A-Infos (en) Ireland, Anarchist journal, Workers Solidarity #94 - Big gains for contract workers in UCD by Joe Black - (UCD SIPTU member)

Like many other employers UCD has sought to save money in the last 
couple of decades by refusing to create permanent pensionable posts. 
Instead, a growing percentage of the workforce have been left on 
short-term contracts without any pension rights. Union organisation in 
UCD has been quite weak; of some 3,000 workers fewer than a third are 
union members. Most of these are in SIPTU. Over the last two years 
management has been engaged in an aggressive “restructuring” exercise 
leading to increasingly well attended union meetings and new 
recruitment. The abuse of short-term contracts was identified as a key 
issue, some 900 contract workers it was revealed were excluded form the 
final pay related pension scheme that permanent workers were signed up 
to. Despite recent EU legislation that required employers to provide 
pension schemes for contract workers UCD, like other colleges, was 
dragging its feet.

By June 2006 it was very clear that this stalling could go on 
indefinitely. In addition, management were refusing to renew the 
contract of one of the union reps in what was seen by us as victimisation.

A large majority of SIPTU members voted to give the section committee 
the power to call a one-day strike, to be followed by a work to rule. 
Rather than act on this straight away at the start of the summer when 
action would be less effective the section committee delayed this action 
until the first day of the new autumn term. As it happened the 
restructuring also started to unravel before this date, as many students 
were unable to use the new computer system to register for their courses.

The surprise result was that by the Thursday before the strike was due 
to take place management appeared to concede on all the key issues. 
Apparent concessions include:
* Bringing 900 contract workers into a final pay related pension scheme.
* 80% of the contract workers whose test cases the union had brought are 
to get permanent contracts. This includes the union rep who had been let 
go in June, with the remaining 20% going to arbitration.
* Management agreeing to submitting future short term contracts to a 
union / management committee. This means short-term contract posts that 
are really permanent posts should be made permanent.

It will take some months to tell if these concessions are genuine or 
were simply an exercise to buy time at a point management were under 
massive pressure. It is also the case that contract workers not directly 
employed by UCD will not get these benefits - all the cleaning work, for 
instance, is outsourced. However, in either case, more progress was made 
in a matter of days once the threat of direct action by the workers 
concerned was on the table than had been made in decades of Labour Court 
hearings and mediation.
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This article is from Workers Solidarity 94 Nov/Dec 2006
Download the PDF file of WS 94 http://struggle.ws/pdfs/ws/ws94.pdf
Read the other articles from WS94 online http://www.wsm.ie/story/1660
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