SIPTU members at Tyndall Institute to go on strike

20 Feb 2014

Staff at the Tyndall National Institute, University College Cork (UCC), have announced they are to go on strike over claims they receive up to 20pc less than the standard rate for other UCC employees.

Tyndall staff members who are also members of the Services Industrial Professional and Technical Union (SIPTU) have started picketing outside the main building yesterday and will also take another one-day stoppage on 26 February as part of the strike.

The centre is one of the country’s leading innovation centres and has made some significant breakthroughs in recent months but the 70 staff members signed up to the union have now called to action after four years of negotiations between themselves, the Labour Relations Commission (LRC) and the Department of Education.

UCC has released a statement saying it has “acknowledged that there should be no disparity of treatment between staff at the Tyndall Institute and staff at UCC, but it said the current difficulties stem from constraints imposed by public service pay policy.”

It went on to warn continued action may harm the reputation and finances of the institute if this were to be a prolonged strike.

One of SIPTU’s organisers, Bill Mulcahy, went on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland programme to highlight the strikers’ need for pay equality and denied they are looking for a pay rise ahead of colleagues and that if no progress is made in the coming days, the strikes may continue in the coming weeks.

Colm Gorey was a senior journalist with Silicon Republic

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