George Lawlor (Wexford, Labour)

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

It is a privilege to be able to bring this vital Bill before the House on Second Stage. We have a chance today to make clear our commitment to standing up for the most fundamental of rights, the right to bargain collectively for better conditions, pay and a fairer workplace. This is also an opportunity to protect a long-standing successful institution by righting a wrong. Joint labour committees, JLCs, and their precursors have been an important pillar of collective bargaining in this country for over a century. Due to legal proceedings a decade ago, their very viability stands at risk. An employer's veto over the operation of JLCs undermines their purpose. That is what we are left with following that legal case.

The Bill would provide a fix and in doing so would protect this important part of our industrial relations framework for the future. By enacting a simple backstop allowing the Labour Court to step in where there is a refusal to engage with a JLC, we can not only protect the rights of every worker to collective bargaining but ensure that the express will of the Oireachtas can no longer be subverted.

As we debate this Bill today, it is important that we be cognisant of the wider landscape of collective bargaining in Ireland in 2025. Sadly, Ireland's voluntarist system marks us as outliers in the industrialised western world. The weak legal protections we provide to workers with regard to collective bargaining allow employers to simply refuse to engage with trade unions or workers. Of course, that is not just bad for those workers; it is bad for our whole society. The economic, social and environmental benefits of collective bargaining have long been clear.. When employers deny employees the chance to bargain collectively, they are not just denying the rights of those workers in particular; they are actively holding our country back and suppressing wages across whole sectors.

Ireland has a particularly low rate of collective bargaining coverage. Just 34% of our workers currently benefit from collective bargaining arrangements, compared with an EU average of 56%. We know the EU directive on adequate minimum wages calls on member states with low coverage to lay out their path to 80% and that the Government is soon to unveil an action plan to that effect. When that action plan comes, it must be ambitious and clear and do what it says on the tin, namely, contain real and measurable actions.

The Bill before us represents one simple action we must take by ensuring that JLCs can once again function as they were always intended to. We can take a big step towards ending the race to the bottom that we see far too often in far too many industries. Well over 100 years ago, it was the Government in London that recognised that across Britain and Ireland there were too many workers in industries that were subject to chronically low pay and poor conditions. Those industries typically had very poor or, indeed, non-existent trade union representation.

That reality led to the genesis of the trade board system, which aimed to guarantee minimum standards and conditions across those industries by providing a form of collective bargaining to the workers in those under-unionised sectors. These trade boards took the form of bargaining bodies, including representatives of employers and workers. They were empowered to set binding minimum wages and conditions across a particular sector. That system proved to be durable and was further refined with the Industrial Relations Act 1946.

That Act saw the trade boards become JLCs. Their members would be appointed by the Labour Court after the Minister had established that a particular sector had inadequate machinery to effectively regulate pay and conditions. It was an effective way to make sure that workers in sectors with low levels of representation benefited from collective bargaining and were able to negotiate for better wages and conditions. However, it relied on certain assumptions.

Whether it was the somewhat unlikely figure of Winston Churchill in 1909 or Seán Lemass in 1946, the originators of the law that underpinned the first trade boards, and then the JLCs, clearly understood that these were bodies aimed at providing the opportunity for bargaining in the sectors with the lowest levels of representation and some of the worst conditions. They clearly understood these as operating across industry and sectors and with the involvement of employers and workers. However, what they clearly did not have in mind was an employer's veto.

How could the system ever have got off the ground if it would all collapse where the employers refuse to tog out? That is, unfortunately, what we have been left with after the legal proceedings brought a decade ago by the Irish Hotels Federation when the then Minister aimed to reconstitute a JLC in the hotel sector. In preparing to oppose the Irish Hotels Federation case, the State effectively conceded that in the absence of employer's representation, the JLC could not be constituted and, furthermore, that the decision to take part in negotiations under a JLC framework was voluntary.

