Unions face even greater survival challenges in the next century than big business, the director-general of IBEC, Mr John Dunne, has told the biennial conference of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions in Killarney.
Meanwhile, the chairwoman of the National Economic and Social Forum, Dr Maureen Gaffney, told delegates their organisations must become more competitive and service-driven while retaining "the bedrock ethos of trustworthiness, justice and social solidarity".
Mr Dunne, the first employers' leader to address the ICTU, said he was "a firm believer in social partnership. By definition partnership is a better philosophy than its opposite."
He warned trade unionists against abandoning national agreements. Most people had benefited from the creation of more than 400,000 jobs since social partnership was introduced. Unemployment had fallen from the highest in Europe to the lowest, and living standards had risen from 50 per cent of the EU average to 90 per cent today, and were set to rise above 100 per cent.
He said there had been losers, such as the long-term unemployed and first-time home-buyers, "but putting all this together, I think we can say partnership has worked".
He admitted he had come to partnership through thinking "commercially" rather than "socially". Yet it made no sense for business people to have "an under-class in society with little opportunity to escape" or not to seek long-term solutions to poverty and crime.
"It makes no sense that young people on good incomes cannot buy a home or that the lack of adequate childcare facilities keeps many well-skilled, expensively-trained women out of the workforce.
"It makes no sense that we siphon taxpayers' money away into short-term palliatives rather than long-term solutions."
However, it made no sense for those whose first instinct was to think socially to see Irish jobs threatened "by paying ourselves more than the international market can afford".
Dr Gaffney said unions felt they were different from business organisations because they provided socially valuable services that would always be needed. "That's what the churches thought," she said.
"The unions are, of course, intimately linked with business. When a business prospers or fails, it inevitably affects the lives of employees. The real and urgent challenge for unions is not simply to adjust to the changes in the world of business but to change how you do your business."
She said unions risked "an over-reliance on traditional representation".
"Unions will increasingly come under intense pressure from other professionals who provide solutions to what were once `union' problems: taxation experts, management consultants, human resources personnel, experts in conflict resolution, counsellors.
"An increasingly educated, gentrified workforce may prefer to turn to lawyers, rather than unions, to resolve their disputes with employers. Turning up with a hot-shot, sharply-suited lawyer to fight their case may be more in tune with their image of themselves as professionals."
She said greater competition might also emerge between unions. They might use sophisticated advertising, rather than traditional workplace methods, to recruit members who would be more inclined to "shop around".
Women were also "under-utilised" in unions. Women made up 40 per cent of union membership, but their different interests, capacities and approaches to problems were not being explored.
Unions had to provide these new services without "jettisoning your social capital, the social solidarity and commitment to social justice and equality that are so much part of union self-identity and rhetoric".