Workers’ action forces council to reschedule meetings

By Eoin English

Tuesday, February 09, 2010

INDUSTRIAL action in the public service has forced Cork’s city councillors to reschedule all of their public meetings.

They should have met as normal at 5.30pm last night for the first of two scheduled public meetings due to take place this month.

But IMPACT has instructed its members in City Hall to withdraw all administrative support from the local authority’s meetings which take place after their contracted hours.

It means there is no-one to take a roll call, to take minutes, or to record votes to give legal effect to the meetings.

Councillors met last night to discuss the issue and decided by a vote of hands to bring forward the time of future meetings.

The council’s next public meeting will take place at 3pm next Monday.

The times of committee meetings, where important financial, housing, planning, and roads issues are discussed, have also been affected.

The latest disruption to city business comes two weeks after IMPACT instructed its members in City Hall to withdraw their "participation and engagement" in the organisation of the city’s St Patrick’s Day parade.

The industrial action is part of unions’ attempts to reverse the pay cuts announced in December’s budget.

This appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Tuesday, February 09, 2010