ESB employees agree to three-year pay freeze

ESB workers have agreed to a three-year pay freeze.

The deal will also result in pension increases for former workers being frozen.

The agreement to do so was arrived at recently following talks between unions and management.

The sides also reached an agreement about pensions.

In 2008 it emerged that the pension fund had a deficit of almost €52bn.

The pay freeze is part of an overall plan to tackle the deficit in pensions.

Last month the company announced that it had revenues in 2009 of €3bn with profits of €5.580m.

Yesterday it was revealed that the company is cutting off supply to more than 900 customers a month.

This has led to a furious reaction from the Labour Party which said that the numbers being cut off were likely to increase because of government policies.

Deputy Roisín Shorthall said the government in its review of the Programme for Government published last October promised that a fuel-poverty strategy would be published by the end of 2009.

Nearly 12 months on, not only was there no sign of the promised strategy but the Government had, in the meantime, introduced or sanctioned a number of measures that would significantly add to the fuel costs and which would particularly hit low-income families,” she said.

Firstly the Government imposed the carbon levy on home heating oil from May 1 last, further increasing the cost of a fuel that had increased by more than a third in the previous 12 months.

This was done despite the failure by Government to deliver on promises by Ministers that arrangements would be made to assist those most at risk of fuel poverty before the levy was applied.

Then last week they learned of the Government’s decision to impose a new public service levy on the ESB that would increase electricity prices for low income families by up to 5%, while at the same time boosting the profits of a number of multinational companies involved in energy generation.

“It is almost beyond belief that this Government would introduce a scheme that involves transferring money from low-income families to multinational companies,” she said.

With no sign of a reduction in unemployment, with many families facing severe difficulties in meeting mortgage problems, and with people facing delays in accessing social-welfare entitlements, the number experiencing fuel poverty was likely to significantly increase, unless the Government acted.

In particular the number of homes cut off by the ESB was likely to increase over the winter, Deputy Shortall said.

Article courtesy of the Evening Echo newspaper.