Ms Patricia King:

We welcome the opportunity to appear before the committee. The Irish Congress of Trade Unions is a civil society organisation representing approximately 700,000 workers across the island of Ireland. While we are discussing the issue of readiness for Brexit, I wish to emphasise at the outset the importance of ensuring full adherence to the Good Friday Agreement and the European Convention on Human Rights in a future EU-UK agreement, if there is one. With regard to the matter at hand, I acknowledge the work to date that has been done by the Department of Foreign Affairs, civil servants and stakeholders, including many businesses, to prepare, but I also wish to express concern, as the Taoiseach did last week, about the complacency of some businesses that have not prepared. Last Friday’s Enterprise Ireland survey revealed that only 42% of businesses believe they are ready.

It is clear that while the pandemic is having the greatest impact on employment, Brexit has major consequences for many workers. The Department of Finance estimates that a no-deal outcome would increase unemployment by 0.25% next year - that is up to 10,000 workers losing their jobs as a direct consequence of Brexit. We believe, and all the indicators show, that the impact would be concentrated in agrifood, traditional manufacturing and financial services. Those sectors have been relatively less affected by Covid-19, but they are also sectors with strong regional footprints, with agrifood and traditional manufacturing in rural areas and financial services in urban areas.

Congress has therefore put forward a number of measures to prepare workers. First, we believe there should be a genuine short-time working scheme to support the jobs and incomes of workers whose firms are vulnerable but viable. This should be modelled on the most effective schemes in other European countries, schemes that support a high level of net pay and, hence, aggregate demand and upskilling.

Recently, we proposed a retraining programme for workers at risk. Last spring, the OECD highlighted that Irish businesses provide less training to employees than other OECD countries where only one in ten manufacturing workers in Ireland took part in training in 2019, compared to one in four in Sweden and Finland.

Third, there should be a job transition programme to help workers made redundant find re-employment. This should be modelled on the European Globalisation Adjustment Fund, EGAF, which has helped more than 10,000 workers in Ireland since 2007. We believe these complementary measures could ensure workers are better prepared.

What would enhance their chances of success is a deeper, indeed a proper, social dialogue between employers and unions on these matters. It is widely acknowledged that Germany’s short-time work scheme is the model to emulate; the IMF calls it the gold standard. What is less often acknowledged is that what makes this scheme truly effective are the sectoral level collective agreements that accompany it. Germany’s official scheme supports 60% of net pay, but this can be, and is, accompanied by sectoral agreements that support 75% to 100% of net pay and facilitate restructuring. Consequently, firms and workers emerge better placed for recovery. The OECD also points out that workers covered by collective agreements are one third more likely to take part in training than those who are not, and that the most effective job transition programmes are those based on social dialogue.

Social dialogue, in short, can ensure that businesses, employees and communities are ready for Brexit, and indeed for other major employment challenges we must address over the coming years, including climate change, automation, and digitalisation, which should all form the basis of a much better social dialogue model. The European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, said she is "a firm believer in the value of social dialogue between employers and unions, the people who know their sector ... the best."