Labour Court says three Shannon Airport Authority employees were not “new entrants”

The Labour Court decided on 21 November 2014 that three Shannon Airport Authority employees were not “new entrants” under the authority’s CRP Agreement. The agreement, made in February 2010, provided reduced pay rates for new entrants but did not define the term. The Court interpreted it to mean someone whose continuous reckonable service with the authority began after the agreement was concluded. The dispute concerned three members of the Services Industrial Professional Technical Union who had worked on successive fixed-term contracts, the first beginning in 2008. They received contracts of indefinite duration in June 2012 under the Protection of Employees (Fixed Term Work) Act 2003. The Court said the authority had acknowledged that they had accrued four years of continuous service by then, so they could not be treated as new entrants under its interpretation.