The leader of the Labour Party Eamon Gilmore has said that in government it would introduce legislation to provide for collective bargaining rights for workers.
In an address to the biennial delegate conference of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (Ictu) in Tralee today he said that it would commit to giving domestic effect to the principles, including collective bargaining, enshrined in the Charter of Fundamental Rights, which will become European law if the Lisbon Treaty is passed.
“If the Lisbon Treaty is ratified that will become part of European law and the Labour Party believes that that should be given effect in domestic law and the way in which we would give that effect is by having consultations in advance with the social partners about the detail of any legislation”, he said.
Union sources said that they believed that such a measure would mean that where employees opted to join a union that management would have to recognise this and negotiate with them.
Ictu general secretary David Begg said that unions had been trying to achieve such collective bargaining rights for decades and that this was the most singular promise made by a party leader.
The president of Siptu, Jack O’Connor, said: “I welcome as enormously significant the statement by Eamon Gilmore here today that in the event of being returned to Government, Labour will insist on the entitlement of workers to collective bargaining, which is enshrined in Article 28 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights, being transposed into Irish law”.
“We note that it contrasts sharply with the current Government’s refusal to do so, although it simultaneously supports that very same principle in the Lisbon Treaty," Mr O'Connor added.
Mr Gilmore also told the conference that there were at least eight commitments on employment rights, made in the social partnership agreement, Towards 2016, and in the subsequent Transitional agreement last year which had yet to be passed into law.
”I am calling on the Government to demonstrate that it is genuinely committed to strong and fair employment rights by enacting the outstanding legislation promised under Towards 2016,” he said.