Labour Court rules that relocation of state agency workers must be voluntary

In August 2007, the Labour Court issued a recommendation regarding the planned relocation of employees of the state training and employment agency, FÁS. The proposed move is part of the government’s controversial programme to decentralise several government departments and state-run agencies. The court ruled that the requirement that FÁS staff who accepted a job promotion must move location was ‘incompatible with any reasonable notion of voluntarism’.

At the end of August 2007, the Labour Court issued a recommendation in relation to the stated government policy that transfers under the state decentralisation programme must be voluntary. This controversial programme, which was first announced in 2003, aims to decentralise several government departments and state-run agencies. The Labour Court ruling concluded that a requirement issued by the state training and employment agency, FÁS, that staff taking promotional posts must move from the country’s capital city of Dublin to the midlands in Birr, County Offaly, was ‘incompatible with any reasonable notion of voluntarism’.

According to Greg Ennis, an official of the Services Industrial Professional and Technical Union (SIPTU), the long-awaited Labour Court recommendation concerning the relocation of FÁS employees represents a victory for the trade union’s campaign for a purely voluntary approach to any moves outside of Dublin.

Detail of recommendation

As part of its recommendation, the Labour Court outlined the following:

It is clear to the Court that the potential for career progression is an important feature of the general employment conditions of FÁS staff. While no employee can claim a right to promotion as a condition of employment, FÁS staff do have a right to compete for such promotional opportunities as they arise within the organisation. They also have a concomitant right, under existing agreements, to be judged on suitability and merit alone in the competitive process.

The court added:

FÁS say that the transfer of staff to Birr will, in accordance with stated government policy, be on a voluntary basis. That must mean that staff have a right not to move. However, if they exercise that right they would effectively be denied access to promotions to which they would otherwise aspire. Thus, in practice, the overriding criterion for promotion would be a willingness on the part of the candidate to relinquish his or her rights not to transfer. Given the importance of career progression to those involved, such a state of affairs is, in the Court’s view, incompatible with any reasonable notion of voluntarism.

The Labour Court noted that FÁS was ‘influenced, to a significant degree, in applying the disputed contractual terms by the introduction of a similar provision in the civil service’. In the court’s view, ‘decentralisation is likely to have a materially different impact on the careers of FÁS staff than in the case of civil servants’.

The court went on to recommend that ‘the broader issue of decentralisation, as it affects state bodies, must be advanced in a way that takes account of the peculiar circumstances of those bodies and their staff’. Individuals who are unwilling to relocate should thus be ‘provided with realistic alternative career options that take account of the proprietary rights and legitimate expectations which they have accrued in their current employments’.

Response to recommendation

Reacting to the recommendation, the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Micheál Martin, pledged that the government would work with the trade unions to see how they can facilitate better progress in this respect. While the minister outlined that FÁS management and the government had accepted the Labour Court recommendation, he added that the blanket opposition by trade unions to the government’s decentralisation programme did not make sense.

In a separate development, the Irish Municipal Public and Civil Trade Union (IMPACT) called on the government to review its decentralisation programme. In a letter to the Minister for Finance, Brian Cowen, IMPACT’s National Secretary, Louise O’Donnell, argued that a review of decentralisation ‘would allow breathing space to learn from the process to date and to shape the programme going forward’.

Meanwhile, SIPTU’s Regional Secretary for Dublin, Patricia King, expressed the view that the Labour Court recommendation ‘highlighted the legitimate concerns of staff and has spelt out very clearly that voluntary means voluntary. The court accepted that people had legitimate expectations and proprietorial rights based on their careers with these agencies and cannot be compelled to relocate.’

Brian Sheehan, IRN Publishing