Labour Court recommends redundancy terms of up to €6,000 at Quality Plastics

The Labour Court recommended redundancy terms for Quality Plastics Limited and the Services Industrial Professional Technical Union, including minimum payments of €3,500 for voluntary redundancies and €6,000 for compulsory redundancies. The recommendation was signed on 4 July 2011. The union sought four weeks’ pay per year of service plus €5,000, saying those terms had been agreed and used since 2008. The company said a downturn and limited funding meant it could offer no more than 1.4 weeks’ pay per year. The Court found the circumstances had changed substantially since the earlier package was agreed and that a package of that scale was not attainable. It recommended four weeks’ pay per year of service, inclusive of statutory terms and without a cap. Voluntary redundancies should be offered first; if there were not enough volunteers, selection should follow a last-in, first-out basis. The Court recommended that the company offer these terms and that the union accept them.