Disruption in refuse collection continues

REFUSE collections in south

REFUSE collections in south. County Dublin will be disrupted again this morning because of the long running dispute over the introduction of a "wheelie bin" system.

More than 100 refuse workers began an unofficial strike on Thursday evening and there were no bin collections in the council's area on Friday.

Their union, SIPTU, has instructed members to work normally, pending a mass meeting tomorrow night. At the meeting, refuse workers will be balloted on official strike action.

Pickets were placed on Friday at Bohernabreena tiphead, which services all of south County Dublin and parts of Dublin city. However, picketing is not expected to be resumed there this morning.

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On Thursday workers had been expecting to receive a £1,000 "lead in" payment for co operating with efforts to reach higher collection targets on new routes. However some of the 107 workers involved were told they were not being paid because they were failing to meet their targets.

A SIPTU branch official, Mr Terry Cowap, described the management decision not to pay the lump sum as "a breach of faith". He says the union negotiators will be recommending that the workforce vote for official strike action at tomorrow's meeting.

However, the workers are expected to ignore the union instruction and picket the Robin Hood depot from the start of this morning's shift. As a result no collections are expected to take place.

The council's personnel manager, Mr Eamon Kavanagh, has defended the decision to withhold the £1,000 payments. He says that employees have had since December 16th to become familiar with the new routes. They had been asked to begin meeting their full target of 1,200 houses per day only from last Monday.