Labour Court recommends Limerick City Council pay fire officers sums due

The Labour Court recommended that Limerick City Council pay fire officers the sums due under Parallel Benchmarking and Sustaining Progress from their due dates. The recommendation, signed on 27 February 2007, followed a dispute with the Services Industrial Professional Technical Union over payments to full-time firefighters. The union said the council’s proposed changes to the fire service were unilateral and were not required by the benchmarking agreements. The council said it could seek workplace changes under Sustaining Progress and had withheld the final 25% of the benchmarking award and the national pay increase because no agreement had been reached. The Court said changes should be discussed with adequate notice in a partnership forum where both sides could participate. It also urged the parties to follow the Local Authority NJIC’s recommendation to resolve the dispute.