The Voluntary Sector and Trade Unions
21 Nov 2006
Contribution to the conference 'Working to Unite the Community Sector and the Trade Union Movement'
November 21st, Liberty Hall, David Begg, General Secretary, ICTU
I'm delighted to be here and I congratulate you on such an excellent turn out and on the contributions which have been made in the debate before the break. I want to say a few things myself and I'll also pick up a couple of points that were raised in the debate. First to take up a point that David Connolly made about the affinity of interest between your sector and the trade union movement; we're both in the business of social justice at the end of the day. We do it through organising people in trade unions and then using our collective strength within the market system to try to get a fair distribution of the wealth that the country is creating. That's the raison d'etre of the trade union movement - to leverage the collective strength of workers to get a fairer society. And that is becoming an increasing challenge in a world in which the relative power of capital and labour has moved in the direction of capital. This is why in Ireland we are seeing extraordinary poverty going hand in hand with the wealthiest period of our history. When you think that 20% of our citizens are at risk of poverty, this is a huge indictment of the model that we have. There were two major items on Morning Ireland News last week which showed the polarised situation in our country; one was that Bank of Ireland profits for six months were Euro 887 million; the other was an undertaker's report of the extraordinary condition of a body which he had removed from Bedford House nursing home in Balbriggan. Those of us who believe in a better way of doing things have to combine as much as we can.
That is the philosophical basis for this gathering this morning. There is a practical basis as well in that everybody is entitled to a reasonable reward for their labour, reasonable security of employment and reasonable expectations of their old age. As I worked for 5 years in an NGO I know the problems that arise. I can empathise completely with people who spoke this morning about their difficulties of achieving funding, difficulties in relationships with government departments and the subservient relationship that arises from that. During my time working in Concern, I took part in an exercise with our British colleagues in which 12 NGO's participated, looking at the quality of HR standards within the sector - only 2 of the 12 were unionised. At one level there might appear to be a clash of values or interests here - it's not easy to deal with unions. But if you look at it positively, it's a business like way of operating so things don't get personal; it's efficient and the norms of society get applied. There isn't an equal relationship between management and the people who work in an organisation. The way to get things done without anybody being offended, without becoming personal is to have it done on a professional basis and this applies to trade unions just as much as anybody else. The employees of trade unions are themselves unionised and I have regular visits from SIPTU to tell me what I should be doing better in Congress. They're always wrong of course!
On a more general point there are significant changes being contemplated which it's worth dwelling on for a couple of minutes. If you look back over the last 20 years, we had one major social policy objective in this country and that was to end unemployment. Our total focus on that meant that we concentrated on getting foreign direct investment into the country and creating an enabling environment for business. Now we have reached a different stage in our development where we have huge social deficits. There is one key concept acknowledged in Towards 2016 which people are not generally aware of but it is absolutely crucial for the country's future. This is a recognition that economic development and social development are inter-related and inter-dependent. This is the first time that that has been recognised. Up to now economic development has always come first and if you have the money you can tackle social issues. Now it is recognised that as a country and as a people, as an economy and as a society we cannot develop unless the economy and society have equal standing. That has significant implications for our deliberations today. A report from the National Economic and Social Council sets out how we might deliver our public services in the future. It envisages a very significant role in service delivery for the community sector. If that is to happen it has to be on a sustainable basis. There is no principled objection to that from our point of view. We have had a hybrid model of social policy in this country for many years, mainly due to the influence of the religious. But if significant funding is involved, we have to have the outcomes that society needs. But it is only possible to get these outcomes if the people who are delivering the services are not trying to deliver them with one hand tied behind their backs.
Also, we are not setting about this task in a steady state situation. We have to locate everything we do in the context of an expanding population. The Central Statistics Office has forecast that by 2026 we will have 5½ million people in this country - we have 4 million people at the moment. Now that means a completely different level of public services will have to be delivered. It amazes me that we don't have proper debates in this country. If you listen to News Night, the amount of time that's spent debating how Britain is going to respond to its increasing population in terms of public service delivery is much more than happens here. The problem is that knowing that these demands are coming, the government's preference is obviously to try to provide the services as cheaply as possible. There is nothing wrong with that in principle but it is wrong if it means not allowing people to have a long term relationship with the organisations employing them, to have security of income through longer term contracts. Employers need to be able to provide staff with reasonably secure employment, income and pensions. And that will enable employers to retain institutional knowledge within the organisation. There is nothing worse from an organisation point of view than when an employee has built up the knowledge regarding a particular project and how best to achieve results and suddenly that person gets a better offer and they move elsewhere. And so the organisation is left bereft of that institutional knowledge and the project or the program upon which they were working suffers as a result.
Let me put another point to you - most community organisations have a twin role to some extent. One is service delivery, the other is advocacy. Now there is a real risk for the sector in the future in that the more you become dependent on government funds the less freedom you have to advocate for what you believe to be right or at least the more vulnerable you are. And don't let us believe that money would not be used to keep people in line because it most assuredly would be used for that purpose. So in order to have some protection you need big brother with you, this (the Trade Unions) is big brother. You need someone to interdict that relationship to ensure that everything is done completely above board and transparently.
There were a couple of other points which were raised in the course of the debate this morning, one concerned the stance we had taken in relation to immigration and the other in relation to pensions. Now in my opinion these are completely defensible. First of all in relation to the abuse of migrants working here, we have taken a very strong practical stance to defend their interest and a huge amount of the current agreement towards 2016 is taken up with that issue. For a long time it seemed as if we wouldn't have an agreement at all because we were not satisfied with what might be enshrined legally to defend people. I think generally speaking a pretty good job has been done in that respect. With regard to opening up the labour market to Romania and Bulgaria, a few years ago we had a market of 2 million people opening up to 70 million people and that had to be managed and part of managing that is the range of measures that I'm talking about. It would be prudent in our view to make sure that those range of measures are bedded down and operating satisfactorily before we open the market any further. There is a question of balance about what is achievable taking into account the change which has taken place in Irish life. A 10% increase in the working population over a period of 3 years is very significant indeed and has to be handled properly.
Now let me just say in regard to pensions, again it was suggested that we should be proactive on pensions. I don't see quite honestly how we could be more proactive than we have been. For the last 2 years we've been trying to get this on the agenda and we have got it very firmly on the agenda in the Towards 2016 talks, I believe ultimately that we will have to have in Ireland either an enhanced first pillar pension scheme based on incomes or a mandatory second pillar. That is the only long-term solution. In the meantime we have to fight every day the likes of the Bank of Ireland to keep our finger in the dyke to stop them eroding the pension schemes that already exist. So we are very much exercised by the issue of pensions - you might have noticed that there was a strike in the Bank of Ireland last week in relation to the pension issue.
So I want to again congratulate everybody for coming this morning. I discern from what was said that most of the people here are already trade union members. We have to get the message out that this is the real world; that there is no dichotomy between working in a management role and being a trade union member. I did it for 5 years myself, I was the chief executive of the organisation and I organised the union there. And you need to get real, you need leverage and you need influence and the trade union movement can provide that influence in reasonably good order. Apart from the practical benefits, we should be working together because we're fighting a very difficult battle at the moment for social justice right throughout the world and people who are of one mind in pursuit of social justice should seek every opportunity to combine and maximise their strength and their influence. So I wish you well in your conference, I hope it is the start of having a very strongly, well organised trade union sector in the community sector. Thank you.