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AMID A CLIMATE of intense industrial unrest nationally, Tesco employees at 16 stores have joined the ranks of the discontented and announced “indefinite” strikes, to begin today, 14 February.
Eight stores are to strike initially, with another eight due to hit the pickets on Friday. Nine of those 16 stores are in Dublin, while two in Wicklow and one each in Kerry, Longford, Meath, Offaly, and Monaghan are also set to strike.
The reason for the strike is that workers who have been employed since prior to 1996 are to be moved to inferior contracts and have their pay greatly reduced, according to unions. Tesco categorically denies this.
This particular issue has been at play for over 12 months now, with plans to move those long-term workers to new ‘modern’ contracts first revealed in January 2016.
Prior to the announcement of strike action two weeks ago, the ongoing situation at Tesco was raised in Dáil Éireann by Independents4Change TD Joan Collins.
Under Dáil privilege, she brought up the existence of Project Black, which Tesco was allegedly using as a means to shed employees.
Hitherto, details of Project Black have been scarce. That has now changed, with the existence of the initiative being officially acknowledged by Tesco management in a leaflet recently distributed to stores.
The company claims that the ominous-sounding title actually refers to “keeping Tesco Ireland in the black”, ie financially sustainable. The company further says that the project refers to “changes to the pre-1996 terms and conditions, no more, no less”.
Unions say it is a “sophisticated and calculated” attempt at union busting, that is, a move designed to render Tesco’s workforce “fully compliant”, the first step of which was the encouragement of longer-term employees to take voluntary redundancy. 700 of those pre-1996 workers have taken such redundancy in the last 12 months (Mandate argues that the figure is much higher). Roughly 250 remain.
A Mandate to strike
Only about 40% of Ireland’s 50 Tesco stores are due to strike this week. Votes by Mandate members in favour of action have been taken in solidarity with the 250 workers still on the payroll who are working on contracts agreed pre-1996.
Those remaining say they are facing pay cuts of at least 15% together with the restructuring of their terms and conditions. Tesco says it is merely applying a recommendation of the Labour Court from April last year and has at all times obeyed all industrial rules.
The company has repeatedly called for Mandate to call off its strike and accept that Labour Court recommendation. Last week, it declared itself “shocked” at the suggestion that Mandate was encouraging its members to “shop with their conscience” in other stores.
TheJournal.ie spoke to two Tesco employees (one of whom has 21 years with the company, the other 27, both wished to remain anonymous for fear of jeopardising the coming strike action) who are currently on pre-1996 contracts. They give an impression of a culture of fear and hostility that has sprung up in the past year.
“We were always a closed shop with full union membership, always achieved via collective bargaining. That all changed last January when we were told that all contracts would be changed,” says one.
They said we were going onto new contracts with less favourable rates and full flexibility. It was either take that or take redundancy.
The two claim that Tesco approached them directly, rather than the union. “They targeted us personally. As the year went on they talked to the union but they were quite standoffish. Just not forthcoming, they were there so they were obeying rules, but they weren’t engaging.”
Both workers describe life at work now as “dreadful, hostile”.
Our lives have been made very difficult. In the run up to the strike vote recently the people on other contracts were brought up and asked ‘how could you go on strike with people like this?’. People who’ve been getting €105,000 in redundancy. Well we were never offered that money I can tell you.
“We’ve been told that we’re selfish, unreasonable, immoral. We’ve been told that if we’re heard talking about this at work ‘it’ll be stamped out’. People who cross the pickets have been told they will lose all benefits (Tesco denies this saying “it is standard that if someone doesn’t come into work then they don’t get paid”). These are people we used to work fine with before this all started.”
The two say that “looking back, you can see the approach being phased in”. “Like when our health committee was phased out three years ago. It was all gradual.”
They are convinced that a Project Purple also exists, and that it is the next phase for Tesco once Project Black, assumed to be the elimination of long-term contracts, is completed.
“They have to get rid of the pre-96ers in order to move to Project Purple. And it’s all working towards having a ‘fully compliant’ workforce’,” one worker says.
