FTA Ireland offers training to LRC

FTA Ireland has offered free legal training to officials from the Labour Relations Commission (LRC) because it claims they are failing to apply EU laws applicable to mobile workers.

Neil McDonnell, General Manager of FTA Ireland, has written to LRC Chief Executive Kieran Mulvey to offer tuition for its adjudicators and rights commissioners.  Mr McDonnell says the LRC is failing to recognise the tachograph as a lawful instrument to measure working time, and is making judgements against mobile workers based on the 1997 working time act rather than the current EU Road Transport Working Time Directive.
 
He said: “Despite our long-running efforts to get the LRC to recognise the applicable laws in Ireland for mobile workers, it continues to ignore them. This is resulting in unlawful findings against the employers of drivers.”
 
Mr McDonnell first wrote to Mr Mulvey about the issue in December 2013, but he says it remains unresolved and awards with no lawful basis are regularly being made against operators who have not breached EU regulations.
 
Mr McDonnell said: “We have examples where operators fully complied with EU regulations and had confirmation from a National Employment Rights Authority (NERA) inspector that no acts had been breached.  Yet the LRC rights commissioner found against them.
 
”This situation has to be resolved.  It is totally unjust that operators who are doing their best to be compliant are falling foul of legislation which should not have been applied to them in the first place.”