SIPTU chief Jack O'Connor has said that there will be no reversal in the decision for Luas workers to carry out strikes on Easter Sunday and Easter Monday.
The strikes, which are aimed at securing a better pay deal for Luas drivers, would cause travel disruption to hundreds of thousands of people who are planning to visit the capital for the 1916 centenary celebrations over the course of the bank holiday weekend.
O'Connor, a resident of Kilteel, said that even if Minister for Transport Paschal Donohoe asked him to intervene and call of the strikes, he couldn't.
"If I was one of those workers, I wouldn’t go back to work because I have participated in a democratic decision", O'Connor said on RTÉ radio this morning.
"He didn't call on me to do that, because he probably knows that I can't," he said.
"He called on me to engage, and I'm telling you, as I told other people earlier, that I'm prepared to engage this minute - but we have to have somebody to engage with.
"And what we have to do, and there's still time to do it, we have to apply ourselves now to address the inadequacies of the proposals."
He also accused the media of inflating the figures in relation to the proposals that were offered to Luas drivers. Transdev, the company which operates the Luas, said yesterday that pay increases of 18.7%, which would increase workers wages from €42,247 to €50,000 a year, was rejected by the workers.
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