Scaffolders are meeting to establish "flying pickets" to patrol Dublin building sites and ensure no scaffolding work is carried out during the Easter holiday period, which ends next Monday.
The Dublin Scaffolders Society met yesterday to discuss strike plans. They have already picketed a number of sites where scaffolding work has taken place over the Easter bank holiday, including Croke Park and some housing developments.
According to the chairman of the society, Mr Andrew McGuinness, any scaffolders working on those sites left voluntarily. Other work was not interfered with.
Normally many scaffolders work through the building trade's week-long Easter holiday. The scaffolders are seeking pay rises worth between 50 and 300 per cent of the basic rate.
Meanwhile, the Construction Industry Federation has reiterated its willingness to discuss pay, provided the talks are within the parameters of Partnership 2000 and the registered agreement for the industry. Most scaffolders are members of SIPTU, which is a signatory to those agreements.
However, scaffolders in Dublin, Cork and Limerick have set up independent societies to pursue their claim. They are following in the footsteps of SIPTU crane drivers, who secured a £3 an hour pay rise through similar independent action. The scaffolders are seeking new rates of between £9.50 and £18 an hour. The current top rate increased from £6.25 an hour to £6.87 this week. Most scaffolders earn between £230 and £350 a week, depending on the amount of overtime available.
The CIF's chief executive, Mr Liam Kelleher, said crane drivers had a special case and their role, especially on high-density sites, had become pivotal to completing projects on schedule. He rejects claims made by many scaffolders that they are not even receiving the rates they are entitled to under existing agreements.
He said the federation would have no hesitation in tackling underpayment by any of its members.
CIF executive Mr Martin Lang, who deals directly with the scaffolding industry, asks why the unions "haven't been beating the CIF's door down if their members are not being paid the agreed rate?
"A much more normal experience for us is to hear that our members are paying well over the rates," he added.
Mr Kelleher accepts there is a perception that builders are making huge profits, but he says that what is really driving up house prices is the cost of land. He says it often absorbs 35 per cent of total costs in the Dublin area, and sometimes 40 per cent.
"The vast majority of of our members are not fat cats," Mr Lang says. "The bulk of individual contractors and sub-contractors have to compete for tenders and there hasn't been anything like the same movement in [scaffolding] prices as in house prices."
But scaffolders are not impressed.
Mr McGuinness said that when the workers who build houses can no longer afford to live in them there is something seriously wrong with the economy. That, in a nutshell, is what the scaffolders' dispute is about.
Housing figures released by the Department of the Environment show that manual workers comprised 34 per cent of new mortgage holders in 1994, but only 22 per cent last year. Unskilled workers, such as scaffolders, comprised just 3.4 per cent.