Trade Unions Maintaining Relevance in the 21st Century

21 Feb 2002

Address by David Begg, General Secretary, ICTU to IRN Conference 21 Feb 02

A few weeks ago Peter Cassells gave a speech at the Institute of European Affairs about the future of Europe. Introducing him, the Director of the Institute, Brendan Halligan, said that Peter was one of a handful of people in the country of whom it could be said that they added 2 - 3 percentage points to our annual GDP during the era of partnership agreements. If this perception is in any sense true why is it that, after the most prosperous 15 years in our history, a period when income per capita went from 60 per cent to 112 per cent of the EU average and when unemployment dropped from 17 per cent to 4 per cent, and in which the trade union movement was a central actor, our relevance is even being questioned?

Apart from the obvious answer which suggests itself, and which I will avoid, it may be that recent tensions within our trade union family are at the root of the question. I will try to talk as honestly as I can about these issues before moving on to consider some broader perspectives on the role of trade unions in the modern world.

Madeline Bunting, who writes a regular column in the Guardian newspaper, observed some time ago that, as far as the media is concerned, there are only two trade union stories, strikes and splits! I think it can be fairly said of us that, on this criterion, we do our best to keep our NUJ colleagues supplied with copy. In the last couple of years we have had:

  • The withdrawal of ASTI from Congress;
  • Tensions between two of our largest and most respected affiliates;
  • The controversy over ILDA and its attempts to joint ATGWU;
  • A high profile disciplinary case against a senior official of ATGWU,
  • and more recently, the expulsion of AEEU from Congress

In addition it has been rumoured for the last six months that a new "Independent" trade union is being formed. Reference to "Independent" is generally taken to mean that if this union is formed it will not seek affiliation to Congress.

There is no one common thread running through these developments - which is good insofar as there is no evidence of a fatal fissure that could grow and sunder the entire organisation. At another level it is bad because it makes it harder to find a solution to the problems. In some cases competition for membership is the issue, in others it is dissatisfaction with national agreements. In one case the problems have their roots in history going back nearly fifty years. Personalities are also a factor in a number of cases.

Anybody with even a rudimentary knowledge of Irish labour history will know that divisions between unions were very debilitating to the struggle of workers for fair wages and conditions of employment up to the late fifties. These divisions were reflected in the political life of the country insofar as we had two Labour Parties, although both participating in coalition Governments in the Forties and Fifties. At one level it was possible for Governments to exploit the divisions in the labour movement; at another it was difficult for Government to make progress without a coherent union input to the developments of social and economic policy. This period of our history is well documented, including in Garret Fitzgerald's autobiography, where he admitted that on one occasion he clean forgot to ask the opinion of the trade unions on an important piece of social legislation. That was the measure of our influence then. It is to the eternal credit of John Conroy and young Jim Larkin that they were able to unite the trade union movement in one Congress in 1959. In the years since, as you know, considerable progress has been made in strengthening and modernising the trade union movement through mergers and amalgamations. It is difficult to see how reversing this trend, in the light of our history, could be to the advantage of Irish workers.

For reasons, which I will come back to in a few minutes, I do not think the cases I have referred to are irremediable in the medium term or that they are more than weakening our efforts right now. Nevertheless, there are no grounds for complacency and we do have to think strategically about how to minimise the impact of inter-union disputes on the cohesion of Congress on the conduct of industrial relations generally and on the public perception of, and support for, trade unions. In relation to the latter point it would not be credible to pretend that there is no contagion effect between membership disputes and the day to day practice of industrial relations, although, in fairness to my colleagues, I have seen them work hard to avoid this.

My personal view of these matters is that regulation of relations between unions is conducted within a framework where penalties imposed by Congress hurt it more than the union who is judged to be at fault. On the other hand we cannot have a situation where no sanction will ever be imposed for this reason. To have it so would be to effectively forfeit any right to regulate at all. We live in an era of consumer rights and that creates expectations of service amongst trade union members which must find a response. We all know that there are situations where expectations may not be capable of being met. Therefore, what we need to do is to create a system of regulation where membership rights can be vindicated but which does not create damaging competition between unions in any industry or sector through having a Dutch auction about terms and conditions of employment. In other words the perspective should be geared towards the member as consumer not the union as producer but also in the knowledge that volatility in union membership would not be in the long-term interests of members or of society in general. Finding an effective solution will require careful thought, analysis and consultation but instinctively I feel it calls for an external independent component to offer assurance that, not alone will justice be done, but it will be seen to be done. The one qualification I would put on this is that any system of regulation so constructed should not facilitate elitism amongst workers. The propensity of one group to want to distinguish itself from another is the antithesis of solidarity and has no place within trade unionism.

