The trade union Unite has given €10,000 to support workers at the Greyhound waste recycling firm who have been on strike for more than a month.

The workers maintain they were locked out by their employer for failing to agree to pay cuts of up to 35 per cent. They have claimed the company has been using strikebreakers to carry out waste collections in Dublin during the dispute. Greyhound has argued that its cost was unsustainable. It has called on drivers and operatives at its depot in Clondalkin, Dublin, to return to work under protest, at the rates it is seeking to impose, pending a "binding determination" by the Labour Relations Commission.

Unite regional secretary Jimmy Kelly was among a number of trade unionists from Ireland, Britain, the US and Canada who visited the striking workers on the picket line at the Greyhound facility yesterday.

Mr Kelly said: “We are sending a very clear message from this picket line to Greyhound. You are not simply dealing with a small group of workers. You are dealing with the trade union movement.

“Members of Unite and of other unions know that the treatment being meted out to Greyhound workers represented by Siptu is the concern of all workers and all unions.”