CE supervisors to strike over pension rights

Supervisors in community employment schemes around the country are taking part in a 24-hour strike on 14 February in a long-running dispute over pension rights.  

There are around 1,250 supervisors and assistant supervisors, who oversee government-funded community schemes ranging from childcare to meals on wheels, disability and Tidy Towns programmes.

Despite being government-funded, staff in these schemes do not qualify as public servants, and so do not have access to the public service pension scheme.

Unions claim more than 250 community sector workers have been forced to retire without an occupational pension over the last decade. 

In a recent ballot, over 90% of the workers represented by SIPTU and Fórsa voted for industrial action which will see a strike and rally on 14 February and a two-day strike a week later. 

 The supervisors will also be refusing to engage in work involving the Department of Social Protection.   

They are now calling on Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe to implement a 2008 Labour Court recommendation that ruled that a pension scheme should be put in place for the supervisors.

There are 26 CE supervisors in Meath and 20 assistant supervisors.

Last week a number of them held a protest outside the office of Meath West TD Damien English. 

Last year Meath Co Council voted unanimously passed a motion calling on the government to honour the labour court agreement. 

Joseph Kearney Rehab coordinator of MOT, a community employment programme based in Navan for men and women in recovery from substance misuse explains the vital role the project provides to the community in Navan and how underfunding is having a negative impact on both staff and service users.

"We have to retire at 65, it is written into our contracts by the Department of Employment and Social Protection who are our direct funders. With new legislation coming in where people can't get their pension until they are 67 that means that we will have to sign on the dole and potentially become CE participants ourselves.

"We are a drugs project in Navan town and we are the only day time funded drugs project in Meath. We work with participants that are now drug-free and need extra supports to get back into the workforce or education. 

"We are the lowest funded of all the 25 CE programmes in the county. 

"If we have a problem with a person that is going to become homeless we have to send them to Co, Louth or Dublin to get social housing.

“We can't get emergency accommodation for people, so we have people living rough on the streets on a regular basis.

"We are also underfunded so we can't hire the counsellors that we need to give people the support they need to help people get off drugs. We are so drastically underfunded it's ridiculous. 

"It makes you feel like giving up, it's like banging your head against a brick wall. Every project in the drugs field has been cut.

"We are underfunded, underpaid and fed up."