Luas Strike Dates Announced

[Thomas J Stamp]

The sick pay thing seems to be, from what I have read, a no risk thing legally for Transdev to do. Even if they are breeching the contract the only remedy the union has is to go the WRC or the Labour Court, which is where they already are. There seems to be a bit of clever PR by Transdev - the % of sick days is usually per employee, not the workforce as a whole and if you as an individual haven't gone over it they cant suspend you - and certainly not retrospectively. As SIPTU says, if they had done it they would be injuncted. Welcome to the 21st Century lads.

As for striking days pay deductions, I'm actually shocked that they have obviously been paid during their strike days up till now. There is no obligation on Transdev to do it. They may be breeching the contract of employment by deducting an entire days pay for a 4 hour stoppage, but again, the first port of call to settle these claims is the WRC/Labour court so there is pretty little the union can do at this moment.

The whole thing has been a PR disaster from the union anyway. They lost this dispute in the eyes of the public from day one with the 52% thing (even though the Junior Doctors thing has been debunked its still commonly being accepted, along with the line that Luas drivers only slide a thing up and down).

Transdev say they have no dosh, but they can afford to bid for Bus Routes. That'll be fun, search for Transdev on twitter and see what our UK neighbours have to say about their bus operations.

Interesting few lines from an independent article last month:

http://www.independent.ie/business/i...-34593180.html

Transdev reported a loss of around €700,000 in its last fiscal year.

Losses for this year are likely to be "significantly higher" in light of strike action, one person familiar with the difficulties said.

The contract to operate the Luas "is, purely fiscally, not worth hanging onto" for Transdev, the person said.

Transdev's UK and Ireland chief executive Nigel Stevens maintained last week that the company is "100pc committed to the fulfilment of the current contract up to 2019 and hopes that its role in the Irish market can extend long beyond this."

Luas would appear to to being operated by Transdev as an opening for bigger fish in the irish market, and despite their saying otherwise, they seem to have no problem getting cash from somewhere to plug the €700,000 last year.