AT LEAST 100 Irish Life Personal Financial Advisers (sales executives) are expected to receive dismissal notices by the end of the week, following the collapse of settlement talks late on Friday night.
Describing last Friday's talks as "a waste of time", a spokesman for Irish Life said that the company would be available for meaningful talks, but would not get involved "in talks for the sake of talks".
Manufacturing Science Finance (MSF) union spokesman, Mr John Tierney, said Irish Life withdrew from the negotiations last Friday, stating that the company would have to decide whether it was worthwhile having any further discussions. "We are not in dispute with the company, we never got into any meaningful negotiations with the company on the new field sales structure."
Mr Tierney agreed that up to 100 dismissal notices will have been served by the end of the week, but added that even if the current five dismissal notices were implemented next Friday and people taken off the payroll MSF would not embark on industrial action against the company. "This is a lock out," he added.
"What Irish Life will end up with is a situation where it will have no sales force to sell its products and there will be a negative effect on Irish Life's earnings." He said the end result would be that Irish Life's best sales staff would be head hunted by the group's competitors in the highly competitive life assurance and pensions industry.
Mr Tierney accused Irish Life of introducing "UK style management" rather than adopting "the more con sensual industrial relations structures that operate in Ireland". This is viewed by Irish Life as a clear reference to the group's British born chief executive for Ireland, Ms Jean Wood, who is seen as the architect of the radical changes in the sales structure proposed by the company.
Irish Life is adopting the attitude that the sales staff, by not operating the new field sales structure are in effect "walking away from their jobs". A spokesman said Irish Life would accelerate the dismissals' process "because the attitude of the negotiating committee has resulted in a chaotic situation where the personal financial advisers are effectively not working for us."
Under the proposed sales structure sales staff would operate in teams and on a bonus related rather than commission related basis has already been accepted by managers represented by MSF. Mr Tierney said Irish Life, having reached agreement with the sales managers, apparently expected the sales staff to "roll over".
The Irish Life spokesman said the new structure was aimed at making the field sales force "more customer focused and accountable". He said the key to the dispute was the unwillingness of the sales force to cooperate with the new structure while further negotiations took place.
He rejected the claims by MSF that the dismissals action represented a lock out. "They are taking effective industrial action without declaring it."
