Unions are hoarding tens of millions of euro in strike funds that might be better used to fund membership-recruitment drives, according to the new president of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (Ictu).
Impact general secretary Peter McLoone, who yesterday began a two-year term as Ictu president, called on unions to instil "a sense of urgency" into recruiting and organising new members.
Finding the resources to do this was "the single biggest challenge" facing Ictu, he told delegates at the concluding session of the organisation's biennial conference in Belfast.
"I think we need to reflect on one point, which is that there are many of us who have dispute funds that we are piling money into for a rainy day."
It might be difficult to explain to a weaker union movement in 20 years' time why that money was not used to boost recruitment.
"If we have the capacity ourselves to resource this campaign over the next four or five years, let's engage with it and let's recognise that we are facing fierce competition. It is our responsibility, the responsibility of this generation, to take on the recruitment issue and deal with it from a position of strength."
Mr McLoone said Ictu did not have the resources itself to fund a recruitment campaign. He and general secretary David Begg would meet individual unions in the coming months to discuss the issue.
He told journalists later he did not know how much unions held in dispute funds in total, but his own union, Impact, had a fund of €20 million.
Drawing on such funds might not be the only way to fund a recruitment drive, but unions did need to consider some way of financing an Ictu-led recruitment initiative.
Union membership in Ireland, when taken as a percentage of the overall workforce, has been declining since the 1980s. While the number of people in unions is growing and has reached 600,000 in the Republic, the labour force is increasing at a faster rate. It is now estimated that fewer than 30 per cent of private sector workers are in unions.
Higher levels of membership in the public sector mean that 39 per cent of workers overall in the Republic are in unions, according to Ictu.
A strategic plan adopted by the organisation in April said recruitment and organising must be the "central objective of all trade-union activity and all other actions must be influenced by this consideration".
Mr McLoone, who succeeds Belfast-based Brendan Mackin as Ictu president, is a senior and influential member of the trade union movement, having led Impact, the State's biggest public sector union, since 1996. He will continue in that role while serving as Ictu president.
His first major task may be to lead Ictu, with general secretary Mr Begg, in talks on a successor programme to Sustaining Progress, due to begin in the autumn.
He said yesterday he believed the parties had "the wherewithal" to reach agreement.
There were some difficult issues to be addressed, however, particularly concerning pay. There was extreme dissatisfaction among some unions that, while the current deal allowed employers to plead inability to pay a cost-of-living increase, there was no provision for unions to seek enhanced terms in companies that were performing well.
