Protecting workers’ rights - Law aims to to challenge exploitation

It is comfortingly accepted that the First World War ended the age of deference.

Democracy and social equity replaced beliefs that allowed monarchs to command armies through nothing more than birthright. 

Ideas like that five-year-old boys — always the children of impoverished parents — were eminently suited to being chimney sweeps’ little helpers were no longer acceptable. 

Greater access to education, and votes for women, were two of the advances that laid the foundation for the social contract that has been the basis of Western stability. 

Organised labour was another force for good. That social contract has been under attack for decades. Neoconservative governments supported ‘entrepreneurs’ who would make trade unions all but irrelevant in the private sector. 

Unfortunately, some unions behaved irresponsibly and created an atmosphere where it was acceptable to refuse to recognise trade unions. This is particularly so in the industry of our age — computerisation and the digital sector.

This technological evolution is leading towards the growth in — if not dominance of — automation that will bring another set of challenges for workers, one that has sparked conversations about a universal wage, though how reliable, or worthwhile, that wage might be is another day’s work. 

So, too, is finalising agreements to ensure that transnational businesses pay something that might take on even the vaguest appearance of a plausible tax liability. 

These issues mean that workers will have to find some way to protect what might be described as their relationship with work and employers.

One belated, but essential, small step in that process was taken yesterday, when the Government published legislation designed to outlaw zero hours contracts in most circumstances. 

The Minister for Employment and Social Protection, Regina Doherty, said the legislation “is aimed at tackling exploitative employment arrangements and those unscrupulous employers who do not respect even the most basic rights of employees.” 

That sounds plausible, though Mandate has warned that the legislation is full of loopholes and that more was needed in a society where tens of thousands of workers did not know, from week to week, what hours they would work or how their income might fluctuate.

ICTU has urged the Government to act urgently to address the problem, as insecure work has risen significantly since 2008.

The study found that 8% of workers — about 158,190 — endure significant variations in hours of work, from week to week, and that some 7% were in “temporary employment” in 2016. 

It also shows a dramatic rise of 34% in the category of “part-time, self-employed without employees”.

The extent of the problem was highlighted when Labour leader, Brendan Howlin, pointed to the use of zero-hours contracts in the houses of the Oireachtas, a calling to account that shamed an environment where exemplary standards should be routine. 

Workers rights and expectations are being challenged in ways that they have not been for a century, so it seems reasonable to expect a proportionate response. 

Especially if this new legislation is not enforced with vigour.