Derek McDowell (Labour)

I welcome the Bill but with less enthusiasm than most Members who have spoken heretofore. As Senator White rightly said, the central problem with the Bill is that its framework is good practice which is already happening within most good companies. However, the Bill does not help these companies in moving matters forward to any great extent. It simply gives them a legal framework in which to operate. The Bill lacks the teeth of a mandatory nature to enforce good practice on companies that do not want it, of which there are plenty.

The Bill is a product of the European factory of labour legislation. It was part of negotiations between the European Parliament and the European Commission for over five years, and it shows. By and large it is the kind of legislation that I and my party support and I do not demur in this case. However, there are difficulties with it. For example, it reflects the German system where there are two management boards within any large company, one a traditional board of directors in the Anglo-Irish style we would be familiar with, chaired by a chief executive or chairman, the other a supervisory board of which typically 50% would be representatives of the workforce and 50% the employers. It is a system which works well and has contributed in no small measure to making Germany the powerhouse of Europe for many decades. Even now that it is reviewing the way it does things the element of partnership which the supervisory board provides is questioned by relatively few people in the system.

Contrasting with the European way of doing things is the Anglo-American way described by Senator White as an old fashioned system where managers manage and workers work, but where occasionally there is confrontation between the two. That system resulted in many industrial disputes in this country in the 1970s and early 1980s. The current Irish system is something of a hybrid where the Irish partnership process has been grafted with some success onto the Anglo-American system of management and worker relationships. This is also informed by the fact that many of our large companies are American multinational corporations, which have their own ethos and way of doing things. To be blunt, most of these companies, while they may deal in a fair way with individual workers, are antagonistic to the notion of dealing with workers as a collective force. Many have made it quite clear, and the Minister will be aware of this, that they would not want to locate in Ireland if they had to recognise trade unions, deal with collective bargaining and negotiate with representatives of workers. Most of the companies of a size to be affected by this Bill are from that background. It does not affect the largely indigenous and some foreign owned companies who already have collective bargaining and consultative arrangements and who already negotiate with trade unions.

The Bill is addressed to largely American-owned multinationals who do not have those processes. We need to ask whether it will be effective in putting in place a forum for consultation and information within those companies. There are aspects of the Bill and matters arising from the negotiating process that suggest it might not be. For example, the Minister of State says there is a trigger mechanism conferring a right on employees to set up a forum, but there is none to actually set the forum up. It allows employees to give notice, if enough of them agree, that they want this type of consultative forum in place. From my little knowledge of American multinationals and the way the workforce behaves in those companies, I would be surprised if in three or four years time, if 10% of the workforce or 100 people took the initiative to act to put these fora in place, many would have been set up. The problem is that workers in these companies will mostly not seek these fora unless there is a crisis, like the recent events at Irish Ferries, or proposals for changes in work practices. There is a long lead-in period so I suspect in such companies where there are no trade unions nobody will take the initiative and nothing will happen. Suddenly, a year or two later, a crisis occurs and workers look to put in place a consultative forum but because the legislation allows the company to delay it for at least six months, the crisis passes and the information is of little use.

I am sceptical about the trigger mechanism and I am not sure it will be effective in providing information in companies where it might actually be relevant. It would be better if we had simply put in place a framework and required companies to implement it forthwith without requiring individual workers in non-unionised places of employment to take the initiative. The issue of trade union negotiating rights and representation is the elephant in the room. Nothing in this Bill will oblige companies to deal with trade unions. If there is already a trade union, and what the Bill calls a system of collective bargaining, the trade union will look to trigger the mechanism to set up the consultative forum and appoint people to it so it works successfully.

In circumstances where there is no union recognition it is difficult to see how the Bill is going to work. The notion that 100 people will come together outside the structure of a trade union and act as a collective, in circumstances where were they to call themselves a trade union they would not be recognised, seems unworkable. I am sceptical we can give the law real teeth in those circumstances. Until we get meaningful legislation obliging companies in certain circumstances to recognise trade unions, legislation of this kind is less worthwhile than it should be.

The purpose of the Bill is to provide for consultation and information but it is light on specifics as to what that means. Two instances are given in the standard rules which are included in the Schedule, namely, circumstances of collective redundancy and where there might be major changes in work practices where consultation and information would be considered appropriate. We oblige people to give information and exchange views and there is a notional mandatory instruction to act in a bona fide manner. However, if an employer wants to block it he or she can do so. It is all very well to say there is a legal obligation to act in a bona fide manner and in a spirit of co-operation. However, it does not define what information has to be provided, nor does it say what consultation actually means. It refers to dialogue but it could be a dialogue of the deaf where the workforce expresses its views but nobody pays a blind bit of attention and there is no obligation to take those views into account. Indeed, it is difficult to see how employers could be legally obliged to do so.

Senator White mentioned the issue of penalties. I take the opposite view. If we accept that this is largely intended for big companies like, for example, Ryanair, then the level of penalty is really quite light and nothing that could not be absorbed over a period of time by large companies with deep pockets and significant resources. If multinationals announce they are about to transfer a large part of their undertakings abroad, what capacity do we have to enforce the legislation after they have left? Would it not be shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted? I do not wish to sound unduly negative, though I suspect I have, but this Bill is good in principle and fine on paper but when it comes to implementing it in circumstances of potential confrontation or if there is significant resistance from employers, I wonder if it has the teeth to make it happen.