By: Michael O’FarrellÂ
Investigations Editor
Ireland’s heavily-privatised waste collection sector is facing a wide-ranging governmental inquiry following a bitter month-long strike which may affect how the entire industry is run.
The dispute – which has seen claims and counter claims about conspiracies aimed at forcing unionised staff out of their jobs – has become a watershed battleground for one of the country’s largest trade unions. The firm at the heart of the row is one of Ireland’s largest and most controversial recycling companies, Greyhound Waste.
As revealed in the MoS last year, the firm offshored its company accounts to the Isle of Man after winning a lucractive contract to collect rubbish in Dublin, and it has been prosecuted multiple times for illegal storage of waste and breaches of environmental regulations.
Last month, after unsuccessful talks at the Labour Relations Commission, staff were presented with new conditions of employment including a 35% pay cut, according to workers at the firm. They have been on strike ever since.
Now an MoS investigation into the dispute has revealed:
- Â The identity of the one-time SIPTU organiser whose low-cost trucks and crews are enabling Greyhound to continue operating during the strike;
- How he seet up his own waste company based at Greyhound’s principal address a full 18 months before the strike – something he now describes as a ‘mistake’;
- He earned €75,000 from Greyhound in March/April alone – two months before the strike for providing workers despite the fact that he is not on the published list of licensed employment agents.
- Claims by Greyhound that he is an ‘owner driver’ with his own trucks, and is not using their vehicles, appear to be untrue.
Calin Bogdan first began helping Greyhound in a piecemeal fashion by supplying crews as far back as two years ago, together with recruitment agencies such as Dublin-based Insight Staffing.
Greyhound says Mr Bogdan is one of a small number of sub-contractors which the company continues to rely on to service its 144,000 customers during the strike.
Greyhound, led by former investment banker Brian Buckley and his brother Michael, deny they anticipated and planned for a deliberate lockout well in advance of last month’s strike being called.
But SIPTU and picketing workers – who say Mr Bogdan’s crews were in place for up to a year prior to the strike – suspect they have been slowly and deliberately edged out.
Those suspicions are fuelled by the fact that Mr Bogdan, a 40-yearold Romanian citizen, set up a com-pany in January 2013 and listed its address as the Dublin headquarters of Greyhound a full 18 months before Greyhound told workers to take a 35% pay cut or leave.
Greyhound, which moved its holding company to the Isle of Man in 2012 allowing them to obscure what profits it makes, says it was unaware that Mr Bogdan’s firm – BCR Transport and Collection Ltd – is listed at its address and insisted he is working as a sole trader from his home. During the week the company told reporters that Mr Bogdan was one of a number of agencies supplying workers. The firm also included him on a list of three recruitment agencies it had paid in March/April this year that was submitted to the Labour Relations Commission. Mr Bogdan was the largest supplier on that list with earnings that month of €75,860.
It’s not the first time his name has been mentioned. Last month Dublin North TD Clare Daly used Dáil privelege to describe him as ‘a procurer of casual labour who arrives at the car park in Woodies and like a scene from On the Waterfront selects people to work through the night to clear the bins that have not been emptied’.
But Mr Bogdan – who is not listed as having a licence to operate as a recruitment agency – denied acting in that capacity when approached by the MoS this week. ‘I’m not recruiting any people,’ he said. ‘I’m not recruiting anyone. I don’t take anyone’s jobs. That’s 100%. It’s not my style.’ Asked about the firm he set up, he said it had been mistakenly registered at the Greyhound address. ‘That is a company with no activity – not even an account done. It’s just been made, that’s all.’
Having described him earlier in the week as a supplier of workers, a spokesman for Greyhound then told the MoS on Thursday that Mr Bogdan was in fact ‘an owner driver’. ‘He owns several trucks and he has been doing the routes during the strike,’ the spokesman said. ‘Before the strike he was providing services to us to cover sick leave and holiday leave, that kind of stuff. When there was a big snow at one stage he helped us out.’ However the MoS has established that claims by SIPTU strikers picketing Greyhound that Mr Bogdan’s workers were driving the same trucks they had operated – part of a fleet rented by Greyhound from Kilkenny-based Holden Plant Rental, are true.
Asked whether Mr Bogdan owned his trucks or was renting them, Greyhound said ‘the contractors all drive their own trucks which they rent from Holdens’. But when contacted by the MoS, the owner of Holden Plant Hire – Paul Holden – said he had never heard of Mr Bogdan and that his contract with Greyhound had not changed at all.
‘We just rent the trucks to Greyhound as we’ve always done. We never have any control over who uses them,’ he said.
Greyhound say it has subsequently used Mr Bogdan to fill in gaps as the company demanded more productivity from its unionised workers. ‘The guys weren’t finished probably 25% of their routes – Bogdan was going out to basically clean up the mess…and the collections that these guys missed.’ The issue of workers not being able to finish their routes is a contentious one for those on strike. They say the company demanded impossible levels of productivity on unreasonably large routes.
Prior to the strike, workers were expected to work five shifts a week, from 7am to 4.45pm, with two 15-minute breaks.The company claims that Mr Bogdan’s replacement crews are far more productive and do a better job. The strikers claim the new crews are being exploited.
Greyhound rejected SIPTU suggestions that using owner-operators such as Mr Bogdan was a ploy to engineer a lockout. ‘I’d refute that,’ he said. ‘This guy has been helping Greyhound out for about two years now. We could not have envisaged a dispute two years ago.’ Speaking yesterday on RTÉ’s The Business, the Buckley brothers said even with pay cuts Greyhound crews are paid more than competitors and they are willing to return to the Labour Relations Commission.
Enterprise Minister Richard Bruton ordered an inquiry into the entire waste sector this week.
