Mandate serve strike notice on 19 Tesco stores

Mandate Trade Union said today that it has served strike notice on Tesco Ireland in 19 stores throughout the country. The union claims that the dispute is based around the company breaching an existing agreement with Mandate regarding reduction of workers hours.

Mandate balloted their Tesco members in these stores for industrial action and the workers voted overwhelmingly in favour by a margin of 95% in favour of strike action. The union have told the company that this course of action is necessary due to the company’s breach of the 2006 agreement regarding reducing hours below the ‘Banded Hour Contracts.’ *see note to editor.

Mandate has informed Tesco that their members will commence strike action on Thursday, 2 July 2009 followed by two more days on Thursday, 9 July 2009 and Friday, 10 July 2009. The union has also confirmed that the strike action may be continued following these strike days, however, they remain available to meet with the company in an effort to resolve the issues in dispute.

Mandate Assistant General Secretary, Linda Tanham said, “Some of our members are losing out on over €100 per week due to unreasonable and unnecessary cutbacks in working hours and it should be remembered that some of these are already low paid workers.

“This is of particular concern for Mandate when you consider that the company made approximately €250 million euro in profits last year in Ireland alone and over €3.1 billion internationally,” said Ms Tanham.

Mandate claim that Tesco is using the recession as a means to reduce the living standards of workers in the pursuit of extravagant profit margins.

Ms Tanham added, “We are all facing difficult times and it’s clear from Mandate’s perspective that we have to behave reasonably and responsibly if a company is in financial difficulty. Having said that, we will not accept company’s playing off the recession and we will fight to maintain and improve the living standards of our members.”

David Gibney, Montague Communications on 01- 8303116

*Mandate and Tesco’s 2006 agreement enables workers to have stability and consistency in their income through a banded hour contract system. This puts staff members into categories of working hours whereby a worker would be entitled to work in bands of 5 hours. For example, some workers would be on a band of 25 – 30 hour contracts yet the company is unnecessarily reducing the hours for these workers below the minimum of 25 provided for in the contract. Mandate claim that the company is therefore in breach of the agreement.

Strike notice has been served in the following stores: