The real challenge facing the ICTU
BY ROBBIE MacGABHANN
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Why do more than half of Irish workers think that a trade union is not
relevant to their working life?
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Some 720,000 people throughout Ireland are members of trade unions in 1999.
It is a record level of union membership in the country. It is also a
measure of how trade unions are failing in Ireland. In the 26 Counties,
almost 520,000 people are members of a trade union, up by nearly 20,000 on
1998. In the Six Counties, the figure has risen to just over 200,000, over
5,000 up on 1998.
However, the proportion of the workforce who are union members has fallen
in 1999 to 48%. A decade ago the proportion of workers who were members of
a trade union was 55%.
So what is the true state of the trade union movement in Ireland? Are we
facing the ongoing marginalisation of organised labour? Is there a future
for the trade union movement in the Irish economy?
``New ways for the new millennium'' is the slogan accompanying a new Irish
Congress of Trade Unions discussion document published this week ahead of
the Trade Union Movement's biennial conference next week. The document's
title, Challenges Facing Unions & Irish Society in the New Millennium, is
symptomatic of the situation the trade union movement in Ireland is in.
The real question is why do more than half of Irish workers think that a
trade union is not relevant to their working life? Why is there an absence
of trade union representation in the new technology companies that employ
more and more Irish workers?
The ICTU is caught in a half-way house. On the one hand, it acknowledges
that there are a lot of outstanding issues regarding wages, working
conditions and union recognition that have not been dealt with by
successive Dublin governments.
On the other hand, the ICTU argues that their partnership approach of
agreeing to 12 years of wage constraint for Irish workers has delivered
substantial improvements to their members. This leaves a confusion as to
what is the true state of play in the Irish labour market.
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The ICTU will only become relevant to Irish workers when it stops talking
about their problems and starts actually dealing with them
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The ICTU document recognises many of the failures of the partnership
approach. ICTU General Secretary Peter Cassells recognises this in the
foreward of Challenges Facing Unions. He admits that people ``cannot afford
to buy or rent a house anymore''. The document itself talks of a three-tier
economy. In the top tier, there are ``the winners who take a
disproportionate share of the spoils''.
The ICTU recognises that ``ownership of capital, especially large amounts of
it, still gives individuals and families the most powerful advantage in
reaching the top rung of the ladder and staying there''.
The second tier is those ``staffing the engine room''. Here you find ``the
majority of those at work''. For these workers, ``making ends meet is a
struggle, although mostly a successful one''.
These workers, according to the ICTU, are driven by some of the following
issues: ``Will I be able to pay the mortgage since I had to exaggerate my
income to get a big enough loan? Will I be able to change the car? Will I
find affordable childcare? Will I be able to afford the extras to give my
children the best chance at school?''.
The third tier is ``made up of people who are either working in the bottom
layers of the economy or are excluded from economic participation''. Workers
in this tier, ``mostly women and young people, get paid between £2.50 and
£4.00 per hour''. These workers ``rise early and queue for the first bus to
get to work while most people are still asleep. They clean offices and cook
breakfasts, make up hotel beds and prepare sandwiches... work in clothes
factories and launderettes and do a whole range of essential jobs without
which the economy would grind to a halt''.
The ICTU solution to eradicating the inequalities of the three-tier Irish
labour market is more partnership and more consensus. The document argues
that ``exploring new ways of developing more positive, constructive and
productive relationships with management and employers will be one of the
biggest challenges for unions in the new millennium''.
The ICTU wants to develop and strengthen the process of partnership. This
will help unions ``remain relevant to the needs of modern workers. Today's
well informed, well educated and assertive workers know that the real
action is in the board room and not on the barricades.''
The only alternative according to the ICTU is to ``go back to resolving
conflicts through the use of raw power and muscle''. This simplistic
analysis of the alternatives to the partnership approach is found
throughout the Challenges Facing Unions document.
The ICTU has made and is making a fundamental error. The partnership
approach has failed a large majority of Irish workers. Those who have
benefited in terms of tax cuts and other concessions would probably have
secured these anyway from government without the ICTU. The growth of the
economy means that tax concessions to workers were necessary to encourage
further economic growth. Once the current boom ends, these concessions will
be clawed back by government.
There are alternatives to the partnership approach in its current form. One
is that the trade union movement actually stand up for itself and say no to
the Dublin government and to the employers who are using consensus approach
to increase their profits while marginalising their workers.
The other is that the ICTU enters the next round of so-called partnership
negotiations this autumn with a clear set of demands that will tackle the
inequalities of the three-tier society they clearly recognise in their
document.
ything less is the equivalent of rearranging the deck-chairs on the
Titanic. The ICTU will only become relevant to Irish workers when it stops
talking about their problems and starts actually dealing with them. That is
the real challenge facing the ICTU.
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