Unions ‘must meet needs of workers’

By Michael O’Farrell, Political Reporter TRADE unions are failing to respond to workers’ needs as membership remains low when compared to the number of people working, SIPTU said yesterday.

National Industrial Secretary Noel Dowling told the union’s Galway conference that trade unions had not been deploying adequate resources on the issue and called on members to develop further links to increase membership.

Although there are now more Irish trade union members than ever before, the number of new people in employment has far outstripped union membership. The proportion of unionised workers in the private sector has fallen to 29% from a high of more than 40%. In 1990, when SIPTU was formed six of every 10 workers employed were trade union members. Today, despite a 20% growth in SIPTU membership, just four in every 10 workers are represented by a union.

Mr Dowling said unions needed to return to the mentality which had seen them grow powerful in the 1950s and 1960s.

“As a movement we are not paying the attention to organising that was paid to it by trade unionists in the 1950s and 1960s. Organising was always number one on their agenda because they knew that without it you could do nothing for workers or protect anything they had,” he said.

“We lost sight of the fact that unless a sufficient number of people organise themselves, the sheer imperative of employees in the non-union sector undercuts wages and conditions in the unionised sector,” Mr Dowling said.

SIPTU general secretary Joe O’Flynn also encouraged delegates to attract new members. In his keynote speech yesterday, Mr O’Flynn said all union members had to be more proactive.

“It is critical for the trade union movement to enable us to maintain standards if we are to influence the future for a fair and equal society for all workers, their families and communities at large,” he said.

Mr O’Flynn rejected suggestions unions were no longer necessary. “Nothing could be further from the truth, as we experience day after day the necessity to protect workers’ rights and dignities. We have to continually challenge the anti-worker agenda of those in the golden circle, ever greedy for an even higher percentage of the gains which workers have helped to secure,” he said.

Addressing the issue of union campaigning and political involvement former general secretary John McDonnell urged delegates to focus on issues the union needed to tackle. “The union has a major role in campaigning for the future and we must keep that to the forefront,” he said.