Kingscourt Brick dispute ends after 272 days

Sean McMahon The 25 Kingscourt Brick former workers who had been outside the plant for 272 days in a dispute over redundancy payments, can now look forward to a brighter after accepting the latest redundancy offer from Lagan Brick management. Following a two-hour meeting last night in the Kingscourt Community Centre, the former Kingscourt Brick workers delivered their decision in favour of accepting the offer. SIPTU Industrial Organiser John Regan explained that proposals had been presented to the workers in the last two days and last night (Wednesday) they balloted on the offer and close to unanimously accepted the package put before them. Mr Regan would not go into the details of what the offer involved. "The settlement is based on an offer that the company made in July and a combination of the Labour Court recommendations that were issued recently. Between both, they formed the template for the set of proposals that was accepted." He added: "The strike ends as from last night - the official pickets will come down, but there will be a presence there until such time as the terms as outlined with the company, which are phased, start to evolve into the monetary terms and the money starts rolling into the members' accounts. Then at that stage the protest will be completed and conclude at that stage." Mr Regan said that by end of business today "we would imagine that some of the money will have gone into the members' accounts and then the second phase is in two weeks time and the last part of the ex-gratia payments, is due in four weeks after that. So within six weeks will have received all the non-statutory entitlements and then all the statutory entitlements will all be concluded shortly after that." In regard to job opportunity, Mr Regan said that part of the Labour Court recommendation was that if the plant opens up again, that the workers would be afforded possible opportunities.