Two senior ATGWU officials who were sacked last year have lost their appeals against the dismissals, but have been offered new jobs in the union on full pay.
Mr Mick O'Reilly and Mr Eugene McGlone have been given until next Friday to accept the offer of demoted positions, but with the salary and conditions attached to their previous posts.
Their pay would also be backdated to last May, when their sackings for "gross misconduct and dereliction of duty" were confirmed following an internal disciplinary procedure.
Mr O'Reilly, who has described the charges against him as "trivial", is to take legal advice before deciding whether to accept the offer.
The decision to uphold the sackings was announced in London yesterday by the three-person union panel which heard the men's appeals.
It said the T&GWU general secretary, Mr Bill Morris, had been correct to dismiss the two.
However, given the "long service and previous clean record" of Mr O'Reilly and Mr McGlone, it said both should be offered demoted positions as senior regional organisers.
As regional secretary, Mr O'Reilly was the union's highest-ranking official in Ireland before his sacking, and Mr McGlone was next in command.
If they accept the offer, both are to be barred from applying for any promotion within the union for 12 months. Their former posts are to be advertised immediately.
The offer is also conditional, the union said in a statement, on the two men withdrawing all legal proceedings against it and agreeing not to institute further legal action.
"If these conditions are not accepted then Mr O'Reilly and Mr McGlone remain dismissed," the statement added.
Mr Jimmy Elsby, the union's acting regional secretary, denied there was anything contradictory in upholding the charges against the men while offering them jobs on full pay.
It was "not uncommon or unusual", he said, for people's past records to be taken into account in disciplinary cases.
Mr O'Reilly was first presented with the charges against him, in a 250-page document, a month after he was suspended abruptly while attending a meeting of union officials in Belfast in June 2001.
The most significant charges related to the manner in which the ILDA train drivers and members of the Cork Operative Butchers' Society were recruited into the union. The two men challenged all the charges in appeal hearings which began in October and concluded six weeks ago.
Mr O'Reilly, who travelled to London to hear the appeals panel's decision, was not available for comment yesterday.
