Strong anti-partnership sentiments were expressed by a number of Siptu delegates yesterday at a conference workshop on employment standards.
There was also applause, however, when the union's national organiser, Noel Dowling, said members should not blame partnership for all the ills of the trade union movement.
Only when the full conference votes on the issue tomorrow will it become clear whether the State's biggest union is prepared to withdraw from social partnership after nearly two decades of participation in the process.
Many who spoke claimed the involvement of unions in partnership was making it harder for them to recruit new members. Mr Dowling, who heads a Siptu unit dedicated to recruitment, said employers were claiming that only 20 per cent of workers in the private sector were members of a union. "It is not as bad as that, but it is heading in that direction."
Waterford delegate David Byrne said he had conducted a survey of 36 shop stewards in 1999 and ascertained that out of 98 family members, only 43 were in unions. "So we cannot even get our families into unions."
Unions, he said, should become involved in educational programmes in schools to inform pupils about the difference between working in unionised and non-unionised employment.
Another delegate, Con Hackett, said national agreements did "more harm than good" and drove people away from unions. "When you see politicians getting pay rises under national agreements, that sickens people in the private sector." When workers were in trouble, he added, they did not think of turning to a union.
"They think they're damned if they join a union and damned if they don't."
Stephen Mills of the Dublin services branch claimed social partnership was an "oxymoron". While unions and their members could be punished for breaches of the 1990 Industrial Relations Act, employers could lock out workers with impunity.
He claimed the tactics of Irish Ferries in its current row with Siptu were a return to "pre-Industrial Revolution days". If the company "gets away with it", employers would be setting the agenda for the future. And why wouldn't they get away with it, he asked, when unions were precluded under the 1990 Act from taking "solidarity action"? Education branch delegate Kieran Allen said social partnership had not prevented the development of a "Thatcherite society", while the proportion of workers in unions had declined. Unions should be organising members in companies such as Intel and Hewlett Packard "whether Bertie Ahern likes it or not".
Mr Dowling said he shared some of the views, but an argument could be made that national wage agreements had been a success economically. He remembered when the only issue at conferences was unemployment.
The proportion of workers in unions was declining in many countries including those that did not have social partnership, he added.
