Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity)

I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

The general election campaign for Fine Gael got off to a very bad start because a video emerged of Michael O'Leary launching the election campaign of Deputy Peter Burke, now the Minister responsible for this area, including, unfortunately, workers' rights, saying the things Fine Gael and its supporters say to each other when they think videos are not on and these things are not going to be public. Michael O'Leary endorsed a Government led by Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil and said: "Let's put two parties back in government that can deliver". He also said: "We need a government that delivers for enterprise ... it’s vital that we elect a government that gets shit done ... I can think of nobody here, certainly in the current government, who demonstrates more action, more energy ... than Peter Burke." Michael O'Leary, of course, is a notoriously anti-worker and anti-trade union employer.

The investment and support of Michael O'Leary has paid off. So far, in just over 100 days of this Government, anti-worker measure after anti-worker measure has been pursued. Previous commitments have been dropped, such as the extension of sick leave, which we were promised at the time. We wanted to stitch the increase in sick leave into the legislation but the Government argued there was no need and that we should not worry because it would do it. It is now being delayed, with Fine Gael proudly trumpeting to business that it is delaying it. There is also the delay of the promised living wage. Just saying that people on the minimum wage should have the very basics of what they need to survive is no longer a commitment by the Government. That was kicked out. The Government has also kicked out something this Dáil voted for, namely, to end the outrageous situation of so-called sub-minimum wages and super-exploitation of young people who are legally paid even less than the minimum wage.

We have a Government that is consciously working against the interests of workers and for the interests of big corporations and the likes of Michael O'Leary. This is the situation in a country where we have immense wealth. We are one of the richest countries in the world, yet we have the highest rate of low pay in the European Union. One in five workers is low paid, representing more than 420,000 workers. On top of that, one in ten workers experience bullying or harassment, there are conditions of precarity and employees here work longer hours and have fewer holidays and less protection against dismissal than their European counterparts. That is rife and part of the so-called voluntaristic model of industrial relations the Government trumpets, which tries to make it difficult for trade unions to organise workers and for workers to get organised. I will provide an example. The people operating cameras for the Oireachtas right now are an example of the kind of conditions of precarity. These are workers doing a job. They should be directly employed by the Oireachtas but they are not. They are outsourced. When there were no Dáil sittings for an extended period when the election was called and then when Government negations were going on, they were not paid at all. The rates they are paid are about half of the normal freelance rates for camera operators and the other work they are doing. It is scandalous but shows this is rife in terms of bad working conditions for workers. Those same workers are faced with grocery and energy prices that are still sky high and rents rising at a rate of approximately 10% a year.

The best way for workers to deal with all of these challenges is to get organised into trade unions and to fight for better terms and conditions. Even with the terrible legal regime in this country and the horrific elements of the Industrial Relations Act 1990, all the evidence shows that if you get organised in a trade union, you will be able to combat bullying and discrimination, improve the atmosphere and safety in your workplace, and increase your wages. All the evidence shows that being in a union gives a premium of at least 10% in wages and a series of other benefits.

The benefits of high levels of unionisation go outside of the workplace. The evidence shows that where there are higher levels of unionisation, there are lower levels of inequality, including wage inequality, across the economy. With higher levels of unionisation, a greater share of the value created by workers goes to the workers themselves as opposed to going to profit. A key reason the balance has shifted with more and more of the wealth created going to corporations is this attack on trade unions, which was heralded by Thatcherism, Reaganism and so on.

The consequence is that while workers in the 1970s were getting 55% of the value that was being created, that has been driven down to 40%. Even under the current regime, workers should join trade unions and transform them into being fighting, democratic organs.

We should be clear that we have a Government that is working against workers getting organised in trade unions. I got an answer to a question to the Minister of State, Deputy Dillon, recently. I asked if he was aware that large employers in receipt of Government contracts, Abtran and RelateCare, which are anti-union employers, with Abtran refusing to engage with the industrial relations machinery, are refusing to recognise trade unions or engage in collective bargaining, and what the Minister of State is going to do about it. The answer I got is the answer that I presume we will get in the speech from the Minister in 13 minutes' time. It stated that we have a "voluntary system of industrial relations that is premised upon freedom of contract and freedom of association. ... The Government fully supports the right of any worker to join and be active in their trade union. Employees have the right under the Constitution to form associations and trade unions" and an employee cannot be discriminated against. It continued, "Under Irish law, there is no requirement for an employer to recognise trade unions for the purpose of collective bargaining."

The Government says that workers have the right to join trade unions but employers have the right not to deal with those trade unions. It is all premised on this illusionary equality between employees and employers, whereas bosses have the cards here. If you do not work, you cannot provide for your family. It is why we have a situation whereby workers have historically combined and have won minimum wages, have the won the weekend, have won 40-hour weeks and so on. It is why workers need to combine and act collectively, but the Government says to employers not to worry, that they can simply ignore the workers and do not need to engage with them.

That is the purpose of this Bill. It introduces mandatory trade union recognition, so that when 20% of a given set of workers join a trade union, the employer is legally mandated to engage with that union through the industrial relations process. That is what it is about. It is very simple. It is about a basic element of democracy in the workplace. It is a measure that is supported, in a recent Ireland Thinks opinion poll, by 70% of people in this country.

An example of a situation it deals with involves the second biggest company in the world, Amazon, owned by the second richest man in the world, Jeff Bezos, a notoriously anti-union individual and employer. The richest man in the world, Elon Musk, is also a notoriously anti-union individual and employer. There is a pattern. We know that Amazon is expanding in Ireland. It now has 6,500 workers. That will increase even further. We know it is renowned for poor working conditions. It denied and then was forced to retract the denial of workers in America being forced to pee in bottles because they are not provided with appropriate breaks, toilet facilities and so on. Huge wealth is being made off the backs of exploited workers in poor conditions. All those workers in Ireland could join a trade union and Amazon could say it is not dealing with them. This is a company that spends about $10,000 a day on fighting unions and trying to keep unions out of its shops. It spent over €10 million in 2022 and 2023 on trying to defeat unionisation. We need to match the effort of those workers in Amazon in this country, fighting to build unions and get organised, with a legislative framework that gives them the right to be in that union and compels the employer to deal with them.

See this speech in context