Main opposition party backs new collective bargaining model

Ireland’s main political opposition party, Fine Gael, has expressed support for collective bargaining rights, a move that represents an important shift for the party. Fine Gael proposes that employers should establish employee representative committees. If these are undemocratic or fail to deal with disputes, trade unions should be allowed to apply for a union recognition ballot. Such a model could be more amenable to multinational investors in Ireland.

A decision by the main political opposition party, Fine Gael, to support collective bargaining rights represents an important policy shift, although the party plans to give employers the option of internal bargaining without trade union involvement.

New coalition government likely

While Ireland is not formally due to hold a general election until the early summer of 2012, many commentators believe that it will happen before then. Given the unpopularity of the current Fianna Fáil/Green Party governing coalition, as evident in a range of opinion polls, it is likely that Fine Gael will join with the smaller Labour Party to form a coalition government. The Labour Party leader, Eamon Gilmore, has already committed to legislating in government for collective bargaining rights if the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union is passed into law.

Fine Gael and the Labour Party have been in government on a number of occasions in the past, either as joint partners or as part of a three-party coalition. Collective bargaining rights is one area in which they would tend to have differences of opinion, as Fine Gael is a somewhat right-of-centre party compared with the more social democratic leaning Labour Party. The latter party is strongly supported by Ireland’s largest trade union, the Services, Industrial, Professional and Technical Union (SIPTU).

Existing rights of social partners

Under Ireland’s constitution, all workers have the right of freedom of association – in other words, they can join a trade union; however, employers have an equal right to refuse to recognise a trade union for the purposes of collective bargaining. The 2001–2004 Industrial Relations Acts tried to resolve this seeming contradiction by allowing trade unions the right to represent members in non-union companies. A trade union could take a case as far as the Labour Court (An Chúirt Oibreachais), whose rulings on industrial relations issues, such as pay, were binding in law. However, the ability of trade unions to continue to use this legislation in an effective manner was, in their view, undermined in 2007 by the so-called ‘Ryanair’ ruling in the Supreme Court of Ireland (Chúirt Uachtarach na hÉireann) (IE0702019I).

Position of Charter of Fundamental Rights

The EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, which Fine Gael cites as a reason why the party has given this commitment to collective bargaining, states in Article 28:

Workers and employers, or their respective organisations, have, in accordance with Union law and national laws and practices, the right to negotiate and conclude collective agreements at the appropriate levels and, in cases of conflicts of interest, to take collective action to defend their interests, including strike action.

This does not provide an explicit right to trade union recognition, but rather to collective bargaining, which could be interpreted as including non-union internal bargaining structures. However, it does mention the right to strike in cases of conflict, which would be impossible without a trade union negotiating licence.

New proposal on collective bargaining

In explaining Fine Gael’s new commitment to legislate for collective bargaining rights, the party’s Spokesperson on Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Leo Varadkar, set out the party’s suggested model:

There are many models of collective bargaining. At one extreme, employers are required to recognise and negotiate with unions. This is the case in Australia and most of mainland Europe. In the United States, for example, employers are required to recognise unions only where a majority of workers vote for it by secret ballot. I believe that the solution for Ireland lies somewhere in between.

Mr Varadkar continued:

Employers should be required to establish Employee Representative Committees to provide a means by which they can talk to and negotiate with their employees. However, where these committees are not established democratically or fail to deal with trade disputes, unions should be allowed to apply for recognition using the American model. It may not be practical to apply this to small businesses with a small number of employees but it should be possible to apply it to larger ones.

Under the Fine Gael proposals, in the event that such a body is not established democratically and fails to deal with disputes, trade unions would be allowed to apply for a union recognition ballot, in the style of the UK and US legislation. Such a model could be more amenable to multinational investors in Ireland, many of whom have a principled objection to dealing with trade unions. If a company already has an internal negotiating structure, or sets up one that works well, then it would not need to concern itself with trying to dispute recognition ballots.

Brian Sheehan, IRN Publishing