Former All-Ireland Footballer joins Green Isle Hunger Strike
24 Feb 2010
Former All-Ireland footballer John Guinan has joined Jim Wyse on hunger strike outside the Green Isle Foods plant in Naas, County Kildare.
John was a member of the Offaly team that won the All-Ireland in 1982 and prevented Kerry winning five All-Ireland's in a row. He lives in Portarlington and has worked at Green Isle Foods as a maintenance engineer for 13 years. Like Jim Wyse, who is now entering his second week on hunger strike, John is not one of the men dismissed last July.
Green Isle Foods, which is a division of the British multinational Northern Foods, has agreed to enter talks with the union for the first time since the dispute began six months ago, but no acceptable proposals have emerged so far. The firm previously rejected all offers by the union to meet and it rejected every attempt to mediate or resolve the dispute by the Labour Relations Commission, National Implementation Body and Labour Court.
The Labour Court found last December that the three workers at the centre of the dispute had been unfairly dismissed on July 10th, 2009. When the company failed to respond to its finding, the Court recommended that the men either be reinstated with no loss of pay, or they receive €160,000 in compensation for the loss of their jobs. It also recommended the facilitation of an immediate return to work by the other employees on strike with no victimisation on either side.
The union welcomes the company's agreement to engage in talks but Jim Wyse and his colleagues will continue with the hunger strike protest until an acceptable settlement can be reached.