Leadership

Workers at Coca-Cola HBC (Bottlers) Ireland have begun industrial action today at the company’s main Irish distribution centres. Pickets have been placed on Coca-Cola HBC depots in Tuam, Cork, Dublin, Waterford and Tipperary. The strike follows the decision by Coca-Cola HBC to outsource 130 jobs to third-party operators. According to SIPTU, last week the 130 Coca-Cola HBC drivers and warehouse staff involved in the dispute received letters from three private transport companies offering them new employment at what the trade union described as “greatly disimproved pay and working conditions and containing threats of redundancy”. The companies, Brian Daly Transport Services Ltd of Ratoath County Meath, Liam Carroll Haulage Ltd of…

Cuts of up to €5bn in public expenditure are to be proposed to the Minister for Finance, Brian Lenihan TD, later this week by the group charged with identifying where savings can be made in the public purse. The Special Group on Public Service Numbers and Expenditure Programmes, which has been nicknamed An Bord Snip Nua, will make over 400 recommendations on where money can be saved in public expenditure, the Irish Times has reported this morning. The group, which is chaired by UCD economist Colm McCarthy, was set up in late 2008 to review public services staffing levels and spending. According to the paper, sources say that proposed cuts…

Elaine Geraghty has announced she is stepping down as chief executive of Newstalk 106-108FM and will be pursuing a PhD at Dublin Institute of Technology. The new chief executive of Newstalk will be Frank Cronin, who has represented Setanta Holdings on the board of Newstalk since 2002. Elaine Geraghty has been chief executive at Newstalk since 2005 having held a number of positions with the Communicorp Group since 1989. Geraghty led the station through the successful national licence application process and its move from a Dublin based news station into the first Irish national talk radio commercial operator. “Newstalk has made such progress and I have worked with a tremendous…

At a time when few businesses can afford any more cashflow problems, international and Irish based ‘time thieves’ are targeting Irish businesses and exploiting weaknesses in their telecoms security to steal millions of euro annually, according to market intelligence from Minute Buyer, provider of telecoms solutions to the corporate market. The company has seen a significant increase in telephone fraud and hacking in Ireland over the last three months, according to Shaun Hayden, Director, Minute Buyer. He admits accurate fraud figures are nearly impossible to pin down because so many organisations are reluctant to talk about it publicly, bust says the Garda Bureau of Fraud Investigation estimates that time theft…