Liebherr dispute - Potential disaster

With hundreds of thousands of people out of work across the country, it beggars belief that a pay row between workers and management at the Kerry-based German firm Liebherr has festered so long that the company’s future is now in the balance.

Kerry’s biggest industrial employer since 1958 and one of Ireland’s first multinationals, its 670-strong workforce is staring into the abyss following a Siptu rejection of Labour Court proposals the firm had accepted in a bid to resolve the four-year dispute. People in Killarney and beyond fear staff are “sleepwalking” into catastrophe and Liebherr will close the plant.

Now is a time for cool mediation, not hot-headed brinkmanship. If a skilled negotiator of the calibre of Kieran Mulvey, Labour Relations Commission head, is called in, his findings should be binding. Otherwise, this could turn into a major disaster for Kerry.