The Labour Court did not recommend conceding the Services Industrial Professional Technical Union and Amalgamated Transport and General Workers’ Union’s claims against Cadbury Ireland Limited for production workers to share compensation paid after transport work was contracted out, or to receive £3,000 severance if they retired early. The recommendation was signed on 21 December 1995.
The unions sought a share of a lump sum estimated at £500,000 for about 900 production workers, along with £3,000 for each eligible early retiree. They argued production workers should share the benefits of a settlement reached for transport workers, who transferred to production after the transport and dispatch work was contracted out. Cadbury said those payments arose from the particular transport settlement and that production workers’ early departures were not redundancies.
The Court said the transport closure negotiations were outside the existing agreements on ongoing change, and that the settlement suited the transport workers’ pay structure. It found no grounds to concede either union claim.