Construction unions have said not to accept any further wage reduction in the industry, in spite of a demand by employers for a 20% cut in the legal pay rates governing the sector. The employers' association, Construction Industry Federation, is expected to soon ask the Labour Court to cut the rates under the construction industry registered employment agreement (REA) by 20%. Those rates apply to 50,000 site-based workers. Fergus Whelan of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) said: “After very difficult negotiations with the CIF last year, we agreed a pay cut of 7.5%. That didn’t result in the creation of one job in the industry. So it is very unlikely that we will be agreeing to any more pay cuts. They are not the way to get the industry out of the mess it is in. In fact, pay cuts will only make it worse.”
English: http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/we-wont-take-another-pay-cut ...
This article was published in the Collective Bargaining Newsletter. It aims to facilitate information exchange between trade unions and to support the work of ETUC's collective bargaining committee. For more information, please contact the editor Maarten van Klaveren, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies (AIAS) M.vanKlaveren@uva.nl or the communications officer of the ETUI, Mariya Nikolova mnikolova@etui.org. You may find further information on the ETUI at www.etui.org, and on the AIAS at www.uva-aias.net. © ETUI aisbl, Brussels 2012.