This article is from page 4 of the 2009-08-04 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 4 JPG
THE Labour Court has dismissed a claim by SIPTU that catering workers at Shannon Airport can retain a meal allowance as part of the €36 million restructuring deal at the airport.
The deal was reached between the Shannon Airport Authority (SAA) and SIPTU two years ago and the dispute that came before the Labour Court concerned the interpretation of the part of the agreement relat- ing to a meal allowance for workers formerly employed in the catering olor busesoelm
This dispute could not be resolved at local level and was the subject of
a Conciliation Conference under the auspices of the Labour Relations Commission before the matter was referred to the Labour Court.
A hearing in the case was held at the end of June and the union ar- gued that catering staff are histori- cally the lowest paid staff in Shan- non Airport and, in accepting the restructuring agreement, the union did not concede the ending of the meal allowance.
SIPTU also stated that it did not agree with the wording of the clauses dealing with the meal allowance in the restructuring agreement.
The union also pointed out that the agreement was accepted on a “with-
out prejudice” basis, which meant that they could re-enter this claim once re-structuring was completed.
In response, the SAA stated that the workers received compensation of €16,000 under the agreement and in the current challanging financial cli- mate, no additional payments could be conceeded.
The SAA also pointed out that the concession of the claim could result in the unravelling of the entire agree- ment.
The matter came before the Labour Relations Commission in 2007, but it could not be resolved and was re- ferred to the Labour Court.
In its ruling the Labour Court stat-
ed, “The union maintained that all persons re-deployed from the cater- ing department should be covered by any further follow-on claim regard- less of the position they were re-de- ployed to, whereas management hold the view that any claim which might be made must be confined to those not re-deployed to higher paid posi- Wey etsy
“Having carefully considered the submissions and the written clauses in the agreement, the court is satis- fied that the agreement restricts any further claim to those not re-de- ployed to higher paid positions and, accordingly, upholds the interpreta- tion held by management.