Immigration, Integration and Cultural Identity - MacGill Summer School

17 Jul 2006

Address by David Begg, General Secretary, Congress to MacGill Summer School
Monday 17 July 2006, Glenties, Co Donegal

The growing potency of immigration as a political issue is evidenced by the recent collapse of the Dutch Government over the disputed citizenship status of the prominent campaigner and critic of Islam, Ayaan Hirsi Ali. The past year has seen immigration related rioting in France, a world wide controversy over cartoons published in a Danish newspaper and a somewhat intemperate debate about illegal immigration in the United States.

It is not immediately obvious why immigration should have moved so rapidly up the political agenda. It may be in part related to globalisation and the insecurity caused by outsourcing on the one hand, and large migration flows on the other. It may in part also be related to insecurity arising from geo-political tension in the Middle East.

For whatever reason, immigration is fuelling a debate about identity. An example of this is to be found in clashes between Samuel Huntington, author of "The Clash of Civilisations" and Alan Wolfe, an American academic, in a recent edition of "Foreign Affairs Magazine" about Huntington's latest offering entitled "Who Are We? The Challenge to Americans' National Identity". These exchanges are worth reading on the Foreign Affairs website for they are fairly vitriolic. What I think is most significant though is that America, a country built on immigration, should be having this debate at all.

Europe, if anything, is more challenged by this phenomenon of migration. Issues of identity are probably more acute. By history Europe has been the continent which populated the New World through emigration. Uncertainty about where the true borders of Europe should be drawn is central to the issue of enlargement. Sitting uncomfortably with these concerns is the knowledge that an unfavourable demographic, by virtue of an ageing population, means that some level of inward migration is unavoidable. And then there is uncertainty about what this will do to the sustainability of the European Social Model. Americans are not affected in the same way about their social model - they don't have one!

Of course it is hardly necessary to observe that Ireland has been transformed by immigration in the last couple of years. Not only have we changed from being a country of emigration to one of immigration but it has happened at breathtaking speed. When the preliminary results from the census become available later this month I expect that our population will be larger than we think and that the proportion of non-Irish born people will be over 9 per cent. This change will have happened over a timescale of 2-3 years whereas it took countries like Germany and Britain over 40 years to make this kind of transition.

We are fortunate, I think, that the impact of this transition has been softened by two significant factors:

  • A booming economy;
  • An influx of people from Europe who are culturally similar to the indigenous population.

Had these conditions not existed I doubt that such a rapid change could have been accommodated with so little social dislocation. As it was the labour market dimension to the change was very challenging but I believe we have acted in a timely and prudent manner to anticipate and prevent problems in this area. It is this aspect of immigration that I intend to focus mainly on tonight.

The last time I spoke at the McGill Summer School it was on the subject of the second Nice referendum and enlargement in particular. Opponents of the Nice Treaty were arguing that accession of 10 new member states would open the floodgates to huge numbers of Eastern Europeans who would come here to take our jobs. I argued, on the basis of empirical evidence arising from earlier enlargements of the union, that this would not happen. I predicted that by virtue of our peripherality we would be a less attractive destination by comparison to close proximity countries like Germany and Austria. On the basis of studies then available I predicted that, at most, Ireland would receive no more than a few thousand immigrants. I was, of course, wrong in my forecast of the numbers.

What I did not anticipate was that Ireland, Britain and Sweden would immediately open their labour markets post 1 May 2004 and, more importantly, that the other 12 countries would not. In our case it meant that a virtually unregulated labour market of 2 million people was opened to a population of 70 million. As the Minister for Education subsequently explained during the Irish Ferries dispute, this was done at the request of the business community. Certainly Congress had no say in it. As a matter of fact we had lobbied strongly during the negotiations on the "Sustaining Progress" agreement for an increase in the Labour Inspectorate, not in relation to immigration but in relation to lack of regulation of the labour market as it then was. The response at the time was to increase the number of Labour Inspectors from 17 to 21, equal to approximately one third of the number of dog wardens in the country!

It was naive of Government to think that employers, faced with the prospect of an abundant supply of vulnerable, and understandably compliant, labour would not succumb to the temptation to exploit them. That, of course, is what happened. Initially it was below the radar screen activity in horticulture, hotels and other low pay industries. But the issue burst into serious public prominence with the GAMA and Irish Ferries disputes. Parallel developments with the Laval and Viking cases in Sweden and Denmark focussed critical attention on the implications of the EU Services Directive. In Ireland on December 9 last, over 160,000 people voted with their feet to support the Congress National Day of Protest against exploitation, displacement and a race to the bottom. Very deliberately, the banner we chose to lead the main march read: "Equal Rights for All Workers".

