LAST minute talks have averted the planned industrial action by the Garda Representative Association and the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors this Friday after the Labour Court made recommendations for a better pay deal for rank and file members.
Upwards of 550 Gardai were expected to withdraw service on this Friday but at 9pm on Thursday night, the GRA were given recommendations that they must return to their members with.
Earlier, the AGSI postponed their industrial action after they said that a “fundamental and historic wrong has been put right as a direct result of the sustained four year AGSI campaign to gain access to the Workplace Relations Commission and the Labour Court.”
Both groups have now postponed their actions which would have seen the unions’ members withdraw service on the four Fridays in November.
Earlier this week, Garda Commissioner Noirin O’Sullivan ordered, in written correspondence, that all Gardai were to turn up for work on Friday and that rest and leave days were to be cancelled.
The move was seen as “bully-boy tactics” which left the union groups “isolated,” according to local GRA representative Garda Frank Thornton, who said that their members had already rejected two pay offers because there wasn’t any real meaningful engagement with Government.
However, eleventh hearings at the Labour Court between the Department of Justice and the garda unions bridged gaps and allowed improved pay deals be put to their members.
Garda Thornton and his colleagues around the country will now bring the recommendations to their members to decide on.
