Polish workers secure jobs and back pay after dispute at electricity plant

Around 200 Polish members of the Technical Electrical and Engineering Union, who had been working on a refit of the Electricity Supply Board (ESB) power generation plant at Moneypoint, have accepted the terms of a recent settlement. The deal followed a dispute between the workers and the ESB, its main contractor, Lentjes, and the subcontractor ZRE Katowicz Ireland over the non-payment of wages and other entitlements.

Industrial action at the state-owned Electricity Supply Board (ESB) Moneypoint power generation plant – the largest of such plants in Ireland – over the non-payment of wages and other entitlements to Polish contract workers was recently averted. The strike was avoided when a deal was reached after four days of intensive talks at the Labour Relations Commission (LRC).

The agreement resulted in a goodwill payment of €600,000 being issued by the main subcontractor Lentjes to the 200 Polish workers employed by the subcontractor ZRE Katowicz Ireland Construction Ltd; the balance was paid by the government’s insolvency fund. The workers concerned had not been paid for six weeks and were due to receive holiday and other entitlements.

Background to dispute

The dispute was triggered in October 2007 when ZRE’s contract was terminated by Lentjes. The latter had been appointed by the ESB to carry out a €380 million environmental refurbishment of the plant, as part of a wider €5 billion refit of the national grid.

Formal strike notice was subsequently served by the Technical Electrical and Engineering Union (TEEU) to the ESB, Lentjes and ZRE Katowicz Ireland. TEEU maintained that the ZRE workers were owed up to eight weeks’ wages, including holiday pay and payment in lieu of notice. This was the second time in two years that ZRE had come to the attention of the trade union regarding shortfalls in payments due to workers.

However, the ESB insisted that it had fulfilled all of its responsibilities, adding that while it would help in the search for a solution, it could not accept responsibility for any monies owed to the workers.

In the end, following the liquidation of ZRE Katowicz Ireland, ZRE’s Polish parent company offered all of its Polish workers at the ESB plant – namely, welders and scaffolders – positions in a separate company which it owns in Poland. Flights home were to be paid if necessary, but the majority of the workers have since received job offers at Moneypoint.

Terms of deal

The exact terms of the deal, concluded with the help of the LRC, were as follows:

• each worker has been given a letter signed by the Chair of ZRE Katowicz and bearing the company seal, offering them a job with the parent company in Poland. Flights home are to be paid for by the company;

• the ESB and TEEU are fully committed to achieving appropriate contractor employment standards. Both parties are committed to reinvigorating their joint engagement to ensure that all of the lessons learned from the current dispute are translated into processes and procedures designed to monitor and enhance contractor standards;

• an ex-gratia payment of €600,000 is to be issued to the workers.

Fraud complaint

Meanwhile, TEEU has made a formal complaint to the Garda Bureau of Fraud Investigation, part of Ireland’s police force, that €54,000 in trade union contributions, which had been deducted from employees’ wages over a period of time, has not been paid over. Moreover, the trade union claims that a sum of €309,000 in pension contributions collected by the company had not been remitted to the industry pension fund.

Response of ESB

The ESB welcomed the proposals arrived at in the LRC, but noted that it had not been in dispute and had no quarrel with any of the parties involved. It insisted that it had participated in the talks on the basis of helping to achieve a resolution, adding that throughout the dispute it had met all of its obligations ‘in a full and timely manner’.

Brian Sheehan, IRN Publishing