The Services, Industrial, Professional and Technical Union (SIPTU), one of the unions representing Trinity’s service and support staff, has this evening voted to strike over a dispute over new temporary contracts and an end to staff promotions.
Trinity’s SIPTU members voted in two ballots today, the first on industrial action and the second on strike action. In the first ballot, for strike action, out of 543 valid votes, 395 were in favour of striking. The second ballot, on industrial action, saw 489 votes in favour, out of a total of 545 valid votes.
The union will now be writing to Trinity to inform them of the decision.
Speaking to The University Times, this evening, Jack McGinley, a senior member of SIPTU’s education sector, said that the two ballots, one on strike action and the other on industrial action, provided a “strong mandate”.
McGinley said that it was likely a combination of industrial and strike action would take place in mid-April, if no third-party becomes involved in the official dispute between the union and Trinity.
A new “diktat” from Trinity would see temporary contracts introduced for new staff and an end to all promotions for current staff. Speaking to The University Times in January, Cieran Perry, the Secretary of Unite in Trinity, said that before Christmas College had informed his union, as well as SIPTU and the Irish Federation for University Teachers (IFUT), that there would be “no more promotions” and “no more permanent contracts for future employees”.
The action will be the first of its kind in Trinity since the mid-1990s.
McGinley said he would be contacting Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU) in the coming days to get their support.
In an email statement to The University Times in January, Trinity’s Press Officer, Caoimhe Ni Lochlainn, speaking on behalf of Human Resources, said that a “revised approach for administrative, library and support staff” was approved by the College Board in December 2016. The new approach, she said, would “focus on more formalised job evaluation and will be introduced this year”.
“HR are currently developing this and it will be presented for consideration by University management and Union Representatives shortly”, she added.
Ni Lochlainn said that “there continues to be promotional opportunity for staff through normal recruitment competition. HR statistics also show that 44 administrative, library and support staff were promoted through competition in the academic year 15/16”.
The University Times reported in January that SIPTU, alongside Unite, another union representing Trinity’s staff, were to meet with the College to discuss the increasing casualisation of staff contracts within the College with senior officials from the Human Resources Department, including the Director of Human Resources, Kate Malone.
In December 2016, The University Times revealed that 63 per cent of non-academic staff employed on temporary contracts, with Perry emphasising that much of this change to employment contracts was down to a general trend of commercialisation.
Last year, the General Secretary of the IFUT, Mike Jennings, was heavily critical of the increasing use of such contracts for academic staff. Speaking to The University Times, Jennings described Trinity’s decision as “egregious” and “outrageous” and possibly illegal. There is, he said, “already a disgraceful amount of casual work in the university”.
Unite are to ballot next Tuesday on industrial action.