Although the numbers of organised workers has grown steadily during the years of economic growth, (including by nearly 6,000 last year) the number of new jobs has outpaced the number unionised. There are many reasons for this:

  • The decline of manufacturing relative to services. which are more difficult to organise;
  • The ideological opposition of some multinational and indigenous companies;
  • The lack of empathy and, in some cases, the active antipathy of the IDA;
  • The weakness of domestic legislation.
  • The transient nature of sectors of the modern workforce (e.g. students).

Mobility in tight labour market conditions is also a constraint. It is an interesting statistic that UNISON has to recruit 200,000 members a year in the UK just to stand still because so many of their people move on from the lower end of the public sector.

We know from our own surveys that there is no general antipathy amongst workers to unions. The bottom line is that the main reason most people do not join a union is that they have never been asked. In a nutshell the main thing the trade union movement needs is an active co-ordinated promotion and recruitment strategy. If one were preparing a strategic plan for the movement that would be at the core of it. To be sure, individual unions work hard at recruitment. Some are very successful at it but there is no co-ordinated strategy and until there is, no great leap forward in membership is likely to happen. For many non-union workers, the question is not "are unions relevant?" but "are they accessible?".

I hope you will agree that what I have put before you is a reasonably objective analysis of the issues confronting trade unions. But let us return to why I think the circumstances are more benign than some commentators might allow. You will realise, I am sure, that if I though the outlook was dismal I would not be here. On the contrary, my five-year absence from active service and the insight to the state of the world I have gained, have served only to confirm in my mind the importance of organised labour as a counterpoise to the liberal market economy. Let me put a few thoughts about this before you.

There is widespread pessimism about the fact that 2 billion people are excluded from the global economy - in fact they are more detached now than they were 20 years ago. The received wisdom is that the only way relations between the market and the community can be mediated is through a strong and vibrant civil society. Western Governments are investing millions trying to build civil society in developing countries. It explains why we could run a thriving tourism business on the numbers of groups coming to Ireland to explore the "miracle" of the partnership process that is rightly seen as the product of a vibrant civil society.

In Ireland Congress is the largest civil society organisation with 750,000 members. It is also the most cohesive. In the partnership construct, for example, there are 19 agencies. Five or six represent farmers; the same number represent employers and the rest are the community and voluntary pillar. Only Congress speaks with one voice - or at least we do most of the time. Let us put it this way, it is big news when we don't!

Congress is also the only All-Ireland body. We have time and time again proved our ability to mobilise the community against sectarianism, the latest occasion being within the last month when we organised the biggest ever rally in Belfast. Neither is this a new phenomenon. As far back as 1907 Jim Larkin was able to persuade even the police to strike for better wages and conditions in Belfast.

Trade unions also influence public discourse quite a lot, notwithstanding Madeline Bunting's observations about strikes and splits! Rarely a day goes by that some trade union representative does not appear on one of the prominent radio and TV programmes. Very often they are young and articulate representatives.

Of course there are fights and rows, arguments and splits. We are a very political people and trade unions are political organisations in the broadest sense of the word. Though troublesome and unwelcome, these disagreements are a manifestation of a political process and a vibrant civil society organisation.

We need also to keep in mind that this is a time of great change. The sophistication of choice of entertainment, the proliferation of television, radio, newspapers and magazines, the internet and elevation of individualism as a thing to be venerated have all weakened collective activities. It even affects voluntary work for organisations like St Vincent de Paul. The same is true of politics. More people voted in the last two stages of the "Big Brother" television series than voted in the last British General Election. In that election Tony Blair got fewer votes than Jim Callaghan in his last election - even though Labour won by a landslide. Likewise the German Social Democrats, even though they are in Government, are losing members at the rate of 40,000 a year. Those that remain are mainly over 35 years of age.

