Industrial disputes

I was reading about the latest potential industrial disputes, that of SIPTU members in Bus Éireann and Dublin Bus who are thinking of balloting for industrial action due to disagreement over talks on plans to privatise 10% of the public bus services (Labour, anyone seen the Labour Party in all this? Ah sure, what do they care?).

More than reasonably:

…today the two unions suspended their involvement in the talks.

They said the department and the NTA had failed to give them assurances on what will happen to staff if routes are transferred to private operators.

Given what we have seen with previous privatisations of state or municipal assets – as with waste collections, the unions are right to be concerned. Anyhow, the thought struck me what are the statistics on industrial action at the moment?

This from the Irish Times notes:

The number of working days lost to industrial disputes in the Irish economy almost trebled last year.
Figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) show 44,105 days were lost to industrial disputes in 2014 compared to just 14,965 the previous year.
In total, there were 11 disputes last year involving 31,665 workers and 11 employers, whereas only 11,924 workers and 12 employers were involved in industrial disputes in 2013.

Can’t say I much like the framing of that – ‘days lost to…’. But hardly a surprise that it’s on the up. Though worth noting that ‘two disputes in the education section accounted for 54 per cent of the days lost last year’.