Four more Tesco Ireland stores have voted to join in the Mandate Trade Union strike action that is currently sweeping across Ireland over contract disputes.
Twenty stores in total have now chosen to get involved with the strike, which started on Valentine's Day.
Six Tesco Ireland stores voted against participating in the strike during a 20 February ballot. Fourteen stores have now voted to reject the strike action.
The retailer said the refusal of so many stores to join the picket line was "a searing indictment of the flawed strategy that Mandate is pursuing to damage the company and it is unprecedented that so many stores would refuse to place pickets despite extreme pressure from Mandate."
As of press time, Mandate had not issued a response.
Tesco Ireland entered discussions with the trade union on 17 February, which ultimately ended 'inconclusively'.
The company reiterated that all 148 stores will remain open throughout the strike.
In a separate press release, it announced that during the strike action, nearly 45,000 customers shopped in the 16 stores affected over the weekend, which remain staffed.
Labour Court Recommendation
The strike initially resulted from Mandate's claim that Tesco Ireland was trying to push through changes to contracts without agreement for roughly 250 employees who were hired before 1996.
The matter had gone before the Labour Court, resulting in a recommendation released in November 2016. The proposed resolution would see the rate of pay protected (with 90% of affected workers seeing a pay rise, protection of two-thirds of guaranteed overtime, along with other concessions), or the offer of a voluntary redundancy, with an average payout of €105,000.
However, the union said the revamped contract would force some workers to receive pay cuts of 15%. The employees wish to maintain their pre-1996 contracts.
© 2017 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Karen Henderson. Click subscribe to sign up to ESM: The European Supermarket Magazine.
