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

I thank Deputy Joan Collins for bringing forward this very important Bill. We live in a world of growing, galloping and deepening inequality. Since 2020, about two thirds of the new wealth created in the economy went to just 1% of the population, almost twice what the bottom 99% got globally. The same process is happening in Ireland, where the richest two billionaires now have as much wealth as the bottom 50% of the population. They are the vast majority who, according to a recent survey, struggle to feed their children. They have to cut back on their meals in order to eat. We live in one of the richest countries in the world, yet over 4,000 children are homeless. All of that is a consequence of growing inequality, which has been rising and accelerating since the 1980s. Why is that? We have Governments that implement right-wing Thatcherite neoliberal policies, designed to ensure that instead of wealth supposedly trickling downwards, it floods upwards. Corporation tax rates are declining, and Ireland plays a leading role in that race to the bottom.

One of the crucial factors is the decline in the power of trade unions. Not only do trade unions win higher wages and ensure better and safer working conditions for workers, but, by their very existence and strength, they decrease inequality and increase the social wage, social welfare, healthcare, education and so on. Trade unions have been consciously undermined and attacked by right-wing governments, from air traffic controllers in America and miners in Britain in the 1980s to the Industrial Relations Act in Ireland, which was designed to tie the hands of workers and reduce their power to combine collectively to take on the very large economic and political power of the employer class in this country and globally. This Government, along with successive Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael Governments, have been a part of that.

If we do not rebuild strong, fighting and democratic trade unions, we will see a picture of the kind of society we are going to have. Let us consider Elon Musk's comments, when he said he is against unions because he does not want to see a lord and peasant sort of thing. Of course, in reality Elon Musk is a new lord and does not want to see the peasants getting organised. That is why he is in such opposition to trade unionists and workers in Tesla in Sweden who oppose his agenda. If we do not rebuild strong trade unions, we will have more and deeper inequality and poverty and more workers working in extremely poor conditions.

The Bill is a very simple and modest measure, designed to partially redress some of the decline in the power of unions. It does not give workers the right to have their union recognised by their boss or interfere with the Government's much coveted and supposedly voluntarist model of trade unionism and industrial relations in this country, which ignores the massive power of bosses, meaning the relationship is anything but voluntarist because workers have to work in order to eat. It does not force workers to join trade unions or have their trade union subscriptions taken off in a check-off system. It is extremely simple. It gives workers the right to say that they want their trade union subscriptions to be taken off at the point of payment. That measure would cut across some of the trade union-busting activities of employers, such as their ability to make it difficult to for workers to join unions and taking action when faced with the potential for industrial action by workers.

The response of the Government to an extremely modest measure to help workers be in unions is to oppose it. It can dance around this all it likes and refer to the need to have this and that discussion and so on, but this an anti-trade union and anti-worker Government. It is on the side of the billionaires in this world and not on the side of ordinary workers. It makes a joke of the EU directive on minimum wages, which contains a commitment. The Government is meant to produce a plan to explain how we are going to significantly increase the number of workers covered by collective bargaining by November of this year. It clearly has no intention of doing anything about that because it does not want to see the number of workers covered by collective bargaining increase. If it did, it would agree to this extremely simple measure.

I want to make a point about another aspect of the Industrial Relations Act, which needs to be repealed. Workers who want to follow the heroic example of the Dunnes workers in blocking and boycotting South African goods could today face persecution from their employers.

They would not be covered, because the Industrial Relations Act would say that is outside the realm of what is covered in respect of trade union action. That is scandalous. Workers should be encouraged to take action against Israeli goods. The trade unions should encourage them and fight for their right to do so, and we need to repeal the Industrial Relations Act.

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