Workers at Gama Construction have refused to call off an unofficial strike to allow talks to take place at the Labour Relations Commission.
Nearly 300 Turkish workers at the company's Dublin sites at Balgaddy and Ballymun have been on strike for more than four weeks in a dispute over pay and conditions.
The workers - members of three unions, Siptu, Ucatt and Opatsi - balloted last week in favour of official industrial action.
Following exploratory discussions with the parties last week, the Labour Relations Commission (LRC) invited them to return for conciliation talks, to take place over a three-week period.
It said it would not be in a position to engage with the parties, however, as long as unofficial industrial action was taking place.Gama Construction said it had accepted the invitation and was available for talks if the industrial action was called off.
However, senior Siptu official Noel Dowling said yesterday there was a "huge level of mistrust" of Gama on the part of the workers and they were not prepared to lift their pickets.
He said the unions had informed Gama they were prepared to enter direct discussions without preconditions and were awaiting a response.
The company had already met the unions twice since workers had withdrawn their labour.
Gama, a major construction company with headquarters in Turkey, employs more than 800 workers in Ireland, most of them Turkish, on various projects.
The company has been under scrutiny since February when Socialist Party TD Joe Higgins accused it in the Dáil of exploiting migrant workers.
Talks at the LRC had been expected to begin tomorrow, but will not now take place while the industrial action continues.
