Labour Court recommends pension access for GMIT catering staff, rejects union’s working-year claim

The Labour Court recommended that Galway Mayo Institute Of Technology (Gmit) amend catering staff contracts to allow access to the Education Sector Superannuation Scheme. The recommendation was signed on 1 April 2016. The Services Industrial Professional Technical Union (SIPTU) sought recognition that the catering staff were public servants and eligible for the scheme. It also argued that changes to working hours breached a 1995 collective agreement. GMIT said the staff were employed by the Catering Company, a company it wholly controlled, and that their contracts did not provide for pension-scheme access. The Court said an express contractual provision making the posts pensionable was required and recommended that GMIT take the necessary steps to amend the contracts. It accepted that spreading the staff’s 36 to 38 working weeks across 52 weeks varied the agreement, but recommended that the union’s claim to restore the former working year fail. It recommended that local discussions continue on how summer work should be rostered.