EMPLOYER and trade union leaders have clashed on the issue of trade union recognition in the first public exchange of views on a successor to Partnership 2000.
The vice-president of SIPTU, Mr Des Geraghty, has warned the Irish Business and Employers' Confederation that the problem of union recognition must be resolved and any new agreement must give workers a greater say in economic and commercial decision-making at all levels.
However, IBEC's director, Mr Turlough O'Sullivan, ruled out mandatory union recognition, claiming it would "scupper" social partnership and scare away foreign investment. Both men were speaking at a SIPTU conference in Dublin yesterday on the future of centralised bargaining.
At the same meeting Mr Mick O'Reilly, the leader of the State's second-largest union, the ATGWU, said that if employers were not prepared to concede recognition the trade union movement should campaign to remove the ban on secondary picketing. Instead of seeking social partnership the trade unions should demand "joint determination".
Employers must be prepared to share power, he said. At present they "view partnership as talking to employees about how to implement the policy once it's decided".
Mr Geraghty said Partnership 2000 had delivered increases significantly higher than predicted in real incomes to workers, but it had not resolved fundamental problems such as low pay, social exclusion or union recognition.
Failure to address the power of various elites in society and to give greater rights to ordinary people "is at the heart of our political corruption, our exorbitant house prices and our social division in all its manifestations", he said.
"The majority of Irish employers have yet to embrace fully the concept of equal partnership in the workplace, or accept that their success should be shared more equitably with their employees".
Social partnership had been central to our record economic growth over the past 12 years, Mr Geraghty said. Those who were reaping the harvest must acknowledge the right of workers to professional representation by trade unions in their dealings with their individual employers or the institutions of the State.
"You cannot build social partnership on social apartheid, nor can you be in a partnership with someone who refuses to recognise your right to exist," he said.
"Equal citizenship is still denied to workers in company law, in industrial relations law and in the relative differences in economic and political power between employers and employed.
"It is also reflected in the privileged treatment of self-employed professionals and owners of capital in tax law, and more recently in their pensions provisions, not to mention their ability to apply restrictive practices of price-fixing and exorbitant fees in the law, auctioneering, accountancy, financial services, various consultancy practices and banking."
However, Mr O'Sullivan said mandatory trade union recognition would "scupper the delicate balance we have worked hard to build and act as a major disincentive to future inward investment".
The Irish approach to social partnership, which provided a middle path between the American model of minimum social safeguards and the European model of rigid safeguards which protected employees but strangled job creation, was the most desirable.
"IBEC and ICTU have worked together to make the ideal of partnership at enterprise level a reality. However, trade unions will have to be more willing to embrace the modern concept of partnership, rather than the outdated participation model which has long been exposed as inappropriate in the modern world," he said.
Mr O'Sullivan warned that attempts to make trade union recognition mandatory would be vigorously resisted. "A vital factor in our economic success has been our ability to attract American-based manufacturers in the hightech industries," he said. "Traditional trade union structures are not appropriate for these organisations".