GREATER powers for works councils and their introduction into medium and small sized employments will be a key issue in negotiations on any new national pay agreement.
SIPTU national industrial secretary, Mr Des Geraghty, told a business seminar in Galway the proposed Irish legislation to implement the EU directive on works councils does not go far enough.
IBEC's director of social affairs, Mr Declan Madden, told the same conference that the biggest issue facing employers was how to sustain growth through increased competitiveness and a continuation of a partnership model for economic and social progress.
Employees had to decide "whether they are prepared to continue to work in partnership to achieve increases in living standards based on modest wage rises, some tax reduction, an improvement in social services and an improvement in economic performance which delivers low inflation and interest rates".
Dealing specifically with the Bill to implement the EU directive on works councils, Mr Geraghty said it was "quite modest" in scope and less than 300 firms would be covered by it. The Bill "does little more than set targets for good consultative practice, rather than impose any model for employee representation.
Ireland and Britain are the only member states of the EU "without a significant element of employee consultation information and participation rights through works councils or their equivalent, supported by either statute or collective agreement. In that sense, we are outside the EU norm, he said.
His union, SIPTU, believes there are "many significant economic, social, industrial relations, practical and managerial reasons now for the creation of such structures in Irish enterprise as a matter of urgency. It would be a pity if the opportunity to develop "an Irish participation model" for the work force was missed.
Government and employers paid lip service to the ideal of greater employee involvement in enterprises but in practice this remained "the missing link in our centrally bargained social partnership approach" to industrial relations.
"I would urge Irish business to be less dismissive of EU social policy in the area of employee rights and see it as the logical extension of the Single Market, and invest in people just as they have in our infrastructure, in agriculture, in science, technology, communications and transport," he said.
Such a policy would also require programmes to improve the "economic literacy" of employees to make them aware of the complex challenges and opportunities that lay ahead. As the economic role of the nation state decreased and integration at EU and global levels increased, bodies such as works councils and forums "will become vital avenues for our voice to be heard in the decision making processes in Europe".