I would now like to consider the relevance of trade unions against the background of a globalised economy. The most analogous period of growth, technological change and global reach to the present was between 1880 and 1914 when urbanisation exploded, trade boomed and Europeans migrated in their millions to the New World. What makes this present day manifestation of globalisation different is the incredible mobility of capital made possible by de-regulation and technology. This has significantly shifted the balance of power between capital and labour. Moreover, the liberal market model of capitalism is capable of creating both great wealth and great inequality. It has been described as "creative destruction". It is a model that is epitomised in its extreme for me by the Enron Corporation. In a recent speech to the Institute of Directors in Dublin, Mary Robinson described globalisation as "the privatisation of power". It is a good description.

The late Moss Evans, General Secretary of the Transport and General Workers' Union in Britain is reported as once having said, "When I look in the mirror when I am shaving I don't see the face of a man who will bring down capitalism". I can empathise with this. Not alone do I not see myself as bringing down capitalism, I don't want to. What I do want to do is to substantially reform the present variant which is much harder, more mobile, more ruthless than the more controlled and regulated European manifestation, sometimes referred to as "Stakeholder Capitalism".

This is an issue that is at the heart of the debate about the future of Europe - whether we still have a European social model to defend. It pitches up in this country as the "Boston versus Bonn" dilemma.

We are very clear about what the issues are. The overriding objective of the neo-liberal market model is to serve the interests of property owners and shareholders and it believes that any obstacles to its capacity to do that - regulation, controls, trade unions, taxation, public ownership, etc. - are unjustified and should be removed. Its ideology is that shareholder value must be maximised, that labour markets should be "flexible" and that capital should be free to invest or disinvest in industries and countries at will.

Let me give you a current practical example of this thinking which quite possibly affects a lot of people here. There is a trend away from defined benefits to defined contribution pension schemes. The effect is to transfer all risks from employers to employees. It will almost certainly exacerbate the already serious under-provision of occupational pension schemes. It is being done in the unashamed interests of companies and shareholders.

This then is the context in which the trade union movement must operate in the modern world. There are some enduring realities in the power relations between employer and employee. Very few of us have any real assets except our homes. If you face the risk of unemployment with little capital and only social welfare to live on, and if on average the job you get after a period of unemployment pays 20 per cent less, then you remain as at risk as the old working class. Beneath the technological change, the soft human resource management techniques and the glitz of modernity, a lot of people are as exposed as ever to some hard realities of the labour market.

Trade union conflicts and shortcomings are many, certainly, but they pale into insignificance by comparison to the world of business. And the last few weeks have been pretty bad for the reputation of business with Enron, Elan and AIB making the running.

Enron provides a textbook case of how corporate power subverts the political process in whatever country it operates through donations to political parties combined with intensive lobbying. Enron was an ideologically driven, vicious corporate model which was rippling from its Houston base across the globe. Its vision was that of a Darwinian dog-eat-dog market, which could be applied to everything from gas supplies and fibre optic capacity to hedging against the weather. This vision drove Enron's political campaign for privatisation and deregulation. Its pitch rested on a near fundamentalist faith in the self-regulating efficiency of the market; true believers claimed there were simply no limits to its applications.

It was interesting to observe the Senate Select Committee rail against a "deeply troubled" Kenneth (Kenny Boy) lay. Many of them had probably accepted his donations. Of course the real victims in the Enron scandal are the workers who lost not only their jobs but their pensions as well - thousands of ordinary people left destitute after a lifetime of service to a God whose feet were made of clay.

It is worth keeping this in mind when debating whether unions are relevant to the 21st Century or not.

The title of this talk also asked me to consider the relevance of trade unions in the context of competitiveness. I cannot really do this in detail because we have not got the time. All I will say is that we have our domestic agenda - which is important because we are a small open economy - and we have an international dimension. In the context of the latter I believe that the never-ending pressure of foreign competition on the labour markets of developed countries will continue to radicalise organised labour in Europe against globalisation. It is quite interesting to observe what is happening in the UK at the moment. The leadership of six of the main trade unions have moved decidedly leftward. Relations between the trade unions and new Labour have never been very warm (even though unions provide one third of party funding) but they are now distinctly chilly.

In our own case competitiveness is a function of many variables. It provides interesting scope for discussion in the future. The key consideration for us is that competitiveness does not become a race to the bottom of the European league of pay and conditions. IBEC were kind enough to invite me to talk to their Council on this topic some time ago and I will be happy to give that paper to anybody interested.

