Dublin Bus drivers decide today when to call strike action in pursuit of their 20 per cent pay claim. The claim, which is outside the terms of Partnership 2000, has been sought by the National Bus and Railworkers Union, which is not affiliated to the Irish Congress of Trade Unions.
The union is expected to begin industrial action with a one-day strike within the next 10 days. The action will gradually escalate by one day a week to a full stoppage.
Meanwhile, hopes of averting next Monday's DART strike receded further yesterday, when most of the shop stewards from the NBRU and SIPTU refused to attend a meeting called by the Dublin district manager at Iarnrod Eireann. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the start of training for eight new drivers on Monday.
The unions have warned that any attempt to begin training will lead to immediate industrial action by existing drivers.
Both unions said shop stewards did not turn up for the meeting because of remarks made by the company's human resources manager, Mr John Keenan, published in yesterday's Irish Times.
Mr Keenan had said "the naked greed of a very small number of drivers" was at the root of the current dispute, in which DART drivers are seeking more than £22,000 each. This was in return for the company reorganising rail services in the Dublin area, training of new drivers and extending services to Greystones and Malahide.
In a letter to Mr Keenan yesterday, SIPTU branch secretary Mr Tony Tobin described the manager's remarks as "crude" and "nothing more than a propaganda exercise". He called for their immediate retraction. He said the company's decision to press ahead with its training programme was in clear breach of procedures.
The drivers had voted to reject a compensation offer of £8,000 from the Labour Court to allow for the changes in the DART service and, Mr Tobin pointed out, the joint union-management agreement on negotiation and dispute resolution allowed for a 28-day cooling off period before either side took further action.
However, Mr Keenan said that he stood over his remarks and said he regretted the unions had not taken advantage of yesterday's invitation. He denied being in breach of procedures.
Referring to an earlier deal with mainline train drivers, Mr Keenan said: "We have an agreement on training which is now in existence for nearly eight months. It has been endorsed by the Labour Court three months ago and in August the court acknowledged that it contained nothing to the detriment of existing DART drivers.
"It will take 17 weeks or so to train new drivers, during which we can seek to resolve differences," he said. The company had "respected both the letter and spirit of the agreement".
A spokesman for the Minister for Public Enterprise, Ms O'Rourke, said yesterday she was being kept informed of developments, but that she had no comment to make on the dispute.