Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I support the Private Members' motion and concur with Deputy Higgins's points. One hundred years on, the attitude of Dublin employers and William Martin Murphy in particular are alive and well among the Irish boss class. Earlier this year in my constituency, ten workers of the Gleeson Group were sacked from the company's distribution centre in Ballyfermot for joining SIPTU. The boss got wind of their joining and sent his middle management to ask all of the workers clocking in that morning whether they had joined the union. The ten who had were made redundant practically the following day. The Gleeson Group is not a small company led by a maverick employer. The company, which employed 750 people at that time, distributes Tipperary Water and Gilbeys Wines and made a profit of just under €5 million last year. The owner, Pat Cooney, threatened to sack half of his workforce in a depot in Borrisoleigh two years earlier when a group of workers joined a union. One of the drivers who joined the union was replaced by an agency driver the day after he was made redundant. Agency workers earn €80 per day and can be taken on and let go at will.

This is not an unusual case in the private sector, where employers maintain a non-union core workforce and casualise the rest of the workers at much lower rates. The 2009 figures on union density showed that only one third of workers were unionised, including 20% of part-time workers. It is clear that there would be higher levels of union membership if workers were not afraid to join unions and were confident that the trade union movement would fight for them.

Last week, ICTU formally requested the assistance of the International Labour Organisation, ILO, in ensuring that the Irish Government made good on its commitment to the ILO and under its programme for Government to introduce legislation to give workers the right to bargain collectively with employers through trade unions. The ILO is the UN's agency for labour affairs. Ireland is a member of it and is subject to its rules and regulations.

As usual, the Government's amendment is to delete all words after "Dáil Éireann". The text to be substituted includes the following: "a phase of consultation with key stakeholders in the context of the Government's commitment in its Programme for Government to reform the current law on employees' right...". If this is the case, why did ICTU need to ask the ILO last week to force the Government to act on the basic right of trade union recognition?

In 2011, congress submitted a formal complaint to the ILO about the lack of legal effect to the right of collective bargaining in Ireland. In response the Government gave a commitment to conduct an independent inquiry, as requested by the ILO. This has just finished, but there has been nothing on this issue since May. More worrying is the statement from the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Deputy Bruton, to an employers' conference on 12 June in which he stated there is no plan for mandatory trade unions and collective bargaining will always remain voluntary. What is going on? It would appear the Fine Gael wing of this Government will stand over the Supreme Court ruling that although there is a right to join a trade union there is also a right on the part of employers not to recognise the union.

Although they fully support the need for legislation as sought by ICTU, unions need to be much more proactive and militant. They should not merely ask for this right, hoping that the Labour Party will not break yet another promise. They should draw on the lessons of 1913 and agitate and organise trade union rights for workers. Trade unions fought for rights for unskilled workers under the leadership of Connolly and Larkin. That is the historical lesson they left behind - try to organise through solidarity action and fight for those rights rather than meekly request them. That is crucial.

Although the fall in trade union density is a result of aggressive, anti-union bosses' policy, it is also the consequence of 30 years of social partnership. This has undermined democracy in the unions and control over those unions by their members, and has decreased shop steward activity even where workers are organised. During the recent debate on the so-called financial emergency Bill in respect of public sector workers the point was made by a long-standing trade union member that it was a legislative lock-out, 100 years on from the General Lock-out.

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