Paudge Connolly (Cavan-Monaghan, Independent)

The dispute at Irish Ferries has the potential to blow the 18 year old social partnership process sky high. This is the partnership that brought us the Celtic tiger. Irish Ferries management seems determined to embark on a course of naked and gross exploitation of vulnerable, mainly eastern European employees. The company's plan to make 540 of its workers redundant and replace them with cheap east European labour is an insult to Irish taxpayers who must foot the bill for the redundancy payments.

The company has also threatened to withdraw its so-called offer if staff do not accept its terms. This has the whiff of industrial blackmail and bullying which hitherto has been foreign — no pun intended — to all previous norms of industrial relations policy. The Taoiseach described the move as unacceptable, deplorable and against the spirit of social partnership. He also declared several times recently that he does not wish to see a race to the bottom in employment standards. I do not know who coined that phrase but it is apt.

It is little wonder the Taoiseach has referred the issue of the Government subsidising the redundancy package to the Attorney General for his advice. The proposal has also been variously described as an affront to Irish taxpayers, corporate greed and naked pursuit of profit maximisation by an unscrupulous company. Its implications for the future of social partnership are stark. Social partnership has, on balance, been good for the country with the greatest fruits accruing to business. Is this why IBEC cries wolf about Irish Ferries' cost base that it claims is excessive relative to its competitors? At least those competitors normally hire crews in the countries from which they sail and manage to maintain relatively low cost bases.

The slave rate of €3.60 per hour proposed for east European workers is not only well below the average industrial wage but it is little more than half the Irish minimum wage. If Irish Ferries can flout accepted industrial relations practices with impunity, and victimise our counterparts in eastern Europe the future for social partnership looks grim. There is no guarantee that talks on a new national wage agreement to succeed Sustaining Progress will even get off the ground. Its future is in the balance.

Irish Ferries already has egg on its corporate face following its unconscionable treatment of a Filipino worker, whom it paid €1 per hour. That was the bottom level of wage payments. This worker achieved a payout of €35,000 after a very difficult fight. Irish Ferries was exposed as utterly lacking in any personal value system in its blind pursuit of corporate profits.

If the ferry company gets away with this unscrupulous behaviour there is little doubt that other employers will follow suit. Such behaviour, condoned by IBEC, is already widespread in construction, security, catering, contract cleaning and in areas of manufacturing. Not all employers in these sectors descend to the bottom but the culture appears to be gaining ground.

There is no link between a ship's owners and its country of registration under a flag of convenience. Companies register their ships under these flags to maximise profit and minimise cost, to avoid economic regulations and standards applying in their own countries. The crew's papers are frequently confiscated as soon as they embark, effectively reducing them to slave status. Fewer than 40 countries have ratified the Conference on Trade and Development.

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