Pat Buckley (Cork East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

At the outset, I am very disappointed with the position taken by Fianna Fáil on this Bill. Judging by the eagerness with which Fianna Fáil representatives were scrambling to get into photographs beside striking Tesco workers this week, I was almost fooled into thinking that the party had experienced a road-to-Damascus moment and had been converted to the side of workers. Unfortunately, Fianna Fáil remains a party of photograph opportunities, not principles. That this very reasonable Bill could be opposed by a party which claims to represent ordinary people, as Fianna Fáil does, indicates how far we have fallen with regard to protecting workers' rights in this State. Obviously, we had problems, having followed the Thatcherite path of the UK in the late 1980s and having legally hamstrung unions with industrial regulations that practically outlawed effective strikes in the 1990s. It now appears radical merely to argue for the right of unions to access workers and attempt to organise. The fact that this law is not already in place is sad and the fact it is necessary is an indictment of the State and lays bare whose side Governments have taken.

The erosion of workers' rights over recent years is clear. Zero-hour contracts, intimidation, blacklisting, punishment for union activities and bogus self-employment contracts are just a few examples of daily attacks on the rights of workers to organise. With the increasing move towards automation, the role of unions has never been so important in ensuring that workers are not cast by the wayside in the name of ever-increasing profits for an increasingly small number of shareholders. The effect of this erosion is insidious but pervasive on the public perception of fellow workers in other industries. Many ordinary people who would have stood with their class a generation ago now decry the idea that anybody working in an ordinary job should earn wages that allow them to live. It appears that people who work in unskilled or semi-skilled positions should be punished. The consequences of not defending workers from the increasingly savage attacks of capitalism will be truly dire, most of all for those in power who will reap the whirlwind of the discontent they have sown.

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