IF employers continue refusing to take partnership seriously at local level the new national agreement will unravel long before its expiry date in 2001, a senior trade union leader has told the conference of the Institute of Personnel and Development in Galway.

The president of SIPTU, Mr Jimmy Somers, yesterday told delegates that he believes there is a "lack of commitment by employers to partnership". This is related to "a lack of understanding or clarity on their part". However, SIPTU fully accepted the need to conduct industrial relations in a new way.

Globalisation, deregulation, consumer demands and other pressures made new initiatives essential, he said. The so called developed economies were also under pressure from low cost centres of production. The World Trade Organisation had not helped by its failure to agree minimum labour standards, at the same time as it further liberalised international trade. As a result workers, including 250 million children, were being abused, mainly in Third World countries.

In Ireland, industrial relations had traditionally been adversarial especially when it came to handling change, Mr Somers said. "We made use of complex time using procedures and settled differences with solutions that sometimes have more to do with the balance of power than with regard to the needs of the customer.

"Win/lose was the measure by which we, management and unions, measured our success. This was only possible in conditions of stable mass markets where costumers and investors were obliged to wait for the process to exhaust itself.

"I believe that this kind of industrial relations has no place in today's competitive markets. It belongs in the past, along with management by command and control, low skilled work and trapped customers. It is part of a culture where employees were expected to be efficient, but only from the neck down."

Adversarial industrial relations led to "fragmentation of work, the separation of thinking from doing, lack of trust in employees, direct supervision and the exclusion of workers from the decision making processes in their companies.

"On the other hand, partnership relations describe the practical recognition of the contribution employees can make to improving the effectiveness of their work and their companies. It involves employees, on agreed terms, as stake holders with rights and positive expectations".

Chapter nine of the new national agreement, Partnership 2000, was an attempt to give "operational meaning to the commitment of partnership", Mr Somers said. Unfortunately, recent statements from the Irish Business and Employers Confederation "suggest they are not taking this particular chapter of the agreement seriously.

"Already they are stating that this is a 9 1/4 per cent pay agreement over three years and nothing more. They are doing very little to advise their members that when the agreement was being negotiated a good deal of emphasis was being placed on the partnership. approach.

"That is why reference is made in the agreement to deepening partnership discussions" at enterprise level, equality of opportunity, forms of financial involvement and other issues. "These clauses cannot now be brushed aside or replaced by a very modest pay agreement for the next three years.

"Trade unionists did not agree to pay moderation as a means to copper fasten low pay and maximise profits. It was done to guarantee competitiveness, maintain employment and to give opportunities to workers to share in the gains through the partnership approach.

"If employers do not take this aspect of the agreement seriously, then there is a real danger that the deal will unravel long before the three years are up," he said.