A local bargaining pay agreement has been reached for over 50 workers at the Beckman Coulter plant in Tulla, Co. Clare, covering a three-year period up to March 2018.

The deal, agreed at company level with SIPTU, provides for 7.5% in pay increases over a three-year period, or 2.5% per annum, as follows:

• 2.5% from April 1, 2015;

• 2.5% from April 1, 2016;

• 2.5% from April 1, 2017;

• Deal expires March 31, 2018.

Discussions on any follow-on agreement are to start in the first quarter of 2018. The deal is in return for co-operation with normal ongoing change and no cost-increasing claims over the three-year period, as well as ongoing co-operation with lean manufacturing.

The deal at the US-owned medical devices manufacturer, which produces diagnostic reagents, provides pay certainty for a three-year period and was agreed after a number of local meetings. The plant was formerly known as Olympus Diagnostics, before becoming part of the Beckman group in 2009.

The company’s Galway plant, which is due to close later this year, had already agreed an increase of 2.5% with effect from April 1, 2015. This increase will be reflected in the severance calculations for the 150 workers affected by that closure. There will be opportunities for some of those workers to redeploy to the Clare plant, which is just over an hour’s drive from Galway.