So, what about the future? Well, clearly, much depends on the shape and disposition of the new Government. IBEC has made its position about another partnership agreement fairly clear in a recent IRN interview. They appear to be unenthusiastic to put it mildly, citing concerns about the complexity of the existing agreement and the need to "equality proof" everything whereas the emphasis should be on "competitiveness proofing".

Personally, I do not want to get involved in any process of putting pre-conditions on any talks that may or may not happen. I think that the partnership process has been good for the country. It has, however, been managed up to now on the basis of some studied ambiguities. By this I mean that:

  • Profits have been subsidised through wages supported by taxation to encourage FDI;
  • In consequence public spending is one of the lowest in the EU and we have underprovision of many essential social services;
  • A large body of employers do not recognise trade unions as legitimate social partners.

In the catch up phrase of our development it was possible to set aside issues of principle in favour of a problem solving approach. This was the right thing to do at the time, but can it continue? We are now at 112% of the EU average on an income per capita basis but it is very unevenly spread both geographically and amongst socio-economic groupings. By the yardstick of the Gini coefficient we are firmly in the Anglo-Saxon camp rather than the mainstream of Europe so equality is important if we want to build a just society.

Professor John Fitzgerald reckons that it will take 7 per cent of our national wealth per annum of the next 10 years to bring our public services up to the level of Europe so continuation of a wage-tax trade off seems problematical.

We need also to consider the implications for our society of immigration, caring as a result of greater labour force participation by women, changing demographics and the consequences of European integration.

What this suggests to me is that we should try to establish a conception of what might be described as "The Common Good" to be worked towards over a ten year time span. This, I realise, is ambitious because, for the first time, it would require some sharing of values.

I can support IBEC's desire for a more focused agreement. I do think that the existing PPF requires very complex management and is lacking in popular ownership. But the focus should include measures to create a more equal, just and inclusive society. If after all these years experience the best we could do was to have a partnership agreement only about wage determination, it would seem like a regressive development.

Ireland, notwithstanding the increasing wealth and individualism, remains a solidaristic society. Public support during the Foot and Mouth campaign was evidence of that.

History is important too. There is a strong trade union tradition closely aligned to statehood in Ireland. The 1916 Proclamation, after all, was printed in Liberty Hall and even today the statute of Jim Larkin adorns our principal thoroughfare. Irish public opinion strongly supports trade unionism but it does expect us to act in a responsible manner.

The case for the continued relevance of trade unions may be summarised thus: The market can create great wealth but, on its own, is incapable of distributing that wealth. Trade unions are significant actors in a market economy capable of forcing some measure of wealth distribution and have the potential - even if it has as yet been poorly demonstrated - of acting across national borders to that end. The prospect of a world where globalisation creates increased inequality in the developed countries and continues poverty and destitution in the developing countries, is so unacceptable to civilised living. Therefore even those who believe in liberal markets must recognise the need for some redistribution and in consequence learn to tolerate unionisation.

Implicit in the question I was asked to discuss is that the 21st Century will be radically different from the 20th Century. Of course in many ways that is self evidently true. But with respect to the great political and economic questions facing mankind one wonders whether the same old dilemmas are not still there.

On 23rd April 1901 Keir Hardie, MP for Merthyr Tydfil and founder of the Labour Party, made a speech in the House of Commons in the course of which he said the following:

"While our population during the last century increased three and a half times, the wealth of the community increased over six times. But one factor in national life remains with us all through the century, and is with us still, and that is at the bottom of the social scale there is a mass of poverty and misery equal in magnitude to that which obtained 100 years ago. I submit the true test of progress is not the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few, but the elevation of a people as a whole... We are called upon at the beginning of the 20th Century to decide the question propounded in the Sermon on the Mount as to whether we will worship God or Mammon. The present day is a Mammon - worshipping age".

It seems to me that this contains a resonance with what has happened in our own country in recent years. In absolute terms the condition of the poor bears no comparison but in relative terms the parallels are striking.

The great political task for our time is to combine economic efficiency, individual freedom and social justice and the modern age too I think has lost the correct balance between the elements of this political equation. The great thing is that in our country, and indeed in Europe as a whole, it does not have to be this way. Social cohesion with economic prosperity is possible and its achievement is the mission of trade unionism.

I conclude, therefore, that, not only is trade unionism relevant to the 21st Century it is essential to it.