Comment: In the new round of the partnership process, it is vital that we continue to build social solidarity in an economic environment in which whole industries are created, grow and then decline in less than a generation. Of equal importance is the need to continually increase productivity and flexibility in the face of ever-increasing globalisation.
Chambers Ireland has just published its latest business confidence survey of small and medium businesses. The message in the survey is unequivocal: a positive outlook, but real concern at cost increases, particularly in areas under Government control and in rapidly rising labour costs.
Given the underlying level of consensus that has been achieved by the social partners in analysing the issues and identifying potential solutions in the National Economic and Social Council (NESC), we are disappointed at some of the public positions being adopted in advance of the talks.
Chambers Ireland is committed to ensuring that Ireland is a good place in which to live, work and do business. We believe that this is true of all partners in the process.
However, we fear that some partners may now find themselves compromised by public posturing that is at variance with their private analysis.
In this regard, I am pleased to report that Chambers Ireland readily endorses the analysis set out in Ictu's recent report on off-shoring, namely:
We have no problem with these insights. And we have no objection in principle to facilitating the unions' desire to prioritise employment standards, displacement and the protection of vulnerable workers from other countries.
But we do not accept their efforts to justify this agenda by arguing that there is a widespread abuse of employees by greed-crazed employers. And given the degree of populist rhetoric, as distinct from measured analysis, that has characterised this debate in recent months, we are particularly concerned that the real agenda at stake has more to do with interests of union members in the sheltered economy rather than those of the most vulnerable in our society.
Our analysis suggests that, over the past decade, partnership has systematically and significantly favoured the public sector over the private sector. This week's ESRI report is merely the latest in a series of studies to reinforce this conclusion.
Against the backdrop of union proposals for a fundamental review of how partnership is organised, we would add that we need a review of the process by which public sector pay is negotiated.
The need to restore parity of wages and conditions between public and private sector workers should be the real issue when we talk about solidarity.
There are a number of key metrics that differentiate the public worker from its private sector counterpart:
Finally, it is ironic that the huge increases under the last round of benchmarking were justified in part by the need to attract and retain high-calibre staff, but we have no practical way of testing the model, as in too many cases, the highest recruitment level is at the level of management trainee.
With regard to all of these considerations, Chambers Ireland proposed a public sector pay pause for the next two years (which would still yield an average incremental increase of between two and three per cent for most public servants) at yesterday's opening meeting.
We supported the concept of "flexicurity" - which is designed to enhance labour market flexibility by providing greater economic security (and training opportunities) to those forced to change jobs as a result of economic restructuring.
There was one important caveat about this, however, which is that the inexorable trend in recent agreements to transform the partnership process from a voluntarist to a rights-based system of industrial relations is fundamentally at odds with the notion of increased labour market flexibility.
This is not an argument against regulation per se. There may indeed be room for some improvement - especially in regard to enforcement - to ensure that any rogue employers are caught and dealt with. But we already have one of the most regulated systems of human resource management in Europe, with 25 separate pieces of legislation and no less than seven enforcement bodies.
If this round of partnership negotiations produces more legally-binding arrangements that inhibit change and constrain workers and management from freely agreeing their own working relationships, it will do Ireland no favours.
It will fundamentally compromise moves towards what NESC has termed a developmental welfare state.
And it will confirm our worst suspicions in regard to an unacceptable democratic deficit in addressing workplace-related issues under the current partnership model.
John Dunne is chief executive of Chambers Ireland.
