AIB partnership deal includes 35-hour week

In April 2003, the staff of Allied Irish Banks (AIB) voted to accept a three-year industrial relations agreement that includes a 35-hour working week, as part of an ongoing 'partnership' approach to change between the bank and the Irish Bank Officials' Association (IBOA).

In April 2003, the 6,000 or so employees of Allied Irish Banks (AIB) voted to accept a three-year industrial relations agreement. The new deal is the most concrete development in the partnership process involving AIB and the Irish Bank Officials' Association (IBOA), which started almost five years ago as part of a wider effort to develop workplace partnership in AIB (IE0304203F). The agreement was concluded with the assistance of an independent consultant, Phil Flynn, a former general secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. Mr Flynn described the AIB/IBOA model as one of the 'best of its kind in operation in these islands'.

Apart from the introduction of a 35-hour working week, which is relatively rare in Ireland, significant aspects of the deal include:

• long service-increments that are to benefit several hundred longer serving staff;

• a commitment on no closures of rural branches for the duration of the agreement;

• no voluntary redundancies for three years; and

• discussions on 'gainsharing', under specific headings such as 'profit share', 'share options' and 'bonus payments'

For AIB, the key to the proposed deal is that it firmly commits IBOA to engage positively and proactively in meeting the market-driven demands of the business. The agreement states there should be 'no strait jacket' put on the bank’s change and 'transformation' agenda. Meanwhile, 'best practice' should apply in regard to consultation, adherence to agreements and 'consensus-based bargaining.' Key roles in negotiating the deal on the management and union sides were played by AIB’s head of employee relations, Donie Wiley and IBOA general secretary, Larry Broderick.

The agreement is seen as a major landmark in the context of Irish industrial relations and as a 'milestone' in the slow development of enterprise-level partnership in the country, which is being strongly promoted by the National Centre for Partnership and Performance (NCPP) (IE0104166F and IE0204203N). The chair of NCPP, Peter Cassells, also chairs the AIB/IBOA partnership steering committee.

AIB is one of the 'big two' Irish banks, the other being Bank of Ireland. Between them, they have dominated the Irish banking scene for decades.