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amongst female employees who found that the lack of child care facilities, in the area,
made it impossible to work full time for Burke. The overall result of this high labour
turnover had meant that the company had a steadily aging staff. One particular complaint
from all staff was the problem that they all encountered over pay and holiday
arrangements. Pay was often late; there were continual problems concerning over-time
payments and holiday arrangements kept being changed without informing staff.
Working conditions were poor. You were aware of this from the information you received
during your first week. You saw damp and noisy areas in the main parts of the factory.
Heating and ventilation controls were bad. These poor controls led to low temperatures in
the winter and high temperatures in the summer, though these were normally just held
within the legal lower and upper limits. Staff frequently complained about the type of work
they were being asked to do, which was often repetitive and physically demanding, and
the fact that management were continually altering shift patterns. There had been a long
history of accidents throughout the factory, with one fatality and four other serious
incidents over the last five years.
On each occasion the company had been fined for breaches of safety legislation. All minor
incidents were supposed to be treated at the temporary first aid post in the factory, but
management had failed to provide properly trained staff, and currently all first aid was
carried out by the office manager. Though there was a large staff canteen, the workforce
had complained that irregular working hours made it difficult to eat properly. There were no
other facilities available to the shop-floor, even though senior management had discussed
getting associate membership for all company employees at a nearby sporting club, which
would cost the company a total of €500 per year. No decision had been taken for 3 years.
In addition to absenteeism, there was a high level of days lost through sickness; there was
no standard procedure for investigating sickness and attempting to reduce it. On average
10 days were lost for each employee per year; there was also a fairly high sickness level
amongst management.
Discipline was often arbitrary and extreme; though there was an existing appeals
procedure, the number of dismissals had risen over the last 5 years from one a year to 10
a year. On inspection of each case you find that the majority of these tended to be over
relatively minor issues, though the number of dismissals involving fighting at work had
been an increasingly large proportion of the serious cases (6 out of 10, in the past year).
Management tended to have a very aggressive style in dealing with the shop-floor and this
was particularly extreme in the case of certain individuals, a fact that was made clear in
the detailed appraisals of the management in Appendix B.
There had been a tradition within Burke Engineering of management keeping their
distance from the rest of the workforce with separate canteens, separate working
conditions and an entirely different remuneration level. You find that one of the most
glaring anomalies between Burke Engineering and other firms in the area is the lack of
clear and concise wage agreements, although there are a number of documents on file
from the previous MD. There had been no clearly defined bargaining procedures and wage
negotiations had been carried forward in a haphazard way.
You discover that the dates for wage rise implementation for each of the unions involved
had varied from year to year, but were tending to run 6 or more months behind the
negotiations. The trend had been for management to agree to some form of interim
payment which was adhered to, and then to delay the full implementation of the
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