Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

I want to raise the issue of workers and trade union rights, North and South. In the South we are governed by the Industrial Relations Act 1990, which banned political strikes, solidarity actions, solidarity strikes and secondary picketing, and which restricted workers' rights to organise. In the North, workers and trade unionists face Thatcher era legislation with similar effect. The power to change these laws has been devolved to Stormont for more than 20 years but none of the parties in the Executive has attempted to change them. This is why People Before Profit MLA, Gerry Carroll, has introduced the trade union freedom Bill, which would scrap those restrictions and give power back to workers to organise. It would allow workers to take solidarity action, make it simpler for workers to take industrial action and give workers greater rights to organise in trade unions. It is mirrored by the similar Bill that People Before Profit has introduced on First Stage in the Dáil, the Trade Union Recognition Bill. That is the kind of shared island we need to see.

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