Universities paid almost €900 000 to IBEC in four years
The seven Irish universities paid IBEC €874 083 between 2005 and 2008.
These contributions are in addition to the costs of substantial, well-staffed Human Resources Departments. In addition, it should be noted that the State, through the Labour Relations Commission and the Labour Court, provides a free service for the resolution of disputes between employers and employees.
Despite this duplication of costs, whereby universities employ substantial numbers of HR staff and then go on to pay IBEC ‘for advice’, the universities also routinely incur massive legal costs for the hire of lawyers to deal with employees.
“IFUT has expressed serious concern over recent years that universities are using needlessly expensive legal teams to deal with industrial relations matters. Not only does this involve huge avoidable cost to the university – money which could be better used elsewhere – but also, we believe, there is an element of trying to intimidate staff against raising grievances even of a relatively simple nature”, said Mike Jennings, IFUT General Secretary.
The IFUT Press Release is available in full here. The fees paid by the Universities to IBEC are available here.
“IFUT hasexpressed serious concern over recent years that universities are using needlessly expensive legal teams to deal with industrial relations matters. Not only does this involve huge avoidable cost to the university – money which could be better used elsewhere – but also, we believe, there is an element of trying to intimidate staff against raising grievances even of a relatively simple nature.
“They are being let know that they will face a barrage of lawyers at the other side of the table,” said Mike Jennings, General Secretary of IFUT.