Around 500 AIB workers are in line to share around €317,500 for moving offices.
The deal comes after the Labour Court recommended the State-owned bank adhere to the provisions of an 11-year-old agreement with the Financial Services Union.
The agreement provides for a payment of €635 to each worker if they are relocated by over a mile to a new office.
The bank is proposing to relocate 500 staff from Dublin’s Ballsbridge to 10km away in Leopardstown. Before the Labour Court, AIB resisted the relocation claim made by the union. It also said that payments for relocating workers were “indefensible where staff are required to travel small distances to new and better-working facilities”.
It said: “Staff transfer between branches is a routine feature of employment in the bank for which no compensation is paid”.
The Financial Services Union told the court there was “an adverse impact on the personal and financial wellbeing of the staff” facing relocation. Staff faced longer commuting times and increased transport costs, and that as a very profitable bank it could afford to compensate staff and their families, the union said.
During the financial crisis in which AIB received almost €21bn in state cash, the 2006 agreement providing for the relocation payments was suspended because the bank felt it was no longer appropriate, given the bank’s reliance on the bailout money.
In its recommendation, the Labour Court said that the 2006 agreement remains in force as employees who co-operated with adjustments to pay and conditions of employment during the crisis were entitled to have those cuts progressively reversed as circumstances improve.
Billy Barrett, a senior industrial relations official with the union, said: “We have been clear that the suspension by the bank of elements of the 2006 head office moves agreement could only be considered a temporary measure, effectively introduced during an emergency for the bank.”
The union’s general secretary Larry Broderick, said: “This is an important recommendation by the Labour Court. It recognised that staff in the banking sector, in common with other public and private sector employees, endured significant changes to pay and terms and conditions during the financial crisis.
“Significantly the recommendation states that bank staff are now ‘entitled to have those progressively reversed as circumstances improve’. This, of course, is welcome news for the AIB staff on whose behalf we took this particular case but may well have implications for staff across the sector.”