Legal provisions intended to ensure employees losing their jobs are consulted with have been described as worthless after Meta contractor Covalen declined an invitation to attend the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) to discuss the more than 700 redundancies it is planning.
Members of the Communication Workers’ Union (CWU) at the company staged a one-day strike on Friday as part of their campaign to win recognition and collective bargaining rights.
Owen O’Reilly, the CWU branch representative at the company, said the union’s members had been “left with no choice but to take strike action”.
“We are not asking for anything extraordinary – we are asking for the basic right that workers across Europe take for granted: the right to be represented by a trade union of our choosing,” he said.
“Covalen has the resources to treat us fairly. Instead, they are using every mechanism available to them to deny workers a voice. That cannot be allowed continue.”
