Labour Court recommends restoring increments at Brothers of Charity Services Limerick

The Labour Court recommended restoring incremental payments with full retrospective effect for employees of Brothers of Charity Services Limerick. The recommendation, signed on 4 April 2011, followed a dispute with the Services Industrial Professional Technical Union, the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation and the Irish Municipal, Public and Civil Trade Union. The unions said workers had already faced pay cuts and the public service pension levy. Management cited funding reductions and financial difficulties. The Court accepted that the workers were covered by the Public Service Agreement, which protected them from additional pay cuts beyond those imposed by law. It found that withholding increments amounted to a pay reduction contrary to the agreement’s spirit, if not its letter, and recommended urgent talks to identify equivalent savings elsewhere.