Rabbitte to meet Packard chiefs

Senior management at Delphi Packard are to meet the Minister for Commerce, Science and Technology, Mr Pat Rabbitte, today to …

Senior management at Delphi Packard are to meet the Minister for Commerce, Science and Technology, Mr Pat Rabbitte, today to discuss the dispute over redundancy terms for 800 workers at the company's plant in Tallaght.

Last week, talks at the Labour Relations Commission (LRC) were adjourned at the request of the company for a week. Today's meeting could be crucial to ensuring that the LRC intervention succeeds when talks resume tomorrow.

Mr Rabbitte said last night that resolving the dispute over redundancies was not only important in itself but "in terms of the wider discussions about replacement industries for Tallaght". For these to be successful an orderly winding down of the plant is required.

Shop stewards at the plant have warned on at least two occasions over the past fortnight that they might extend the dispute to other subsidiaries of General Motors in Ireland if the Packard company does not honour the terms of a Labour Court recommendation. The recommendation would add about £2 million to the overall cost of the existing redundancy package on offer from the company.