LCR22812

1. Payment Of The Incorrect RDA (Rostered Duty Allowance)

BACKGROUND:

2. This dispute could not be resolved at local level and was the subject of a Conciliation Conference under the auspices of the Workplace Relations Commission. As agreement was not reached, the dispute was referred to the Labour Court on 7 March 2023 in accordance with Section 26(1) of the Industrial Relations Act, 1990. A Labour Court hearing took place on 4 August 2023.

RECOMMENDATION:

This dispute relates to the rate at which Rostered Duty Allowance (‘RDA’) is paid to three clerical staff (‘the Workers’) who work within the Airport Operations Control Centre at Dublin Airport.

Following the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, Dublin Airport Authority (‘the Company’) concluded an agreement – ‘The New Ways of Working’ (‘NWOW’) - with the trades unions that represent the majority of its three thousand employees, in order to avoid compulsory redundancies and to mitigate against permanent adverse changes to employees’ core terms and conditions of employment.

The NWOW agreement provided, inter alia, for the amalgamation of the two pre-existing control centres (in Terminal 1 and Terminal 2 respectively) into a single Airport Operations Control Centre (‘the APOC’). This development led to the creation of a new organisational structure within the APOC, which included new roles and a new 24/7 rotating roster with all APOC staff required to work nights. The Workers who are party to the within dispute moved from working an eight-hour roster to a twelve-hour roster that included night shifts as provided for in NWOW.

The Workers submit that they have been in receipt of a lower rate of RDA than they are entitled to since the aforementioned changes have been implemented and are seeking a higher rate of payment equivalent to that being paid to other colleagues in the APOC.

It is submitted by the Company that NWOW provided that existing staff who were in receipt of an RDA prior to the commencement of the new rosters would not have the amount of that RDA reduced as it would be red-circled. The Company expressly points to the following provision of NWOW:

• “… daa staff who currently receive Roster Duty Allowances (RDAs) will continue to receive these at the 2019 levels on a red circled basis. Daa employees allocated to nights will receive the appropriate RDAs subject to a minimum of the 2019 levels.”

It seems that the Workers’ concerns arise, in part, from an earlier miscommunication by the Company whereby the Workers were informed, in error, that as they had not worked nights as part of their pre-NWOW rosters they would be in receipt of additional payments for night work as part of the new arrangements. Those additional payments were in fact made to the Workers for a period of time until circa mid-April 2022 when the Company discovered – following completion of a roster reconciliation exercise - they were being made in error. The Company accepts full responsibility for this and has not sought to recover the overpayment.

Discussion and Recommendation

Having carefully considered the very detailed submissions before it, the Court is satisfied that the Company has properly implemented the red-circling provisions of NWOW to the Workers in relation to their RDA entitlements. Furthermore, the Court is satisfied that the Workers’ claim for a higher rate of RDA payment is misconceived as it is premised on the Workers’ assertion that their circumstances are equivalent to those of a group of colleagues who had different shift arrangements prior to the implementation of NWOW and whose RDA payments have been red-circled at a higher rate than the Workers’ accordingly.

For the aforementioned reasons, the Court does not recommend concession of the within claim.

	Signed on behalf of the Labour Court
	Alan Haugh
DC	______________________
29 August 2023	Deputy Chairman