Legal provisions intended to ensure employees losing their jobs are consulted with have been described as worthless after Meta contractor Covalen declined an invitation to attend the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) to discuss the more than 700 redundancies it is planning.
Members of the Communication Workers’ Union (CWU) at the company staged a one-day strike on Friday as part of their campaign to win recognition and collective bargaining rights.
Owen O’Reilly, the CWU branch representative at the company, said the union’s members had been “left with no choice but to take strike action”.
“We are not asking for anything extraordinary – we are asking for the basic right that workers across Europe take for granted: the right to be represented by a trade union of our choosing,” he said.
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“Covalen has the resources to treat us fairly. Instead, they are using every mechanism available to them to deny workers a voice. That cannot be allowed continue.”
Those involved in the strike say the legally required consultation has not yielded any improvements to the company’s position that only statutory redundancy will be paid.
As that requires two years’ service, more than half of the workers losing their jobs are not expected not to receive any redundancy payment at all.
Asked about the situation, the Department of Enterprise said there are a number of laws in place to protest workers at risk of redundancy and that legislation imposes certain legal obligations on employers proposing collective redundancies.
It said that while the Minister cannot intervene in individual employer-employee relations, there are well-established dispute resolution mechanisms available through the WRC and the Labour Court.
[ Meta contractor Covalen accused of rushing lay-offs to avoid redundancy paymentsOpens in new window ]
CWU deputy general secretary Ian McArdles said the fact that the company has simply declined more than one invitation to engage at the WRC “shows how the procedures can be easily ignored and are therefore worthless”.
In a statement, Covalen said it “continues to proactively consult with and support the affected teams through this transition. We also continue to follow the required processes in line with our obligations. All employees have access to our employee wellbeing support through Covalen’s Employee Assistance Programme.”
CWU general secretary Seán McDonagh says the situation “exposes the fundamental flaw at the heart of our worker representation and collective redundancy legislation. The ‘with a view to agreement’ concept places no real obligation on employers to reach agreement where a union is not recognised – in effect handing management a veto over enhanced redundancy terms and measures to mitigate job losses. The result is stark: a hugely profitable company offering only statutory payments that leave workers with less than two years’ service with nothing.”
The job losses at Covalen, which provides content moderation and other services to Meta, follows an announcement in recent weeks that Meta itself would shed about 10 per cent of its global workforce – about 8,000 people – as a result of developments in AI.
Meta is expected to announce how many jobs will be lost in Ireland next week.
