Irish Federation of University Teachers

The Irish Federation of University Teachers (IFUT) has welcomed the government’s decision to consider access for retired workers to employment rights bodies.

Responding to a proposal by Labour Senator Brendan Ryan, Minister for Labour Affairs, Dara Calleary, said that he was “sympathetic” to retired people having “a facility whereby grievances arising from their former employment relationship might be examined on their merits”.

IFUT General Secretary, Mike Jennings, said the current situation “represents an unjust anomaly which has allowed unfair treatment of older employees to go uncorrected”. The anomaly arises because of a ruling 30 years ago by the then Attorney General that a retired person could not be regarded as a ‘worker’ and so could not bring a claim to the Labour Court.

“We welcome the Minister’s commitment to removing this anomaly, but it is important that his expressed sympathy for retired workers be converted into effective amending legislation without delay”, Mike Jennings said.

The IFUT Press Release is available here.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 5th, 2010 at 17:12 and is filed under General Secretary, Labour Court, Labour Relations Commission, Minister for Labour Affairs, News, Rights Commissioner. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.