Ninety two per cent of voting members of the Trinity branch of Unite, one of the trade unions representing service and support staff, have voted this evening to take strike action over the ending of promotions and ending of fixed-term contracts.
The vote, which took place today, saw members ballot to support industrial and strike action in Trinity over the ongoing dispute with College, which a number of meetings and negotiations have failed to solve. The ballot had a turnout of 72 per cent.
Staff in the other union, the Services, Industrial, Professional and Technical Union (SIPTU), voted on Friday to take strike action, with just under 73 per cent present voting in favour.
In email statement to The University Times, Trinity’s Unite Local Committee Chairperson, David Grouse, said: “Both the result in favour of Industrial Action and the turnout indicate the level of anger among Unite members. Support and service staff believe they are being disrespected and are determined to challenge management.”
“We believe management are now obliged to meet with us to genuinely attempt to resolve the issues and as always, we are available for discussion”, he said.
Secretary of the Local Committee Cieran Perry said: “We have a clear mandate from our members for Strike Action if necessary and we intend to make management aware that we intend to pursue this option if they aren’t willing to genuinely engage with Unite.”
Writing in The University Times, Dr Jack McGinley, President of SIPTU’s Education Sector, said: “It has come to the point where the ball has been dropped too many times and staff are sick of getting excuses as to why things could not be progressed swiftly.”
The two votes mean that Trinity could see industrial and strike action before Easter this year, the first time since the 1990s such action has taken place in College.
The University Times reported in January that SIPTU, alongside Unite, another union representing Trinity’s staff, were to meet with the College to discuss the increasing casualisation of staff contracts within the College with senior officials from the Human Resources Department, including the Director of Human Resources, Kate Malone.
In December 2016, The University Times revealed that 63 per cent of non-academic staff employed on temporary contracts, with Perry emphasising that much of this change to employment contracts was down to a general trend of commercialisation.
