Three in five US firms here don’t recognise unions

THREE out of every five US multinationals based in Ireland fail to recognise trade union representation, new research has found.

When multinationals from other countries are factored in, the situation improves only slightly.

Overall, approximately two in every five multinationals based here fail to recognise trade union representation in their facilities, according to the research from the University of Limerick.

The big employers are reducing trade union representation creating massive problems for the trade union movement.

Preliminary results from the research, which is published in Industrial Relations News, show that 61% of all multinationals engage with trade unions at some level in Ireland — roughly three in five.

However, researchers Jonathan Lavelle, Patrick Gunnigle and Anthony McDonnell found that only 41% of American companies — or two in five — recognise trade unions in their Irish operations.

“It would appear that there is a country of origin effect with regard to union engagement,” the authors said. “Irish, British and the rest of European multinationals are more likely to engage with trade unions whereas US multinationals are least likely to engage.”

That is bad news for the Irish trade union movement as there are currently tens of thousands employed here in US companies.

The researchers carried out 265 interviews with human resources personnel in a sample of 423 companies. About 40% of HR personnel were from US organisations.

According to Mr Gunnigle, their investigation showed replacement procedures in the case of employee grievances were only in place for some non-unionised employees, though not all.

The researchers also found that those who did recognise trade unions tended to be those who had been in the country for the longest. However, even they were beginning to turn away from worker representation, by opening new plants at which they rejected unionisation. That process, where older sites are unionised, newer sites not, is called “double breasting”.

The research concluded almost 60% of multinationals that have established a new site over the past five years and engaged in some form of double-breasting.

“Building on previous research this is indeed a worrying trend for trade unions in Ireland. The trade union movement has struggled over the past number of years to establish a presence in inward investing companies, particularly those companies in the information and communications technology or financial services sectors, but they could point towards their strong base in existing companies.

“However what appears to be happening now is that this strong base is eroding and they are finding it difficult to hold what they have.”

The findings are consistent with a fall in trade union membership density across Europe and the fear expressed by the authors is that the trend of non-unionisation will continue to spread beyond the multinationals.