Martin Ferris (Kerry North, Sinn Fein)

The examples of Irish Ferries and Doyle Concrete emphasise the need for safeguards to be put in place to prevent employers attempting to emulate the tactics of the likes of Independent Newspapers in 1913. That need is even greater now that many employers see the existence of a large pool of potentially cheap and unorganised non-national workers from the new accession states as the means to undermine hard-won rights and conditions.

There is also a need for tighter legal safeguards for union organisation. While the 1937 Constitution recognises the right of workers to join a union, it places no corresponding compulsion on the employer to actually recognise this. In other words, if an employer can find a way to break a union there is no law to prevent this.

The Industrial Relations (Amendment) Act 2001 and Industrial Relations (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2004, while providing options for unions that have been refused recognition by employers, do not deal with union recognition but with disputes over improvements in pay or conditions of employment.

The legislation explicitly excludes arrangements for collective bargaining. It is unlikely, therefore, to improve union access to workplaces where the employers are determined to stay non-union and consequently is likely to have minimal influence in reversing the declining union density in the private sector.

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