Electricians' strike hurting fragile economy, warns Cowen

The electricians’ strike is taking its toll on the already fragile economy, Brian Cowen warned today.

As talks continued to resolve the five-day-old action, the Taoiseach said the row did not reflect well on either side.

Mr Cowen appealed for the electricians and employers to work together to find a solution in the interests of the country.

“We need to avoid disputes and going back to the old days of industrial-type conflicts,” he said, at the biennial delegate conference of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions in Tralee, Co Kerry.

“It’s not in any of our interests to see this. It puts an onus on both parties to engage constructively and find a solution, because the wider implications for the economy are not good at a time when the economy is already fragile and needs to be supported.”

The Labour Relations Commission has called strikers union the Technical Engineering and Electrical Union (TEEU) and employers groups – including the Construction Industry Federation (CIF), the Electrical Contractors’ Association (ECA) and the Association of Electrical Contractors Ireland (AECI) – back to talks on the orders of Tánaiste Mary Coughlan.

The employers groups have withdrawn demands for a 10% pay cut among workers while electricians say they are owed a 11% pay rise going back three years.

“The industrial relations machinery of the State, at the request of the National Implementation Body, has been engaged with the parties in an attempt to bring about a solution,” said Mr Cowen.

“There is an onus on both sides to engage constructively in that process and to reflect in their behaviour the reality of the impact the dispute is having on the wider economy and its reputation.”

Scores of building sites from townhouses to the country’s biggest projects have been hit over the past week as angry electricians formed pickets.

Corrib gas, Dublin Airport’s Terminal 2 and the new Lansdowne Road stadium were among the flagship sites hit.

Guinness and Cadbury got injunctions from the courts to move pickets from their front gates.