The general secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (Ictu), David Begg, has criticised judges of the Supreme Court over a recent ruling which he said the trade union movement believes has undermined representation rights set out in legislation in 2001 and 2004.
Speaking yesterday at the Ictu biennial delegate conference in Bundoran, Co Donegal, Mr Begg said the Supreme Court had "presented a situation that the country did not want".
He also signalled that how the Government dealt with the issue of trade union representation rights would be an acid test of the social partnership model.
Under legislation introduced in 2001 and 2004, trade unions were given limited rights to represent workers in non-union companies. However, trade unions believe these rights have been undermined by a recent Supreme Court ruling involving Ryanair.
The trade union movement realised that the Government had a difficult job in balancing the demands and requirements of the foreign direct investment community with the needs of unions.
"Truth be told, for the last 20 years or so we have gone along with that. We do not like it. We do not like how they [ the foreign direct investment companies] have treated us. We don't like their lack of willingness to have us recognised or to recognise our existence at all. We thought that the 2001 and 2004 acts were a good solution," he said.
Everyone had been more or less content with the situation until the judges, "living in their rarefied atmosphere of the Supreme Court, where, I suppose, most of them have never known a hard day in their lives", had got hold of it.
"They do not understand that the world is not a courtroom. They do not understand, for example, that it is not possible for an ordinary worker to come into any court and say, yes, I stand up and give evidence to this effect. They do not understand the tradition of the trade union movement and how, back in 1913, when the movement started off, memorials, as they were called, had to be signed in a circle so the ringleaders could never be identified. They are totally immune to that tradition and do not understand it."
Mr Begg said that the situation arising from the Supreme Court ruling in the Ryanair case had to be confronted now.
"I think honestly that we have run out of road in terms of our capacity to accommodate a sort of dichotomy between our role in society in social partnership and its lack of recognition for our role in terms of the collective bargaining process," he added.
