The Mayo branch of IMPACT Trade Union last week instructed 450 members in Mayo local authorities to refuse to meet with, take phone calls/e-mails, or deal with any written correspondence/representation from Fine Gael councillor Peter Flynn, following his remarks made at the recent county council meeting where he hit out at the industrial action being taken by the members of the public service unions in Mayo County Council in their dispute over pay cuts. Councillor Flynn has hit back at such treatment saying that he is being backlisted in Mayo “because I dared to speak out against the trade union movement”.
During the last monthly meeting Cllr Flynn said: “We do not know from hour to hour or day to day how we are going to be affected by the action.” He went on to say that Mayo County Council is the only council that has not made a single job cut, and Mayo County Council has, in fact, seen its employee numbers rise over the last three years.
A letter dated March 10 from the Mayo IMPACT branch chairman David Murphy states that the councillor’s recent comments are “scandalous, insulting and degrading to all of the staff of Mayo local authorities” and are “ignorant to the actual facts of the current national industrial relations dispute”.
The letter stated that the councillor’s comments are full of “hypocrisy” due to the fact that he receives a councillor’s salary, an expenses allowance, and chairs an SPC and that his behaviour is “completely unacceptable”.
Finally, Mr Murphy said that Mayo local authorities have a duty of care to ensure that all employees are treated with courtesy and respect and these comments were “entirely consistent with your previous public utterances about workers”.
Cllr Flynn responded in writing to this “aggressive” and “threatening” letter by saying that over the past few weeks he has received no notification why local authority offices on one day refused to answer calls, why an area meeting in Westport was cancelled due to work stoppages, why two people were ordered not to attend an SPC, and why two senior members of staff walked out of the same SPC at 5pm with no excuse.
The Westport based councillor added that “jobs need to go at senior levels” and if Mayo County Council “wants to maintain all employees they need to expand the scope of their activities, redeploy/retrain people, and in some cases impose a reduced working week”.
Cllr Flynn also said that, speaking to colleagues in other local authorities, they have experienced limited disruptions to working practices and “none have any experience of union representatives forcing employees not to attend meetings during regular working hours.”
In further responding to the trade union the Fine Gael councillor clarified that he has “never criticised the pay, conditions, or terms of employees” and “has never questioned any Mayo County Council’s employees work ethic or qualification”.
Speaking to the Mayo Advertiser, Cllr Flynn said that since the last correspondence with the trade union on March 12 he has heard nothing. He added: “Fine Gael are advising me that it is illegal” and it “seems to be from IMPACT locally” not a national directive from where the boycott stems.
