Yesterday an imminent strike by Eircom (www.eircom.ie) was averted, and the company agreed to pay a wages increase of 2%. A high percentage of the 7,000 Eircom workers voted in favour of the strike, but the 4 unions managed to find a solution after 3 days of negotiations with top management. The exact details of the deal have not (yet) been published, but it is expected that new work practises and redundancies were some of the talking points. The agreement will also be backdated to May 1st 2007. This all kicked off in May when Eircom released positive figures, but still wanted to make 900 workers redundant.
The last time Eircom, then Telecom Eireann, went on strike was 1978. That was even before the old Pope came to visit !