Report into state electricity company suggests framework for change

A report into an unofficial industrial dispute in Ireland's state-run electricity company, the Electricity Supply Board (ESB), charts a way forward for the negotiation of change in a company which must soon face up to competition. The report was submitted in October 1999.

A confidential consultants' report into an unofficial industrial dispute in March 1999 at an Electricity Supply Board (ESB), power plant in Tarbert, County Clare, proposes a framework to agree a strategy for change in the company as a whole, and its power generation business unit in particular. As Ireland's monopoly state-run electricity company, ESB and its 8,000 employees will soon be facing competition for the first time due to EU deregulation requirements.

The report, "Management-union relationships at Tarbert power station", states that a shorter time-frame is now needed to process company-wide change, compared with the drawn-out "partnership" process agreed under ESB's 1996-9 Cost and competitiveness review (CCR) (IE9902272N). The consultants note that many trade union and management representatives told them that Tarbert was not significantly different from other power stations. For this reason, their proposals centre on company-wide issues, as well as ones specific to Tarbert.

The consultants who carried out the report were Phil Flynn, the former president of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) and current chair of ICC Bank, and John O' Dowd, a former joint director of the National Centre for Partnership and former general secretary of the Civil & Public Services Union (CPSU). They presented the document to the parties in early October 1999 and a summary was published exclusively in the Industrial Relations News (IRN) newsletter on 14 October.

Two craftworkers at the centre of the unofficial dispute were suspended for two weeks without pay and barred for four years from holding a post "at any level" within a trade in ESB. A formal written warning to each of them is to be removed from their personal files after 12 months of "satisfactory service."

The report says that management and unions must discuss and agree a strategy for change regarding the future of ESB in the power generation business market. Agreement should also be reached on a "fast-track" system for bringing issues to finality. An agreed chair/facilitator is required to assist the process and the parties should consider the development of reward systems aimed at developing a more positive employee attitude to change, productivity and so forth.

The regulatory, competitive and political environment within which ESB operates is undergoing rapid change, with large industrial users due to have wider supply options from 2000 as 28% of the market is opened up, rising to 32% by 2003. However, there is little doubt that the Tarbert dispute - and a more recent unofficial stoppage at the Ferbane power station in County Offaly- have inflicted damage on the image of the company.