But there are people post-96 who have similar set hours and contracts to us. The same manager said to us “we’ll deal with them later”.
The crux of the matter, according to these employees, is: ‘if the company won’t honour these contracts, who’s to say they’ll honour others going forward’.
Right now it’s us being victimised. But if we give in, who’ll be next?
What is Project Black?
Roughly two years ago, Tesco engaged the services of law firm Eversheds (now Eversheds Sutherland in Ireland) to advise on the company’s industrial relations, according to Collins. Regarding Eversheds, Tesco says: “Eversheds have never given Tesco Ireland advice on changes to pre-1996 terms and conditions.” The company has also categorically stated that Project Black is not the result of Eversheds’ consultancy.
Unions meanwhile say the end goal of that consultancy is to “probably deunionise” the company’s Irish workforce.
“The advice started two years ago and has been ramped up significantly in the last 12 months,” a source told TheJournal.ie.
We’ve never come across this kind of sophisticated derecognition of trade unions. We are being consistently undermined, and weakened by the company’s approach.
Union sources say that Tesco sees the approach taken by Dunnes Stores (where unions are not recognised, and the media is ignored completely) as the way forward, and that what is happening is consistent with the approach taken by the company in the UK in the past five years.
“So now they’re still sitting down with us, but not faithfully, there’s no effort to engage,” our source says.
The template is not a new one: “It’s all behaviour we’ve seen, and that’s been documented by our sister unions, abroad, particularly in the UK.”
This is the strategy advised by these professional consultants. If they’re brought in to get rid of 1,200 from the workforce, and 900 are already gone, then it becomes about what Tesco says is flexibility – so out of every 100 workers one will need to be flexible regarding hours. But it’s never been about that, it’s about undermining contracts, and what happens is a lot of people end up on precarious part-time contracts.
Keeping something along these lines a secret is naturally quite difficult to do.
The existence of Project Black was for a long time ignored by Tesco, and first came to the unions’ notice via an employee who was tipped off by a friendly manager.
“Tesco were aware that we knew about it. And let’s put it this way, they weren’t denying it,” says our source. Project Black is now (relatively) out in the open. Recently, the following flyer has been posted in staffrooms across the country, finally acknowledging the controversial project. And denying the existence of Project Purple, saying it is a concoction on the part of the unions.
Click here to view a larger image
Mandate see it as being more likely the next step in the company’s new industrial approach to its staff.
“This is a very sophisticated, calculated approach to staff relations. You can take something totally inferior to what you already have, or you can take redundancy. And if you don’t you can take your union with you. Our members are feeling very isolated right now,” our source says.
Union busters
It may not be a household name, but Eversheds, first established in 1988, itself is one of the largest legal firms in the UK, and was one of the 50 largest in the world in 2009.
It employs more than 4,000 people across the globe.
The firm has been through countless corporate tie-ups in the last 30 years, the most recent involving its Irish affiliate in the opening weeks of 2017 – the company’s new name here is Evershed Sutherland following a merger made with US firm Sutherland Asbill & Brennan.
A corporate consulting behemoth, Eversheds is not a firm to be taken lightly. It operates offices in at least 55 countries, including one each in Dublin and Belfast.
Its so-called ‘union busting’ strategy for clients can be traced back 17 years to when the UK government reintroduced compulsory procedures for union recognition for the first time since the 1980s, though ‘union busting’ itself is possibly an unfair description – the strategy put in place could be more accurately referred to as union-resistance.
“UK employers should view a union organisational effort as an economic heart attack,” Alan Lips of US firm Taft Stettinius & Hollister warned at the time.
Eversheds itself seems to have been particularly well-prepared for the then new legislation – it embarked on a nationwide ‘trade union roadshow’ at the time to sell its new union resistance practice.
Its clients have included Mercedes, upmarket grocery chain Sainsbury’s, and, interestingly, Ryanair.
In 2007, the firm, contracted by Michael O’Leary’s budget carrier, was instrumental in arguing successfully in front of a European court that the only employment law that should apply in the case of aircraft employees is that of an airline’s home country – in Ryanair’s case, Ireland.
