{"id":12433,"date":"2025-08-20T21:51:24","date_gmt":"2025-08-20T21:51:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/12433\/"},"modified":"2025-08-20T21:51:24","modified_gmt":"2025-08-20T21:51:24","slug":"unite-dispute-with-jones-engineering-goes-to-mediation-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/12433\/","title":{"rendered":"Unite dispute with Jones Engineering goes to mediation \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

A dispute between Unite<\/a> and builder Jones Engineering<\/a> sparked by legal action against three of the union\u2019s members will go to mediation after the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development<\/a>\u2019s (OECD) intervention.<\/p>\n

HA O\u2019Neill, part of the Jones group, recently dropped High Court action against Unite and three shop stewards following a one-day strike in March 2023 over travel allowances.<\/p>\n

Both sides accepted an offer of mediation on Tuesday from the OECD, which got involved after Unite and the Builders and Woodworkers International (BWI) filed a complaint with it against Jones and its US owner Cathexis.<\/p>\n

The OECD\u2019s national contact point for the Republic, part of the Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment, ruled that the issues raised required further consideration.<\/p>\n

Unite general secretary Sharon Graham dubbed the decision a \u201cvindication\u201d of its members in Jones, adding that it sent a clear signal to other employers.<\/p>\n

The union and BWI claimed the company breached the OECD\u2019s Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises on Ethical Business Conduct by taking action against the shop stewards.<\/p>\n

Jones said on Tuesday that it rejected the union\u2019s allegations and added that the OECD had not found that the company had \u201cacted inconsistently with the guidelines\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cFacilitated mediation does not imply wrongdoing, but rather that all parties wish a resolution to the matter,\u201d Jones Engineering added.<\/p>\n

Failure to comply with OECD guidelines can affect companies bidding for state or publicly funded contracts in member countries.<\/p>\n

Along with dropping the court action, which the company has done, Unite wants Jones to compensate its three shop stewards and to enter a facilities agreement with the union, meant to allow greater co-operation between the pair.<\/p>\n

Unite also seeks the restoration of the travel allowance, which originally prompted the dispute.<\/p>\n

The union and the Mechanical Engineering and Building Services Contractors\u2019 Association, of which Jones is a member, have taken this issue to the Workplace Relations Commission and Labour Court in a bid to resolve it across the industry.<\/p>\n

Unite members held a one-day strike on March 10th, 2023, at Jones Engineering\u2019s sites in Pfizer in Grange Castle, Dublin, and Intel in Leixlip, Co Kildare. <\/p>\n

They were demanding the restoration of a travel allowance to building workers of one hour\u2019s pay, which the industry had dropped with unions\u2019 agreement following the financial crash in 2008.<\/p>\n

HA O\u2019Neill sought a High Court injunction restraining Unite and the shop stewards from engaging in further industrial action pending a final hearing of the dispute.<\/p>\n

The company maintained that the industrial action was unlawful and that there was no valid dispute between it and Unite.<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court subsequently ruled that the High Court was wrong to grant the injunction as Unite had followed procedures laid down in the Industrial Relations Act, 1990.<\/p>\n

However, HA O\u2019Neill subsequently took a separate High Court action against the union and its officials, which it halted in June this year.<\/p>\n

In their complaint to the OECD, Unite and BWI claimed that the court proceedings were meant to financially punish the three shop stewards.<\/p>\n

However, the company has always rejected that it acted improperly.<\/p>\n

Jones said it continued to recognise all unions and to operate within frameworks that have guided industrial relations in its industry for decades.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A dispute between Unite and builder Jones Engineering sparked by legal action against three of the union\u2019s members…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12434,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[79,18,19,17,11798,11800,11799],"class_list":{"0":"post-12433","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-jones-engineering","13":"tag-organisation-for-economic-co-operation-and-development-oecd","14":"tag-unite"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12433\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}