ESB strike postponed

A planned strike by 1,200 ESB technicians has been postponed, the company confirmed tonight.

The industrial action by members of the ATGWU had been set to go ahead on Monday after a meeting between management and the union ended today without agreement.

It has now been postponed for 24 hours, a spokesman for ESB confirmed tonight.

The ATGWU claims 1,700 outside contractors are taking away jobs from 107 ESB apprentices.

The trainees are due to finish work at the company by the end of the year but only about half will be kept on at the State company.

An ESB spokesman said: “We always only retain about half the apprentices so it has been company policy all along not to guarantee jobs at the end of training.”

He said unions agreed in 2002 to allow the company to engage 1,700 external contractors to carry out upgrading work on its new €4bn network renewal programme.

The energy provider had offered talks on Monday to the union, but tonight the ESB spokesman said he did not know if they would negotiate with the threat of strikes hanging over the company.

In a separate development, another union at ESB criticised ATGWU and instructed its workers to work normally if there was a strike.

The senior Technical Engineering and Electrical Union (TEEU) officer at the ESB, Davy Naughton, has said the company had accepted the union’s proposals for dealing with the apprenticeship issue.

“It is very worrying that another union, the ATGWU, which has only seven members affected by this issue, is proposing to take industrial action.

“Traditionally the ESB has always trained more apprentices than it needs in the interests of the wider economy.

“It is also of benefit to the apprentices themselves, who would not otherwise have received training and the career opportunities that qualification provides,” he said.

But the ATGWU accused the TEEU of anti-trade union Thatcherite practices.

“I’m very disappointed that the Irish trade union movement has sunk so low as to invite its members to offer blackleg labour in defiance of an official trade dispute,” ATGWU spokesman Brendan Ogle said.

ESB has said power supplies will not be affected in the event of industrial action but there could be delays in repairing local breakdowns.