Trade union leaders are to seek immediate dialogue with the Government with a view to establishing whether there is a basis for talks on a new partnership agreement.
There is now little prospect, however, that talks on a successor to Sustaining Progress will begin on schedule next month.
At a special delegate conference of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (Ictu) yesterday union leaders deferred a decision on whether to participate in talks.
Siptu, the country's biggest union, had already declared its intention not to enter talks in the absence of specific commitments from the Government on measures to maintain employment standards and prevent exploitation of workers.
Its stance arises directly from the row over Irish Ferries' plan to replace hundreds of unionised seafarers with cheaper labour from eastern Europe. Siptu and other unions claim the Irish Ferries move is part of a "race to the bottom" in employment standards which is also being experienced in other sectors, including construction.
Addressing yesterday's conference, Ictu general secretary David Begg criticised the business community for its "ambivalent" stance on the issue. Employers, he said, put such a priority on competitiveness that it seemed almost anything else was acceptable.
"This begs one to ask the question: is there no threshold of decency below which the objectives of competitiveness will not drag us?" He questioned why apparently no one in the business sector had felt a "moral obligation" to deprecate what was happening at Irish Ferries or to deplore the displacement of workers in other areas of the economy.
"Nobody in the business community was willing to come out and say, 'No, that's not the type of country we stand for.' . . . Nobody in the business community has come out to take a moral stance on the exploitation of workers."
Business organisations had queued up, however, to condemn the workers in An Post who were threatening to strike from next week. These workers, said Mr Begg, had acted in full accordance with the terms of Sustaining Progress.
Mr Begg told delegates it was the view of Ictu's executive council, which had met on Monday night, that a decision on entering partnership talks should be deferred.
The issues were of such magnitude that they could not be dealt with entirely in the pressure cooker of negotiations on a new national agreement.
Mr Begg said the "light touch" labour market regulation currently in place was no longer sustainable in the context of the opening of the Irish labour market to citizens of the new EU states.
This would have been difficult to manage "with the best will in the world", but what had happened was that the greed of some employers could not be restrained, he claimed.
As a result, a sea change was needed in the way employment standards were regulated and enforced.
Ictu had raised these issues with the Taoiseach last week, and this dialogue had been very satisfactory, Mr Begg said. He believed Mr Ahern wanted to deal effectively with the problems Ictu had raised.
However, the issues were technically complex, and further engagement was needed. "While we don't need to see - and are not asking to see - actual legislation enacted in advance of new talks, we do need to see the blueprint. We need to see what the plans are," Mr Begg told the conference.
