Strike action at Carroll’s Cuisine postponed

SIPTU members employed at Carroll’s Cuisine in Tullamore, Co Offaly have decided to postpone their plans to take strike action.

This decision comes following an agreement from management to begin talks on the workers’ outstanding issues, including collective bargaining rights, on Friday 31 October. Employees were due to implement work stoppages this Friday and Saturday.

SIPTU manufacturing divisional organiser, Neil McGowan, said that the dispute results from the company’s refusal to recognise their union and agree a collective agreement that will deliver improved pay and terms and conditions of employment for the workers.

"Following the serving of notice to management of this industrial action, the company wrote to SIPTU accepting our request for a meeting.

“In light of this change of position by management, our members have decided to postpone the planned industrial action to allow direct talks to take place this week. This is the first time management has agreed to meet with the Union and has come about as a direct result of the overwhelming vote for industrial action by our members," McGowan said.

The workers in Carroll’s Cuisine, he added, remain determined in their campaign but there is a real opportunity to make progress now that management has agreed to engage.

"The fact that members were forced to ballot for action, and serve notice of work stoppages, before the company would sit down with their Union, further underlines the need to strengthen collective bargaining rights in Ireland.

"Ireland remains an outlier in western Europe in terms of collective bargaining rights. Working people, like those in Carroll’s, should not be left with no other option other than taking industrial action to secure what should be a fundamental right," he said.

However, McGowan said that the deferral of the planned industrial action is to allow for negotiations to take place in good faith; in the event that the outcome is not positive, members will then consider options to progress their claim for "fair pay" and "union recognition".