This issue of employment standards, compliance and enforcement in the labour market was made the central demand of the unions in the new round of Social Partnership negotiations. We were somewhat sceptical about the willingness of employers and Government to seriously contemplate moving away from the extremely flexible labour market model which had been so resisted only three years earlier. For this reason we sought certain assurances about the principles involved before entering talks and this took three months to achieve.

In the event our scepticism was well founded. By way of preparation Congress engaged the services of a prominent Senior Counsel and legal team to assess the type of legislative changes that would be necessary to prevent a "Race to the Bottom" in employment standards. The legal team created an elegant solution to be achieved through a single new piece of legislation rather than the amendment of various existing Acts relating to employment. When the talks started IBEC and the Construction Industry Federation (CIF) made it clear that, while they could support improved enforcement, they would not countenance any change whatsoever in the existing framework of laws. This seemed like a totally impossible situation!

It gradually emerged that the real problem lay with the Foreign Direct Investment companies, and in particular, I would say the American Chamber of Commerce. Ironically these were not the target of our campaign but they saw any change in the legal framework on this issue as a watershed - a fundamental shift away from a pro-business totally accommodating and, by definition, unregulated labour market. The power of this FDI sector is very great - not just as an influence group within IBEC but also in terms of their direct political access to and clout with the Government.

This veto on legislative change made for a very difficult negotiating environment and was ultimately unsustainable. It does, however, explain why, having spent three months talking about talks, it took a further five months to actually secure the package of employment protection measures incorporated in the new agreement.

The employers, while eschewing legal remedies, asked us to outline our concerns and vowed to find remedies for those concerns within the existing legal and industrial relations framework. The problem with this was that we had to submit every proposed solution to the test of our earlier evaluation of the weakness of the existing legal framework. In practice it was not possible to deal with the issues identified by us without recourse to at least amending legislation. That is the way agreement was eventually reached. There will be extensive legislative change. It will not be as elegant as the single act we proposed but it will be effective.

What, in practice, were we trying to achieve? It can be reduced to three critical areas, viz:

  • We had to make a working assumption that, if not addressed, it was only a matter of time before we had another Irish Ferries situation, albeit on land. Without a robust legal and enforcement architecture to deal with it our evaluation was that such a dispute would release very damaging racial and social tensions;
  • We had to factor in the experience of the Gate Gourmet dispute in the UK which allowed the employer to contrive an industrial dispute to justify a collective dismissal of the existing workforce and its replacement with a completely new group of workers. Existing Irish law would also allow this although this is not well known;
  • We had to deal with large scale abuse of employment standards, including extensive use of bogus self-employment, principally, but not exclusively, in the construction sector.

The new agreement "Towards 2016" deals comprehensively with these issues. A complex series of measures detailed over 15 pages commits the Government to extensive legislation over the next year and a half. While the provisions of the agreement are technical and not easy to access for the lay reader the following are some of the key provisions:

  • The establishment of a new Office of Employment Rights Compliance (ODERC) with an increase to 90 in the number of Labour Inspectors backed up by 23 new positions of a legal, accounting and administrative support nature;
  • ODERC will work closely with unions through agreed Memoranda of Understanding to tackle problems of non-compliance;
  • The Revenue Commissioners, Social Welfare and ODERC will collaborate through CAB style joint investigation units to target serious abuses of employment standards;
  • The RCT1 tax system will be reformed to prevent people in the building industry and elsewhere from being forced into bogus self employed status to allow employers to avoid pension contributions etc;
  • Employers will be obliged, under pain of a fine of €250,000 or imprisonment, to keep accurate employment records in a prescribed format for inspection by the Labour Inspectors;
  • The Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment will take new legislative powers to allow him to publish the outcome of investigations like the GAMA case;
  • There will be a new Employment Rights procedure to allow easier access to Rights Commissioners, the Court and the EAT and with compensation where rights are denied. Up to now only monies owed and expenses could be awarded. Powers to award up to two years pay by way of compensation is a very significant change and will help many migrant workers whose cases are usually about bread and butter issues like payment of correct wages;
  • Penalties for non compliance in all areas of employment will be increased as follows:
    • On summary conviction - €5000 in the District Court and/or imprisonment,
    • On indictment - penalties up to €250,000 fine.

