US firms are major influence in rise of non-unionism

A study published in mid-2001 finds that the significant rise in the number of newly-established workplaces without a recognised trade union in Ireland since the mid-1980s is largely due to the positions adopted by US-based companies with Irish subsidiaries.

There has been a significant rise in the incidence of newly-established workplaces without a recognised trade union in Ireland since the mid-1980s, and this is primarily due to changes in the structure of the economy and a change in the positions adopted by US-based employers, according to a new study by Bill Roche, professor of industrial relations and human resources at the Michael Smurfit School of Business, University College Dublin. Entitled Accounting for the trend in trade union recognition in Ireland, the study was first published during 2001 in the leading UK academic publication, the Industrial Relations Journal.

Professor Roche's research indicates that the rise in the level of non-recognition of unions among Irish-owned and foreign-owned workplaces - other than subsidiaries of US-owned companies - can be largely attributed to pre-existing low rates of union recognition in the sectors in which these firms have located since the mid-1980s. Only in the case of subsidiaries of US-owned multinationals is there evidence that the rising incidence of non-union workplaces marks a more generalised shift in the posture of employers towards unions in the new competitive conditions now prevailing in the Irish and global economies. The number of US-based firms prepared to recognise unions in Ireland has fallen from almost 70% to just under 15% since the mid-1980s.

The study rejects the idea that rising non-recognition points to the deliberate use by employers of "progressive" human resource policies which seek to "substitute for trade unions". It also rejects the view that the stance taken in relation to unions by companies of different national origins have become more uniform in response to international competition and globalisation. Even among US-owned companies, Professor Roche finds that no uniform position, whether based on individualisation or union substitution, characterises their stance on unions. Instead, he finds that a variety of approaches to remaining "union-free" have been adopted.

Professor Roche states that what US non-union companies share in common is an increased resolve not to deal with trade unions in their Irish plants: "What recently arriving US employers appear to have in common above all is a strong anti-union animus and a greater determination to assert their preference for remaining non-union in the economic and institutional circumstances now prevailing."