Fás and Siptu at odds over holiday scheme

FÁS HAS described its pre-retirement leave scheme, which gives retiring workers up to 70 days’ holidays a year, as “not appropriate”.

It said 105 out of its 1,900 staff are on the scheme, though this number will be down to 48 by February next year.

The scheme entitles certain employees at the State training agency who are within two years of retirement to take 44 days’ annual leave on top of their normal 26-day entitlement. It was brought in to help Fás workers adapt to retirement.

Siptu industrial organiser Brendan O’Brien accused the media of focusing on “peripheral issues” and not the extra workload that Fás employees had to deal with since the start of the recession. He also said the union was amenable to change if proper procedures were followed.

Labour TD Gerald Nash said the perk gave ammunition to those with an agenda against public service workers. He said the arrangement was not sustainable and the justification for it “simply does not stand up to scrutiny”. The scheme has provoked widespread criticism.

Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport Leo Varadkar said Siptu was doing a disservice to its members by supporting the perk. “When unions try to defend those privileges, they do all public servants a lot of harm,” he said.

Fine Gael TD Paudie Coffey described it as an “unfathomable and ludicrous perk”. Mr Coffey said Siptu’s attitude towards the scheme was “simply unbelievable” given the state of the economy.

The State training agency said the scheme had been negotiated when Fás was Anco, and it was now seeking to eliminate it. The Fás board took the decision to abolish it in March 2010, but Siptu objected and went to the Labour Relations Commission and then the Labour Court. The union claimed fair procedure was not followed. The Labour Court determined that the scheme should be reinstated until a review of such schemes in other public bodies was undertaken.

Fás said no scheme of comparable generosity was available anywhere else in the public service.

The issue will return to the Labour Court because attempts to resolve the issue by the court’s deadline of May 2nd proved unsuccessful.