In essence, the exploitation and abuse of workers is now a de facto criminal offence. This represents a profound cultural and social shift and one which I believe will benefit this society hugely, over the long-term.

  • New standards of compliance with labour law and requirements of certification of same in order to tender for public procurement contracts. If certification is not received payments can be withheld - In other words, the taxpayer will no longer subsidise exploitation or sharp employment practices;
  • Legislation to regulate employment agencies and educational establishments to prevent them from undermining employment standards and immigration law;
  • Changes to the Work Permits system including the right of a person to apply for and reapply for their own permit and requirement for non EEA students to be covered by a work permit;
  • Legislative changes to prevent Irish Ferries type collective redundancies and "Gate Gourmet" type unfair dismissals;
  • An LRC Code of Practice to protect people working as domestic servants.

I have no hesitation in saying that these measures in their totality, and in the context of the legislation necessary to implement them, represents the single biggest leap forward in social policy initiated in this country. Other important social policy changes were inspired by the EU but this is the biggest thing we have ever done of our own volition. It is also the most difficult project Congress has ever undertaken both in terms of its complexity and in overcoming the opposition to it. The international significance of this work has already been referred to by the Taoiseach. The validity of his observation was underlined by the fact that we have already had a visit by representatives of the British Cabinet Office seeking to explore the relevance of this agreement to their immigration challenge.

In the current debate about ratification of the agreement I cannot understand how opponents of the agreement can rationally dismiss what has been achieved. No one on our side has criticised the proposals - in fact they were unanimously endorsed by the Executive Council of Congress. There is apparently a view that Government would make these changes anyway. I have no doubt, that in a General Election year, political manifestos would promise to increase the resources of the Labour Inspectorate, but I doubt if they would go much further. It is naïve to think that a comprehensive reform of the labour market would be achieved in any context other than a social partnership agreement.

I know that some of our affiliated unions who oppose the agreement have philosophical objections to the whole concept of social partnership. While respecting this outlook I have to question whether fidelity to a philosophical viewpoint should stand in the way of an agreement which offers an unprecedented level of protection to migrant and indigenous workers alike.

Indeed, it can be argued that the Irish Trade Union movement has successfully bucked the very debilitating and damaging global trend towards weakening and diminishing employment rights and worker protection. Admittedly, we may have started from a low base, but we have succeeded in halting a trend that, ultimately, benefits only a tiny minority and damages social cohesion.

Of course the functioning of the labour market is only one aspect of the immigration phenomenon. Integration is another important consideration and education is relevant here. A recent OECD study on immigration reveals that there is a gap, in international experience, between the achievements of indigenous and immigrant children. This is hardly a surprise given the barrier to education represented by poor competency in English. The agreement is not silent on this topic either. A further 550 language teachers will be appointed to assist international students to get over this barrier. It is worth observing in passing that, in the experience of teachers, international students in general are often more diligent, better motivated and better behaved than Irish students.

One further point is relevant here. The responsibility for meeting the requirements of international students should not be disproportionately focussed on one sector of education. The new agreement requires all schools to publish their admissions policy. All must play their part and I will be watching to ensure that these new developments do not cause any further elitism in education.

The approach to integration is very important. Diversity and multi-culturalism must be considered in the context of the need to preserve social cohesion. There is a danger that the doctrine of multiculturalism, if taken to extremes, could produce a group politics to trump the politics of social solidarity. If that happens it opens the way to increasing inequality and falling social mobility such that it becomes impossible to articulate any sense of social contract or common purpose once group rights overwhelm the belief in collective effort and collective responsibility.

But this does not necessarily mean assimilation. There is no need to abandon all ties to a country of origin or to fall in with every aspect of the Irish way of life. It is though important that newcomers acknowledge that Ireland is not a random collection of individuals; they are joining a society, which, although hard to describe, is real enough. It is not enough to point out, as many multiculturalists do, that there is no simple moral consensus anymore. Perhaps this is true but then it seems to me that the political challenge is to create and sustain a minimum degree of moral consensus and solidarity in an otherwise pluralistic society. Diversity in itself is neither good nor bad, it is fairness that matters placed within a human rights framework.

