The Independent is threatening the core values of our industrial relations, writes David Begg
In any work community there is a need for orderly, consistent and known methods for dealing with the working relationship between employer and employee and, in particular, there is a need to resolve the differences which arise from those relationships.
Procedures are, therefore, of central importance in industrial relations. For both sides procedures establish a modus vivendi reflecting the weaknesses and strengths of the parties. They represent an acceptance by both sides of the need for voluntary restraint in the use of unilateral power.
The system of industrial relations we have in Ireland is built on this concept of voluntarism. Employers and unions negotiate collective agreements governing how they will do business. The State provides a sophisticated dispute resolution machinery to which both sides can have access and through which professional conciliators help them to resolve differences.
It is almost 50 years since the present mechanisms for the resolution of industrial disputes were first put in place with the establishment of the Labour Court under the Industrial Relations Act, 1946. Over the years many changes and developments were introduced culminating in the first major overhaul of the system through the Industrial Relations Act, 1990.
When introducing the new Act, the then minister for labour, Bertie Ahern, said the purpose of the Act was "to put in place an improved framework for the resolution of trade disputes with the overall aim of maintaining a stable and orderly industrial relations climate".
The 1990 Act established the Labour Relations Commission to work in collaboration with the Labour Court and to engage in conciliation as a preliminary to the formal Labour Court hearing. The intention was that the Labour Court would be a "court of last resort".
Over the years since 1991, when the Act became operative, both the commission and the court have achieved impressive results dealing with many thousands of cases and achieving a 70-year low in the number of days lost through industrial disputes. This has been made possible by the willingness of employers and unions to honour agreements and, ultimately, if necessary, to subject themselves to the judgment of the Labour Court. As a result Ireland is a stable and prosperous economy.
The current dispute at Independent Newspapers is of concern for two reasons. First of all it involves personal trauma for a couple of hundred people and their families because, to all intents and purposes, they have been made compulsorily redundant. The second reason is the implications arising from the policy stance of the board for the fabric of industrial relations in Ireland as described above.
In fairness to Independent Newspapers, it has been regarded by the trade unions as a good employer. Pay and conditions have always compared well with other employments and agreements have been honoured. People have stayed with the company for a lifetime and indeed several family members and even three generations have worked there. That all changed when a radical restructuring was forced through in recent weeks.
In implementing this restructuring the board has decided not to engage with any third party. It has refused an invitation from the chairman of the Labour Court to meet him. It has refused a request from the National Implementation Body (NIB) to go to the court. The NIB was set up some years ago to ensure the proper functioning of the partnership agreement and is made up of senior personnel from IBEC, Congress and the Department of the Taoiseach.
There is some irony in the fact that when the current partnership agreement, "Sustaining Progress", was being negotiated, the employers insisted on including in it what they called enhanced compliance machinery. This gave additional powers to the Labour Court to make binding determinations in cases where employers could prove inability to pay cost-of-living increases or where there was a proven breach of the agreement. There was some apprehension about this on the union side but eventually it was agreed. Now a major employer is refusing even to go near the court.
It is important to understand that what is at issue in this case goes way beyond social partnership. The Labour Court was established long before social partnership was thought of. The issue is whether the voluntarist system of industrial relations, unique in Europe to Britain and Ireland, can endure if it is to be undermined in this way.
The strength of the system, and of the Labour Court in particular, lies not in its power to compel anyone to do anything, but rather in the moral authority which it has built up over 50 years. Upon this question may depend, in some measure at least, our future economic wellbeing. It is not something which Congress, the Government or employers generally can be sanguine about.
Independent Newspapers is not an insignificant player in Irish society. It is a major employer, a prominent member of IBEC, and, through the editorial policy of its newspapers, a major opinion former. What it does makes a big difference. No matter how pressing it perceives its immediate business needs to be (and it is still very profitable), it has a responsibility to look at the bigger picture.
David Begg is general secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. He is also a member of The Irish Times Trust