Staff to strike at Tullamore's Tesco Extra

Staff at Tullamore’s Tesco Extra store are due to go on indefinite strike this Thursday, May 26.

Mandate Trade Union has announced that a strike of indefinite duration will take place in more than 70 Tesco Ireland stores from Thursday morning at 7am. It follows a breakdown in talks in the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) this morning.

Mandate say the strike is avoidable provided the company either withdraws their threats to force changes to pay and conditions of employment for their workers without agreement or attends the Labour Court for an impartial third party hearing.

There are around 120 workers at the Tullamore Tesco store. Mandate said the proposals for staff employed before 1996 include pay cuts of between 15 and 35%, cuts to overtime, a reduction in the annual bonus, changes to rosters and cuts to Sunday and unsociable hour’s premiums.

As Tesco’s Birr store was built post 1996, it is not being impacted by Thursday’s strike action. Workers at Tesco in Edenderry are members of SIPTU Trade Union and it is not known if any action will be taken at the store at this stage.

In response to the planned action Tesco said: 'We are extremely disappointed with Mandate’s announcement that they will hold strike action on Thursday 26 May. Our stores and online service will open for business as normal on Thursday 26 May. As no changes in relation to the c300 colleagues on the pre-1996/97 contract have been made, we consider such action inconsistent with the ballot which only mandated action in the event we implement change.'

'We deferred the proposed implementation date for this contract change to facilitate constructive discussions in the WRC, for which we have always been available, and we made no decision at the WRC about setting a new implementation date. Further only 30% of colleagues in affected stores eligible to vote actually voted in support of this action. Extensive discussions at the WRC over several weeks, including 18 hours yesterday, have failed to deliver progress on agreeing compensation for making this change to our pre-1996/97 contract that affect c300 out of our 14,500 workforce.  In the spirit of compromise, Tesco yesterday tabled new proposals at the WRC that address the feedback received from our colleagues in relation to the pre-1996/97 contract changes. '

'We are disappointed that Mandate has rejected these proposals without giving their members the opportunity to vote. We have revised this offer further and we believe that colleagues should now have time to consider our new offer.  We are proposing these changes in order to improve our customer service at our busiest times of the week.  They will also deliver a fairer workplace.'