Trade unions and Government must build on EU's wage directive for a better future for workers
Kevin Callinan: 'Successful economies are characterised by greater levels of collective bargaining, not less.' File photo: Gareth Chaney/ Collins Photos
In the immediate aftermath of the first wave of the global pandemic, Fórsa and Siptu trade unions highlighted the unique opportunity for the Government to seize a watershed moment in history, likening the circumstances then to those that existed in Europe immediately after the Second World War.
With the right approach to leadership, we identified an opportunity for a new consensus on public services, workers’ rights, and the social and political health of the nation, supported by adequate taxation, social dialogue, collective bargaining, and legal rights to equality and civil and political freedoms.
Five years on, the world has been beset by a combination of seismic change and increasing uncertainty. EU leaders, while grappling with demands for more defence spending, have managed to heed the warning flares fired by populist extremists, and this has been met with modest attempts to expand the focus from a market-centred economic orthodoxy to develop initiatives to improve social cohesion.
As inflation continues to take its toll, geopolitics remain fragile and immigration has become a focal point for the left, the right and the centre. Economic forecasts are explicit in their observation that inward migration will be an absolute necessity for the future of the Irish economy, while many of our main political parties continue to pivot on the topic in response to where they think the electorate wants them to turn.
If that growing tension is to be sustainably defused, there is an oversized role to be played by access to fair wages, decent work and the process of empowering workers to engage in the collective bargaining process.
Successful economies are characterised by greater levels of collective bargaining, not less. In a world of growing inequality, it is vital we have mechanisms in place to tip the scales of fairness back in the direction of a human workforce.
This week, the European Court of Justice cleared the way for the implementation of the EU Directive on the Minimum Wage, designed to boost collective bargaining and to establish a National Living Wage.
It’s a significant development for workers throughout Europe, and a reminder that, at its best, the European Union can deliver real progress on living standards and workers’ rights.
Its implementation truly has the potential to be a game changer for the Irish workforce, where there will be a significant challenge to boost collective bargaining coverage.
It currently sits well below the minimum threshold of 80% envisaged by the directive and lays down a challenge for trade unions to add more members in workplaces.
The Irish Government has followed through on its Programme for Government commitments to transpose the directive into Irish law, which it did last year.
Last week it also published the Action Plan on Collective Bargaining, developed with the Irish Congress of Trade Unions and Ibec.
It’s welcome and necessary progress ahead of Ireland’s presidency of the EU next year, and the planned pension auto-enrolment scheme.
It is disappointing, however, not to be able to include the implementation of a National Living Wage, which has been pushed out to 2029.
Each of these elements have a role to play in improving social cohesion. Political leaders need only look at how the question remains largely unanswered in UK politics, and a growing sense of chaos as the electorate scrambles for a political saviour.
We’re not immune to the same cycle here, and recent events have shown discontent, and fear, can erupt into immediate and devastating violence. Remove any sense from people that they have a stake in society — and in their own futures — and this cycle is easy to replicate.
In this context, the directive has a meaningful role to play in empowering workers. It has potential to be a properly gutsy reform of Irish industrial relations, and it throws down a challenge to trade unions to provide the leadership and expertise necessary to deliver a meaningful workers’ dividend.
In recent years Fórsa has made significant progress in recruiting new members, and the emerging voice of the newest generation of younger workers is becoming louder, and clearer. All the evidence points to a generation with an appetite for real engagement, campaigns for justice and greater worker advocacy.
In some ways this comes as no surprise. This is a generation that witnessed, as children, the devastation of the financial crash in 2009, and for whom CMAT’s recent hit has become an important cultural and political marker.
This is the generation who keenly felt the life restrictions of the pandemic, and who are now trying to navigate the world of work where full employment clashes headlong with a housing crisis, conspiring to force yet another generation of young Irish people to leave the country for better prospects.
They are a generation alive to the challenges we all face, motivated to find solutions and alert to the possibilities of collective strength and engagement. This directive is one of the tools they need to carve out a better, more sustainable future for themselves and the generation of workers that follow them.
This week’s ECJ ruling, the Government’s Action Plan and trade union leadership must conspire to place it in workers’ hands.
- Kevin Callinan is general secretary of Fórsa
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