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Sugar dispute turns bitter
Page 12
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• by Brendan Nolan Irish hau hers who traditionally rely on 10 weeks' work hauling sugar beet face problems this week with two Irish Sugar processing plants shut by a dispute with growers.
As CMwent to press members of the Irish Farmers Association were picketing plants in Carlow and Cork in protest at the prices Irish Sugar has offered for their crops.
Up to 500 trucks were blocked by 24-hour pickets as the dispute deepened.
"Hauliers are not getting in and this upsets the whole business," says Richard Persse, spokesperson for the Beet Hauliers Association, which represents one in every three of the firms caught up in the dispute. "Sugar beet is a ten-week campaign for those with trucks dedicated to hauling beet."
He points out that extra trucks and drivers are hired in by hauliers to cope with the demand for transport during the campaign, "but Irish Sugar has a monopoly and is doing what it likes, since there is no other market for the beet".
Hauliers receive up to 1R£7.70 a tonne to move beet, with twothirds of the rate paid by Irish Sugar and a third by the grower. The farmers are demanding a 28% price increase for their beet, which Irish Sugar is refusing to pay.
Unions representing 650 factory workers are in negotiation with Irish Sugar and the IFA. However, hauliers who negotiated an 8% rise in beet haulage rates last year, following an 11-year freeze, do not expect to benefit from any rise.