That decision saw the case of three Belgium-based cabin crew who were dismissed by the airline five years previously overturned after a Belgian labour court ruled that they had been unfairly dismissed.
Eversheds Sutherland did not respond to a request for comment from TheJournal.ie.
When asked to confirm that Eversheds had been retained by Tesco to assist in its approach to industrial relations, the company’s response was:
“Eversheds have never given Tesco Ireland advice on changes to pre-1996 terms and conditions.”
Tesco’s side of things
The company has, for its part, rejected all the Irish unions’ claims in the last two weeks.
Since the announcement of the impending strike action, Tesco has repeatedly released statements calling for Mandate, which represents over 10,000 of the company’s 14,000 Irish workforce, to accept last year’s Labour Court recommendation and to call off its proposed industrial action.
Its approach has been to consistently call for Mandate to call off the strike, most recently on Sunday when the union suggested it would cancel the pickets if the company agreed to not change any pre-96 contracts without prior agreement.
“All Tesco stores will be open today, Tuesday 14 February for business as usual,” the company said in a statement.
Tesco calls on Mandate to accept the Labour Court recommendation which affect 250 of the 14,500 colleagues in Tesco. It remains as the means to resolving the dispute which affects only a small number of staff and the indefinite strike is disproportionate action for Mandate’s other members in the company.
The company likewise underlines that “in the stores that have been balloted less than half of colleagues working in those stores actually voted in favour of strike action”.
Regarding Project Black itself:
“Project Black is the internal working name for changes to the pre-1996 terms and conditions, no more no less,” the company told TheJournal.ie.
1,000 people were in scope at the start of this process and 700 colleagues have opted to take voluntary redundancy with the average payout of €105,000.
Tesco says categorically that Project Black is not the result of Eversheds’ consultancy, and that “there is no such project” as Project Purple.
The company added that a recent pay increase granted to employees, which had been delayed for 10 months, is the fourth successive annual 2% pay increase it has made.
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Replace right wing with left wing and the headline sentence is exactly the same
@Johnny King:
Agreed.
Extremists, on either side, are not big into building consensus.
@Johnny King: until these terms stop making money for the media we will continue to hear about it.
There is no far right in Ireland. Just people with common sense. The brutal truth is those who disagree are part of the establishment!
@Irish Axe: Oh, there are far right here alright.
They burn down hotels and hostels.
And attack those they chose to dislike.
@Irish Axe: Yup, typically transparent attempt to convert various lawlessness and extreme anti-social behaviour into ‘common sense’. At least you didn’t fall back on ‘patriotism’.
@Irish Axe: Wrong. Dumb fks without a decent bone in their body.
@Irish Axe: #0.9%
@Irish Axe: you’re right as the far-right only got less than 1% of support. Common sense voted 52% for FFG so eat that!!!!!
@9QRixo8H: It’s so p@ťhetically funny seeing the usual sč̣obie brigade constantly harping on about the far right bogeymen, when in reality they refer to ordinary people that don’t want our country further destroyed by foreigners.
It’s a psychotic condition, often associated with taking hallucinogenic drugs, and is especially prevalent amongst a number of cohorts.
These include existing illegal immigrants, people working in the NGO illegal immigration industry as well as our own lifelong dole merchants who believe that there is a limitless amount of money and homes for a limitless stream of illegal immigrants.
@Thomas Sheridan: I think you hit nearly every dog-whistle point. Well done!
@Irish Axe: There is a right wing, they believe everything on social media and all sorts of weird and wonderful story’s.
A lot of it is completely off the wall.
One great lie that did the rounds was bus loads of immigrant’s been bused around to vote as instructed. Depending on where you are , it was the greens, FF, FG, SF and even a few independents were accused of it. Off the wall stuff!
If you read their literature , they are far right and bigotry and discrimination are not common sense.
