TEEU make U Turn

national | worker & community struggles and protests | press release Wednesday July 23, 2008 17:06 by John McCoy

The Techicinal Engineering & Electrical Union have done a complete U Turn and removed all references to Rouge and Maverick Employers from its Website.

This action displays their reliasiation that the challange to the Registered Employment Agreement that is currently in force in the electrical contracting Industry is most likely to suceed. The REA is being challanged by the newly formed National Electrical Contractors Ireland (NECI) and a group of independent contractors who have obtained an injunction from the High Court to stop any variations to the REA until a full hearing can be heard.
The objections to the whole agreement are based on section 27 (3) Part C of the 1946 Industrial relations act which states that the Labour Court must be satisfied that party's to the agreement must be substantially representative of the body's they are speaking for. It is the their opinion that the Electrical Contractors Association (ECA) with 59 members and the Association of Electrical Contractors Of Ireland (AECI) with 360 members are not representative of the approx 4000 contractors who employ people and were not representative of the industry in the REAs inseption.

It is the opinion of many that TEEU are reeling in shock by this ligimate challange after historically having almost automatically varied the agreement. The Union seem to have always got the better of the ECA and AECI and now reliase that the easy days are gone.

The new NECI stressed that their objective is to be involved in the negotiations for a new Registered Employment Agreement that is fair to all employers and workers in the sector. Not as claimed to reduce all electricians pay to the minimum wage. In fact the NECI would like a proper and fair grading system for electricians in the new agreement where top performing employees could be paid more than the existing rates.