Improved access to collective bargaining will leave unions with work to do, Siptu conference told

A European Union directive intended to ensure higher levels of collective bargaining in countries like Ireland will still leave unions here with a great deal of work to do if they to reverse a long-term decline in private sector membership, delegates at Siptu’s biennial conference in Galway were told on Tuesday.

Esther Lynch, the general secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation, an umbrella body that campaigns on behalf of around 50 million union members across 41 countries, said Irish unions needed to ensure changes intended to encourage far more employees benefit from collective bargaining agreements do not simply result in unions improving the lot of workers who are not members.

The directive is widely seen within the Irish union movement as having the potential to provide a platform for future membership growth.

“The trouble,” said Ms Lynch, “is you can be very successful in terms of the coverage achieved by a collective agreement but without building density there is the risk that workers are covered by that agreement but don’t join a union.”

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She said Ireland currently has, at 34 per cent coverage, a higher rate than the UK and a number of other European countries but that it lags well behind the EU’s bigger economies Union membership across the EU, however, declined from 38.9 per cent in 2000 to 27.5 per cent in 2019 and she described work to extend membership of unions like Siptu in Ireland as “vital and critically important”.

Irish Congress of Trade Unions General Secretary Owen Reidy said ensuring membership rises along with collective bargaining coverage will be the “fight of this generation’s lives” and there is “no more important right” than the right of workers to join unions where they want to.

“As it is,” he said, “it is in the gift of employers whether they respect the fact that their employees are members of a union.”

He said this was the case whatever the level of membership but that the challenge of reaching workers in sometimes hostile environments in sectors like hospitality where membership levels are currently “negligible” needed to be a particular priority.

The EU directive should change the landscape, he suggested, “but we can’t have a situation where coverage goes high but density (the percentage of workers in membership) goes low”.

Speaking separately, on a motion that was critical of Siptu’s profile in public and media discourse on the economy Barry Neven, a delegate from the aviation sector, described those who benefited from union deals with about contributing as “freeloaders”.

“If we pay €5 a week for membership then go out and negotiate for pay and the non-members get it as well, that needs to stop,” he said to warm applause.