Anglo calls off Labour Court hearing
Issued on December 08, 2011 at 03:33 PM
The decision by senior management at the IBRC (formerly Anglo and Irish Nationwide) to abandon a previous agreement to refer the terms of a proposed redundancy deal to the Labour Court is a cause of serious concern, according to IBOA The Finance Union.
Union General Secretary, Larry Broderick, said the refusal of a wholly State-owned institution to co-operate with the State's industrial relations machinery will set a very dangerous precedent. "I recall in the not-so-distant past Government Ministers taking private sector employers to task for refusing to allow the Labour Court or the Labour Relations Commission to mediate on various industrial relations issues.
"The Ministers in the current Government seem eerily silent when a State body now suddenly withdraws from a process which would have involved another State institution with proven expertise in this area.
"We had reached a prior understanding with IBRC that while the two sides worked on agreeing a range of other issues about the wind-down of the bank, the contentious issue of the redundancy terms would be referred to the Labour Court.
"However, the last-minute U-turn on the referral to the Labour Court suggests that the IBRC management has been overruled by the Department of Finance and instructed to impose the terms contained in its opening proposal made in September," said Mr. Broderick.
"If this is the case - and there is further evidence to suggest that the Department of Finance has also intervened in the day-to-day running of other domestic banks - then we are facing management by diktat - a situation all the more disturbing since the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Brendan Howlin, declared in April that the Government had no wish to try to micro-manage Irish banks.
"Management by diktat would be extremely alarming - not only for the staff who work in Irish banking - but also for the taxpayers' hopes of seeing some return on the substantial funds invested in the sector. If Irish banking is to get off its knees and start to serve the economy again, it needs a well-motivated workforce and not a dispirited collection of bonded labourers who have no say in either their own future or the future of the sector," declared the IBOA leader.
"The unwillingness to negotiate agreed severance terms for the rank-and-file staff in Irish banking contrasts sharply with the golden parachute pensions and other benefits enjoyed by the senior executives who effectively broke the banks - and the country with them. Despite much hand-wringing by politicians at the time, this elite were handsomely rewarded for their recklessness. The lower ranking staff on the other hand are being made to make the real sacrifices - with thousands of jobs set to disappear at a time when job creation is supposed to be the key national priority
"One of the abiding lessons of the catastrophic collapse of recent years was the failure of senior executives to take seriously the legitimate concerns of their staff. Key decisions were made on a whim by-passing the traditional standards of prudence and integrity. I fear that the IBRC's failure to challenge this unwarranted and negative interference by the Department of Finance - whose own track record on the collapse of Irish banking is far from faultless - may set a dangerous precedent for the future of industrial relations in the financial services sector and further afield," Mr. Broderick warned.