Indeed we do not all have to like each other, or agree with each other or live like each other for the glue that holds society together to work. As the philosopher David Miller has written:

"Liberal states do not require their citizens to believe liberal principles, since they tolerate communists, anarchists, fascists and so forth. What they require is that citizens should conform to liberal principles in practice and accept as legitimate policies that are pursued in the name of such principles, while they are left free to advocate alternative arrangements. The same must apply to immigrant groups, who can legitimately be required to abandon practices that liberalism condemns, such as the oppression of women, intolerance of other faiths and so on."

So the point is that a liberal state has the right to outlaw things that challenge its core values - such as the emergence of separate legal - political enclaves that would be implied, for example, in the acceptance of Shari law for Muslims in areas of high Muslim settlement if they existed here.

This, of course, is an extreme example. But how would we handle say demands for faith schools and faith based ethics in hospitals beyond the delicate balance between Catholic and Protestant that currently exists? Our experience of immigration, and the fact that so many of the people who come here are culturally and ethnically so compatible means that we have not yet had to confront some of these complexities.

A great deal of effort has gone into proving that immigration is a good thing for Ireland. Reports in quick succession by AIB, ESRI and the European Commission around the time we were trying to negotiate labour market reform all telling us positive news were, in my opinion, calculated to influence those negotiations.

Of course, a central problem is that this country does not yet have a coherent, joined-up immigration strategy - to date, all moves in this area have been dictated by the requirements of business.

Towards 2016 changes that. The employments rights provisions won by Congress represent a coherent, strategic approach to immigration and the labour market. It could well prove to be a building block for a broader social compact on the issue.

My own sense of it is that we do not have sufficient up to date detailed data to fully evaluate the impact of immigration. The new agreement provides for the collection of that data and for a high level group to monitor it. This will, hopefully, lead to evidence based decision making in respect of the labour market.

In the short term Irish business has benefited hugely from first mover advantage in opening the labour market to the 10 new EU states. In the longer run, however, we may come to regret aspects of it. The demographic profile of the Eastern European states is worse than ours. There is perhaps a 7 to 10 year period or even less in which people of an age interested in migration will come to us. The incentive to bypass the non active citizens here or to fail to provide the infrastructure of caring necessary to allow women to remain in the labour force or to increase our productivity through upgrading skills - in favour of drawing on immigrant labour supply as the easier option - may lose us the demographic advantage we have over the rest of Europe. In other words the danger is that immigration will be taken as a panacea for longer term structural problems in relation to labour supply which it is not.

This concerns too our attitude to economic growth. The legacy of our high unemployment years has left us with a mantra that maximising growth is good in all circumstances. The population increase which is a consequence of this mentality will continue to overheat the housing market - with a current inflation rate of 14.2 per cent - and with a continuous loop in which Irish people invest in houses to rent to immigrants who come here to build houses!

Whatever it is this does not look like a formula for sustainability. Would we not be better to try to optimise rather than maximise economic growth in a manner which addresses all of the foregoing issues in a more sustainable way. Should not the objective and purpose of our migration policy be that of sustainable development of our economy and society?

Let me acknowledge that it is no easy matter to achieve this desireable equilibrium. One cannot calibrate our system to a predetermined level and rate of economic growth. Neither can one easily stop immigration. The push-pull factors are too powerful. Even as this is being written a conference of African and European leaders is taking place in Morocco to agree a joint strategy in the face of increasing alarm in the numbers of people seeking to reach Europe illegally from the South. In October last year hundreds of migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa tried to storm the border fence separating Morocco from Ceuta and Melilla Spanish enclaves in North Africa. Five people were shot dead in the attempt.

This difficulty in managing migration highlights the importance of standards. Standards can act as automatic stabilisers within the economy. Properly enforced they can reduce the incentive to competitiveness based on the availability of large numbers of workers - cowed, undemanding and easily exploited. Standards can force business to choose instead competitiveness based on high skills, high productivity and high levels of participation. Standards can force society to choose to invest in Life Long Learning and public services necessary to support this activity. And if we choose this model it also implies that we will invest in integration. This is crucial. We must not allow a situation to develop where newcomers, by virtue of their circumstances, become engaged in competition for housing and public services with people who are already deprived and struggling. The tension this causes is sometimes dismissed as racism rather than as reflections of genuine problems in dealing with sudden social change.

If we take time to analyse the forces behind immigration we would have to acknowledge that it is both vital to our society and, in today's world circumstances, inevitable. But we also have to accept that its costs and benefits are very unevenly spread, and that we don't do enough to ensure that the people who are most affected by it, either as immigrants or as hosts, can manage the change being forced upon them. Upon our ability to engage with this reality will rest our future as a society.