Paul Hardy
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Re:Whatever happened to "new unionism" in the UK? - 13/11/2006 10:26
Here in Ireland, we have had national agreements - popularly known as 'social partnership' - for the last 18 years.
The impact of these agreements on workplace organising is mixed. Activists very often blame the agreements for a decline in union participation - my response to this is to point north and east to Northern Ireland and Britain, which have experienced similar declines without 'social partnership'. But they may have a point, nevertheless. But what we cannot know is whether a Thatcherite 1980s style assault on the union movement, probably prevented by the partnership process, would have succeeded in Ireland as in Britain. (My guess is that it would have.) As someone with organising experience on both sides of the Irish Sea, I am fascinated by how utterly different labour and political histories in the 1980-present period have led to rather similar situations on both islands.
The real difficulty in Ireland is that social partnership has not been complemented by workplace partnership. Indeed, the commitment of the Irish government to address changes in labour law through a tripartite process (and ONLY through that process) has in effect put the reform we really need - a right to union recognition along UK or Canadian lines - out of court, since the employers' body IBEC has threatened to pull out of the process if union recognition is even put on the table. Refusal to recognise unions, once confined to US-owned multinationals, is now close to total - even the Irish Guide Dogs for the Blind, for example, refuses to recognise their employees' union.
This development has left us with an organising paradox - activists in unionised workplaces too often have a belief that workplace power and union density has no relevance to them, and would-be trade unionists in unorganised workplaces are utterly daunted by the challenge of unionisation.
So, to conclude, I am reminded of Gandhi's comment when asked what he thought of Western civilisation when I think of Irish social partnership - that it would be a good idea.
Post edited by: paulhardy, at: 13/11/2006 10:28
Post edited by: paulhardy, at: 13/11/2006 10:32
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