Affiliates of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions are to expel members "who engage in racist behaviour" and delegates have also called on the Government to withdraw the right to apply for work permits from employers who abuse immigrant workers.
"Racism remains pervasive if not rampant in Ireland," IMPACT delegate Mr Pat Bolger said in moving a motion to develop an effective anti-racist trade union action plan.
"Our country is changing," he said, but there was no reason to fear this or balk at the commitment combating racism involved. It was important not to repeat the mistakes that led to riots in Oldham, Bradford and Burnley.
"Unions have a unique responsibility to tackle racism wherever it shows its ugly head. Our movement is founded on industrial and social solidarity. We are strongest when we raise up the weak. We are at our best when we extend the hand of welcome and friendship to the stranger and the isolated."
In committing themselves to "constructing an anti-racist workplace", unions were also embracing new opportunities to recruit an estimated 250,000 to 300,000 new workers coming to Ireland to sustain economic development, Mr Bolger said.
SIPTU regional secretary Mr Mike Jennings called for the withdrawal of the right to apply for work permits to employers who treated immigrants as "bonded labour".
"As a full-time official, I am not supposed to mention unofficial disputes except to condemn them, but recently in Co Meath, when I witnessed workers taking unofficial action because of the way their Czech colleagues were being treated, all I could do was feel immense pride."
Unions should not be blind to the problems of racism in the workplace, but most Irish workers were responding with a generosity of spirit. Unions should condemn those employers who abused the system.
Mr Jennings said his union had been involved in a number of other situations, ranging from Brazilian poultry workers being paid £100 a week less than their Irish counterparts to Moldovans travelling all the way from the provinces to Dublin in secret to inquire about their rights.
A Romanian worker who returned from home leave a week late because his wife had almost died in childbirth had been given his belongings in a plastic bag by a security guard and told to leave Ireland because his permit was withdrawn.
"Why do these horror stories happen? They happen because of fear and the greatest source of that fear is the work permit system," he said. He knew of one case where an employer was given 12-month work permits for fruit-pickers and, when the season ended, passed his employees on to other farmers like "a job lot".
He urged unions to involve immigrant workers. "I hope, when I come back in two years' time, I won't look out at a sea of all-white, all-Irish faces."