The system of internal staff representation for staff at Siptu is “inferior to the Ryanair model”, a Workplace Relations Commission hearing has heard, with workers obliged to engage with an internal committee that senior management could influence and then routinely ignore.
Siptu’s staff, the commission hearing in Waterford was told, are obliged to be members of the union they work for but receive none of the benefits.
During what was day two of the hearing on Wednesday — an action which has been taken by long-time Siptu official Ger Malone who alleges she was penalised after making several protected disclosures about concerns she had regarding issues at the union — a letter written by the Staff Representative Council (SRC) on November 1st, 2021, to members of Siptu’s National Executive Council was cited.
In the letter, the contents of which were said to have been unanimously agreed by the SRC’s members, concerns were raised about the “direction” in which Siptu was travelling.
It alleged “widespread discrimination” by the union’s management against its staff with “the two most prominent grounds being gender, and political beliefs”.
The SRC contended that the rules and procedures under which it was established as the sole representative body for the staff were “frequently broken when they don’t suit management”.
The staff representatives described it as “incredulous” provisions that the organisation’s most senior management could vote in the election of the SRC’s officers and described the “unbelievably deficient industrial relations model which we inherited” as “inferior to that of the Ryanair model”.
The letter stated the SRC’s members had sought to raise their concerns in a previous email sent a few weeks earlier but this had not been acknowledged or responded to.
Representing Siptu, senior official Karan O Loughlin said there was nothing in the contracts of the union’s staff that prevented them from joining another union but Ms Malone said all staff were obliged to be members of Siptu and to authorise it to make related deductions from their pay.
Ms Malone was chairwoman of the SRC for nine years but lost the position in an election in April 2022. She alleges senior management at the union conspired to engineer her defeat. The union denies this.
Previously a volunteer shop steward at the Ray-Ban factory in Waterford, Ms Malone took up a paid position with the union in 2002 and said they had made a significant contribution during her time representing the union’s members.
She said she had been penalised and persistently undermined by senior officials in recent years, however, as a consequence of the protected disclosures she had made, including one who had been asked by a senior member of management to act as their “eyes and ears” within the organisation.
She said she had been left in a “complete state of shock and experienced an overwhelming sense of portrayal” because of the way she was treated by her employer.
Ms O Loughlin said the union “vigorously “denies the accusations made.
She said Siptu disputes the standing of all but three of the protected disclosures under the Act and “certainly denies there was any penalisation or detriment as a result of the disclosures”.
Ms Malone was speaking on the second day of her case against the union in which she originally claimed 29 alleged acts of penalisation she said were linked to 17 protected disclosures she made. If successful, she could be awarded five years’ salary.
Ten of the allegations of penalisation were found to be time-barred on the first day of the hearing, in April, while 11 were made during the six months immediately before she lodged her complaint in November 2022 and will be considered by the adjudicating officer in the case, Gaye Cunningham.
The question of whether the remaining eight will be was the subject the lengthy submissions by the two sides on Wednesday with several interjections by Ms Malone’s supporters, including a small number of other Siptu employees.
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