The problem is they moved the centre. Nothing wrong with being right wing in the traditional sense. It’s good for those of that persuasion to have suitable candidates. Because the main parties made a bollix of immigration policies, it opened the door for far right cabbages to make themselves known. The far right will simply drop off if we get immigration fixed, a big ask, admittedly. I don’t think expecting sensible border controls to be a right wing thing anyway. All parties should be in favour of that.
@ecrowley ecrowley: No, they didn’t move to the center.
(Economic) Right wing parties want open borders.
That gives employers a greater pool of people seeking employment, keeping wages lower than they would otherwise be.
That gives businesses larger markets for their goods and services, increasing profits.
That creates more demand for housing, benefiting landlords, developers, banks, estate and rental agents, solicitors…
It is harmful to people already here.
But we don’t count.
Had to stop reading such a pompous, cracked, old age mouth scutterer rambling. There’s alot wrong that’s gone on/is happening in the workings of this country, and no matter how you paint it, reality is sf/sd’s are up in councils seats while ffgrns are down over 100 between them. This will continue going into a general election with right sided parties (mainly independent Ireland) gaining ground slowly also.
@James Reardon: The government parties are down 67 between them. I think you’ll find that that isn’t ‘over 100′.
@Brendan O’Brien: oh well, still down a nice chunk. Good to see one of the journal comment dwellers on standby for correction. *thumbs up
Seems anything right-leaning is “far right” for this current Government that does literally everything against its own system.
Hypocritical click bait article.
Nope, our right-leaning govt have 52% of support, but your far-right has zero percent of support!!! And we will go more rightwing in bringing in more landlordism and vulture funds because that is what is needed and you far right don’t understand this
@9QRixo8H: “You you you”, don’t ever recall posting my political stance. Do you make it a habit projecting yourself onto others, putting words into peoples’ mouths? Sound like a clown doing that.
@Kieran Menon: Peadar constantly sounds like a clown, I wouldn’t place any stock the ramblings of such a cr3tin.
Left wing? Right wing? No difference, really. Both are ultimately equally illiberal and authoritarian in their outlook. Each knows what’s good for you because you don’t, and they believe society needs to be strictly managed in accordance with their narrow vision, and if you don’t get with their program, you will be disciplined. You may even need to be re-educated! Strangely and somewhat slyly, they never tell you all this before they get into power, though. The older I get, the more cynical I become…
Activist journalism. The heads on those
“journalists”. All nerdy nutjobs.
He’s going mad that his parties go 0.9%!!!!!! His twitter is FULL of extreme-right reposts but sure he’s not far right he’s normal would never support a holocaust or racial segregation, right? RIGHT?
So F ing sick of this ‘far right’ rhetoric. Most of my families’ husbands and wives are from outside of Ireland… guess what though?? They came here with a legal Visa. This current Government and their Civil Servants couldn’t appoint one person who could even organise a school register legitimately let alone the electoral register. I for one am done.
One of the commenters in another article was throwing around the term insanity when it is pointed out that the taxpayers are funding the modelling community to say the planet is burning up, boiling, and things like that. This three-ring circus of academics, politicians, and the electorate is a remarkable spectacle as an exercise in dysfunctional social engineering.
The trap is to believe in left and right politics when the dynamics are academic politics operating through a social-political conduit, and reactions to this are seen as right politics. Journalists like the idea of left/right politics, but it is a distraction from people who like to be fair rather than ideologues.
Look at how academia works and how nature is incidental.
Restricting female bodily aurltonomy is not far right, who celebrated the success of Franco against the democratically elected government of Spain, the Vatican and the Catholic Church in Ireland, seems that the Irish never knew that who led them were far right for many years.
Thoroughly enjoying the demise of SF
@John D Doe: The party that increased its representation at both local and EU level?
Burning down abandoned hotels is nothing compared to what SF were doing during their ‘Long War’ .
There are five councillors elected who are critical of immigration. That is five out of one thousand.
And the thing is they are right, we have not enforced our own laws on immigration.
Far right (and Far left) means concentration camps – think Hitler, Stalin & Co.
Anyone throwing that terminology around in this country should be locked up – just so they know what they are saying.
$tup!d is the new clever and if you disagree your $tup!d
have your say