Derry's City Hotel workers in redundancy industrial ballot

Workers at Derry’s City Hotel who have decided to commence an industrial ballot have received the support of Derry and Strabane councillors for the action.

Councillors on the Business and Culture committee unanimously agreed a motion proposed at Tuesday afternoon’s meeting by Cllr Shaun Harkin (PBP) and seconded by Cllr Catherine McDaid (SDLP).

The full text of the motion read: “That Council supports City Hotel workers and will write to City Hotel management urging them to properly engage with their trade union SIPTU and fully respect their collective bargaining rights, including on any proposed redundancies.”

Cllr Harkin said: “As a Council, we have called on employers across the district to engage with trade unions and respect their workforce and respect their workforce’s right to trade union representation. 

“People will have seen in the last couple of days that the workers at the City Hotel have decided to commence an industrial ballot and SIPTU is their trade union organisation,” he added.

“City Hotel is an iconic organisation in this district. I have been to it many times myself. There have been many trade union conferences held there and they are having renovations right now. 

“It is disappointing that workers feel the need to actually commence an industrial ballot. I have spoken to quite a few of the workers who are trade union members. I have talked to the SIPTU organisers there and they wanted to avoid this situation. They have done a lot of work engaging with the management organisation and also making proposals to the Labour Relations Organisation to work this through and avoid it becoming a public issue. 

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“As a Council which encourages all employers to be good employers to their workforce, to recognise these trade unions, I think we should make clear our solidarity with the City Hotel workers many of whom have been there a long, long time. 

“We should urge the City Hotel management to properly respect the workers, to properly engage with the trade union SIPTU and to make sure any proposals, particularly around redundancies - which is what is being proposed right now - is done through all the proper mechanisms - legal and statutory - and through the collective bargaining process. I think that is what we should expect of all employers and I think we should send that message very clearly to the City Hotel,” said Cllr Harkin.

Cllr McDaid said: “Specifically around the private sector, we need to be supporting our workforce because the private sector is a lot harder to get a union in there, so Council needs to be supporting them to use their union and use it appropriately.”

Supporting the motion on behalf of Sinn Féin, Cllr Brian Harte said there had been a number of job loss announcements recently in Derry, including BT.

“Anything we can do to protect the workers, Sinn Féin would be supporting.”

Providing context to the ongoing situation at The City Hotel, SIPTU Organiser Niall McNally said: "We have been advised by the Labour Relations Agency (LRA) City Hotel Derry management has declined to engage in collective conciliation concerning its threatened redundancies. This situation has forced our members to ballot for industrial action.

"We had hoped to resolve this issue without it escalating to a ballot of members, which is why we proposed the involvement of the LRA to facilitate a constructive dialogue between both parties in the interest of reaching an agreement.

"As it stands, the City Hotel Derry has indicated the redundancy process was triggered due to a cessation of building work due to instructions from Derry City Council and NI Fire and Rescue Service, and its subsequent impact on revenue. However, we believe this explanation is inaccurate and misleading. It is our position that the redundancies are, in fact, a result of an internal business reorganisation process.

"Many workers on exploitive zero hour contracts have already be let go by the Hotel which has significantly increased the workload on existing staff, further redundancies, we believe, could have health and safety implications for the remaining workers," said Mr McNally.

He added: "There must be an immediate pause on all redundancy processes until transparent discussions can take place regarding the actual basis for this decision. Most of the workers that will be impacted are from the local community.”

"The hotel is also locally owned. Previous to a new management agency taking over its operation there were decades of constructive relations between our Union, the workers, hotel management and owners. This hotel is an important part of Derry, a city which has a long a tradition of supporting local enterprises and collaborative trade union relations."