LRC rules out pay increase for electricians

Around 10,000 electricians around the country will not receive a 5% pay increase expected since last April due to a Labour Court ruling issued this morning.

However, Labour Court Chairman Kevin Duffy has recommended that electrical employers and the Technical Engineering and Electrical Union should renegotiate the pay terms of their agreement for the electrical sector as soon as possible.

The €1.05 per hour increase had been agreed last April between the TEEU and certain electrical contractors' employer groups through a Registered Employment Agreement.

REAs set down legally enforceable minimum wages and terms and conditions for individual sectors of the workforce.

However, last April two new electrical contractors' bodies challenged the latest version of the REA, which would have raised their employees' wages by €1.05 per hour.

National Electrical Contractors Ireland argued that in the current economic climate, they could not afford it.

They also argued that the agreement was invalid because many electrical contractors had not been represented at the negotiations.

However, the key union in the sector the TEEU insisted that the REA was valid and wants the labour Court to apply the pay increase.

The Labour Court ruled that it could not approve the wage increase, given that all employer groups, including those involved in negotiating it, had now withdrawn their consent.

However, Labour Court Chairman Kevin Duffy rejected the employers' application to cancel registration of the REA, which would have removed minimum terms and conditions apart from pay for thousands of electricians.

Instead, Labour Court Chairman Kevin Duffy recommended that employers and the union should re-negotiate the wage terms of the REA to take account of the changed economic circumstances.

It is thought those negotiations will get underway on 10 March.

The recommendation was welcomed by the TEEU.

Assistant General Secretary Dan Miller said the union was glad that National Electrical Contractors Ireland had failed to bring down the Registered Employment Agreement adding that had it succeeded, it would have provided a recipe for industrial relations chaos across the wider economy.

The ruling has been described as 'fundamentally flawed' by National Electrical Contractors Ireland, who had challenged the validity of a pay agreement for the sector.

Denis Judge, National Electrical Contractors Ireland CEO, said the ruling failed to address a number of issues raised by the group, including the extent to which those negotiating the agreement were representative of the industry as a whole.

He said his group was awaiting legal advice on whether it would seek a judicial review of the ruling.

He said NECI would also be balloting its members on whether they wanted to take the matter to the High Court.