The legal proceedings were struck out and the case ended before it reached the court. Those legal proceedings cast a long shadow. We are now left in a situation far removed from what the original drafters of the trade board or JLC system envisaged. We are left with an employer's veto and, with that, the reality that powerful employers can simply sidestep and ignore what should be a crucial pillar of our industrial relations infrastructure and a crucial tool for underpaid and under-represented workers to get a place around the table to negotiate for a better deal. We are all the worse off for it.

In some sectors, like security and childcare, JLCs have continued to work well. We have seen their results in legally binding employment regulation orders, setting fair floors for wages and working conditions. They have helped to root out rogue operators and stop unfair competition based on low pay where a bad employer is undercut by a worse one. The hotel sector is a case in point. In this and other sectors, employers are actively boycotting the JLC process, undermining this keystone of our industrial relations system and depriving their employees of their right to collective bargaining.

The Irish Hotels Federation years-long boycott has left workers in the hotel sector without a voice at the table. That is a travesty for those workers and it is bad for the sector's good employers that want to play a fair game. Boycotts like that leave us with a race to the bottom. That is why I believe the Bill is so vital. It would enact new provisions on the constitution of JLCs. These will apply in a case where the Labour Court seeks to consult an organisation of employers or workers but is met with refusal to engage on the appointment of members to a JLCs. When facing such an impasse, the court will then be able to appoint the people it views as representative of the interests of the relevant employers or workers.

The key purpose is to emphasise that while the members appointed will be representative of the interests of the employer or workers' side, they need not necessarily be their representatives. That crucial distinction would make clear that there can be no veto on the employer's or worker's side.

The court would review the membership of the committee from time to time to ensure it continued to be representative. If the court was satisfied it was not possible to appoint such representatives to a JLC and that the employers or workers concerned were operating in a way aimed at ensuring effective regulation of pay and conditions could not take place, the Bill would allow the court to make its own proposals for an employment regulation order. Those proposals would need to take into account the legitimate financial and commercial interests of the employers in the sector, the desirability of fair and sustainable minimum rates of pay appropriate to the sector and the general level of wages in comparable sectors.

When the court has finished those proposals, it would then forward them to the Minister, who would deal with them just as though they were the proposals of a JLC. Thus, the unfortunate loophole that has emerged since the Irish Hotels Federation legal proceedings would be closed. Under this Bill, employers would no longer be able to veto the establishment of a JLC simply by refusing to play ball. Of course, we would all hope the backstop powers given to the court by this Bill could be used sparingly and employers would engage with the JLC process in the correct spirit. We must be clear, however, that where they fail to do so, we would step in to ensure the workers in those underrepresented and often underpaid sectors that need JLCs the most get their shot at a fair deal. Without this Bill, JLCs will be forever hamstrung. We will lose a crucial pillar of our industrial relations framework and will fall yet further behind our neighbours on workers' rights.

In October 2022, the high-level group on collective bargaining, which included IBEC and ICTU, published its final report. It made it clear that the robustness and effectiveness of this statutory mechanism had been impacted by employer disengagement in relation to the operation of the JLC system in several sectors. The time has never been more urgent to stand up for collective bargaining. The Government has delayed and dithered too long. We cannot sit on our hands any longer while too many workers are left voiceless in the face of low pay and poor conditions. The Government has promised an action plan, as it is required to deliver under the terms of the EU's directive. That is very much welcome. Today, however, the Government has the opportunity to take real, decisive action by backing this Bill. I will come clean and say it: there is nothing radical in this Bill. We are not asking for any major overhaul of the industrial relations system here. All we are asking for is a simple, common sense step that will make a real difference. It is a step that will restore the original intent of the Oireachtas from when joint labour committees were first legislated for back in 1946. It is a step that will give so many workers across the country the seat at the table they deserve. It is a step that would benefit all of us. I urge colleagues across the House to stand up for collective bargaining and workers across the country by supporting this Bill. Go raibh míle maith agat.

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