LABOUR PARTY leader Eamon Gilmore has said that a Labour government would not be a trade union government.
Speaking following an address to the Siptu biennial conference in Tralee yesterday he also warned that a Labour government would at times be at odds with the trade union movement over changes that would have to be introduced.
“There are reforms that have to be brought about in the running of our public services . . . That would bring a government into difficulty at times with trade unions. That is something that I’m prepared for and I want trade unions to understand that they should be prepared for as well,” he said.
Mr Gilmore told delegates that for the first time in a century there was a real prospect of Labour-led government. However, he said that such a government would have to be of all the people and not a trade union government. “But Labour in government will engage with the trade union movement, in the knowledge that we share common origins and common values, and that the instincts of a Labour-led government will always strive for fairness and greater equality,” he said.
Mr Gilmore repeated his pledge that if in government the Labour Party would introduce legislation to allow for collective bargaining rights for trade unions.
The Labour Party leader also said that it was necessary to reduce the size of the public pay bill but that this could be achieved by means of a process of major reform rather than across-the-board reductions in pay.
He said that the Labour Party was opposed to further widespread reductions in pay. He urged the Government to resume talks with employers and unions which he said would be required if major reform was to be secured.
He said there was a campaign under way to scapegoat workers in the public sector. “For months, there has been a belittling of the work of gardaí, teachers, nurses, hospital workers and council road workers, as if they were the cause of the economic downturn.
“If you had just arrived in Ireland, and didn’t know what has happened here, you would be forgiven for believing that it was the nurses from AE departments who borrowed all the money to speculate on development land; that it was the local authority librarians who lent them the money, and not the bankers; that it must have been the Garda who were running the banks. There are gardaíin the banks now, and for very good reason,” he said.
Mr Gilmore said he did not want to see strikes.
Pay cuts, he said, would lead “to strife and to conflict. And any Government seriously looking at reducing the pay bill and providing better public services for the people of this country needs to combine what has to be done on pay with the necessity for reform and you can only do that by engaging with people and by sitting down and talking to them.”
Asked whether the trade union movement should call off its proposed campaign of opposition to cutbacks, Mr Gilmore said that he was not going to tell them what they should be doing. “They obviously have to devise their own strategy but I make no secret of the fact that I don’t want to see strikes. I don’t want to see conflict,” he said.