Martin Ferris (Kerry North, Sinn Fein)

There has been a number of instances over the past few months that illustrate the extent to which some employers are willing to challenge trade union organisation. Not only that, but they are prepared to challenge workers' rights on basic issues such as the right to join and be identified with a trade union.

Last weekend one of the guests at the Sinn Féin Ard-Fheis was Ms Joanne Delaney who was sacked by Dunnes Stores for the heinous offence of wearing the badge of Mandate, the union of which she is a member. While no doubt it is claimed by the company that she was in breach of uniform regulations, it is clear that wearing union badges has not hitherto being invoked by Dunnes as an excuse to discipline an employee.

We are entitled to ask, therefore, whether this is part of their testing the water prior to further assaults on union members. If so, is Dunnes in fact planning to undermine union organisation as part of a plan to worsen wages and conditions and introduce what are fondly described as "flexible working patterns"? That indeed has been the pattern in other disputes where companies have deliberately provoked their workforces in the hope that this will allow them to replace union members with workers on lower wages and weaker terms of employment. That was clearly what was behind the Irish Ferries dispute and we had an even more blatant example with Doyle Concrete which disregarded Labour Court instructions and displaced an entire unionised workforce to take on non-national workers on lower wages and of course with no union membership. That company has now decided to close rather than obey the court. We have not seen the company's executives locked up in Mountjoy as workers are tonight. It is a disgrace that workers are locked up while employers such as Doyle Concrete can get away with it.

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