Around 150 workers at Balcas Timber in Enniskillen began a seven-day strike at 5am on Friday, the biggest escalation yet in a pay dispute that has been running since last November.<\/p>\n
Balcas, Northern Ireland's largest sawmill, is owned by the Longford-based Glennon Brothers group. The Enniskillen site alone has an annual sawn timber capacity of around 300,000 cubic metres and produces roughly 60,000 tonnes of wood pellets a year, drawing close to a million tonnes of roundwood annually from forests across Northern Ireland and the Republic. A full week off the line is enough to disrupt supply well beyond the plant gates, and Unite the Union says merchants and builders across the region should expect delays.<\/p>\n
The dispute has been building for months. Workers rejected a 3% offer in June and ran three separate one-day strikes -- June 18, June 25 and July 2 -- while talks continued through the Labour Relations Agency. Balcas called that 3% its final position, citing cost pressures in the sawmilling sector. Unite disagreed, pointing out the offer amounts to about 50p an hour phased in over two years, below inflation, with some new starters still on minimum wage. When nothing moved, the union escalated from one-day stoppages to a full week.<\/p>\n
Sharon Graham, Unite's general secretary, has kept the argument simple: Balcas is profitable, and profitable companies can pay properly. The company's most recent accounts show pre-tax profits of \u00a318.7 million on turnover of \u00a3130.8 million -- close to a 15% margin. Glennon Brothers isn't shrinking either. Alongside Longford and Enniskillen it runs mills in Fermoy and at Invergordon in Scotland, and within the last year it bought Pontrilas, the biggest timber processor in England and Wales, adding roughly \u00a3120 million in turnover to the group. Unite's point writes itself: a group expanding that fast isn't short of money for a pay rise at one site.<\/p>\n
Balcas maintains its offer is fair given market conditions and the cost pressures facing the sector, and says it wants to keep disruption to a minimum while the dispute plays out. Workers say a similar standoff in 2019 only got resolved after a week-long strike, and that pay since then hasn't kept pace with either inflation or the minimum wage.<\/p>\n
Whatever happens next depends on whether Glennon Brothers reopens an offer it's already called final. Given the numbers on both sides -- the group's profits and its acquisition spree against workers near minimum wage -- this one is likely to get watched closely outside Fermanagh too.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Around 150 workers at Balcas Timber in Enniskillen began a seven-day strike at 5am on Friday, the biggest escalation yet in a pay dispute that has been running since last November.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":99418,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"Default","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5204],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-99417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-news"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n