Irish Ferries served with strike notice over job cut plans
SIPTU has served two weeks' strike notice on Irish Ferries as a result of the company's plans to replace workers on its Irish Sea routes with cheaper labour from abroad.
The company said yesterday that it was offering a voluntary redundancy package to the 543 workers on its Dublin-Holyhead and Rosslare-Pembroke services.
It said any workers who did not take up the offer would have to accept lower pay and an erosion of their working conditions.
The company claimed the move was necessary to help it reduce costs and remain competitive, but SIPTU spokesman Paul Smyth said it was "just old-fashioned greed, nothing more and nothing less".
Bob Carrick from the Seaman's Union of Ireland, meanwhile, said Irish Ferries' financial situation did not warrant anything as drastic as the move announced yesterday.
"We have been negotiation with them over the last couple of years, cutting back where cutbacks were possible and after getting all those cutbacks, then the company turn around and do this," he said.
Mr Carrick also said the terms being offered to workers who remain with the company were derisory, with staff expected to accept having their wages halved and their holiday entitlements abolished.
