Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

Union busting is a term we associate with the United States of America, but it is an international practice and it is very much alive and well in the Republic of Ireland. In 2015, Tesco employed the union busting legal firm Eversheds Sutherland as it prepared its union busting strategy Project Black. Attacking union subscriptions and the check-off system was very much part of the project. When Tesco workers who were members of the Mandate trade union went on strike in 2017, company deduction of union subscriptions was halted at all stores where Mandate had placed pickets. "We never collect trade union subs in stores on strike", a Tesco spokesperson said. Holding back tax and pensions would be illegal. If this legislation can prevent this tactic being repeated, it is valuable legislation that I will support. Any legislation that combats strategies such as that is to be welcomed but, at the end of the day, advances for trade unions and trade unionists will only happen on the basis of workplace organisation and building up union power from the shop floor.

I note the attitude of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael to this legislation. Both parties, in their own ways, try to portray themselves as friends of workers. Well, here they are, siding not just with employers but with the worst of employers, and against workers and worker organisation.

While we are discussing trade union matters, I will make two other comments. I express my support for the housekeeping staff at Cork University Hospital, who have been threatened with having their annual leave denied with the recruitment freeze used as a pretext. That is wrong. It needs to be reversed and they will have my full support for any action they take to stand up for their rights in this manner.

Second, I note the comments of Adrian Kane, representing the Cork Council of Trade Unions, who told the Munster rally for Palestine in Cork last Saturday that he was calling on the trade union movement throughout Ireland to immediately campaign for legislative change to ensure workers in trade unions who choose not to handle goods from a country under a charge of genocide from the ICJ will be able to do so free from prosecution from regressive employers. I welcome and endorse those comments.

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