| Founded | 1923 |
|---|---|
| Predecessor | Irish Engineering Industrial Union |
| Date dissolved | 2001 |
| Merged into | Technical Engineering and Electrical Union |
| Members | 11,533 (1991) [1] |
| Affiliation | ICTU |
| Office location | 5 Cavendish Row, Dublin |
| Country | Ireland |
The Electrical Trades Union was a trade union representing electrical technicians and engineers in Ireland.
A trade union, also called a labour union or labor union (US), is an association of workers in a particular trade, industry, or company created for the purpose of securing improvement in pay, benefits, working conditions or social and political status through collective bargaining and working conditions through the increased bargaining power wielded by creation of a monopoly of the workers. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with employers. The most common purpose of these associations or unions is "maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment". This may include the negotiation of wages, work rules, complaint procedures, rules governing hiring, firing and promotion of workers, benefits, workplace safety and policies.
Ireland is an island in the North Atlantic. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel, the Irish Sea, and St George's Channel. Ireland is the second-largest island of the British Isles, the third-largest in Europe, and the twentieth-largest on Earth.
The union was founded in 1923 when the electrical section of the Irish Engineering Industrial Union split away. Initially, it was named the Electrical Trades Union (Dublin), but became the Electrical Trades Union (Ireland) in 1925. It joined the Irish Trades Union Congress, then joined the group of unions which formed the rival Congress of Irish Unions. [2]
The Irish Trade Union Congress (ITUC) was a union federation covering the island of Ireland.
The Congress of Irish Unions was a confederation of trade unions in Ireland.
The union was initially very small, with only 240 members in 1930, but grew to 1,000 in 1940. From the 1960s onwards, the union began accepting workers in a wide variety of jobs only loosely connecting with electrical matters, and this enabled it to exapnd its membership above 6,000 by 1970. In 1974, the British Electrical Trades Union became part of the Electrical, Electronic, Telecommunications and Plumbing Union, and the Irish union took the opportunity to drop the disambiguator from its own name, officially becoming the "Electrical Trades Union" for this first time. [2]
The Electrical, Electronic, Telecommunications and Plumbing Union, known as the EETPU, was a British trade union formed in 1968 as a union for electricians and plumbers, which went through three mergers from 1992 to now be part of Unite the Union.
In 2001, the union merged with the National Engineering and Electrical Trades Union to form the Technical Engineering and Electrical Union. [2]
