Paul Hardy
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Re:Whatever happened to "new unionism" i - 11/12/2006 16:47
Union membership is up over that period, but the labour force has doubled in the same time, because of falls in unemployment, the increased role of the women in the formal workplace, the return of Irish migrants from overseas and, latterly, large-scale immigration from central Europe. Density is something like 33pc.
So, yes, to answer your point, despite the embedded role of the unions in the Irish state, employers have nevertheless declared war on the unions. They are still willing, just, to engage in the national pay agreements - partly because they have a generation of HR managers who have never negotiated a pay deal - but it comes down to this. Falls in union density and hence power mean that employers feel they can refuse recognition without facing a strike or other workplace sanction. Raw power, in other words.
The employers' body IBEC is foursquare behind the proposition that any union recognition must be voluntary, partly because many of its US-based members are allergic to the prospect of union recognition (even though most of them operate in Britain and other jurisdictions with statutory union recognition, including the US itself). This allows a savvy employer to pay the terms of the national pay agreements and otherwise to run the workplace as a dictatorship - which is exactly what they want, of course. This allergy to union recognition is now the new orthodoxy in Irish management, extending even to unlikely quarters such as the Guide Dogs for the Blind and the Religious Society of Friends. The legal position that workers have no right to union recognition, even if 100pc are union members, is a major plus for the anti-union bosses and has a massive chilling effect on organising.
Of course, the only way out of this is the revitalisation of union activism and organising in the most basic way - and that's the plan! Implicitly, at least, that means no longer begging employers to be nice to us in workplace 'partnership'. How to combine this change with 'partnership' at national level is a very good question.
Post edited by: paulhardy, at: 11/12/2006 16:49
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