Figures released last week show a rise of 20,000 in the membership of unions affiliated to the ICTU in the State. Impressive though these gains are, they nevertheless point to a continuing decline in the overall level of unionisation among employees at work, while indicating that the rate of decline may be slowing.
Unionisation has declined from a historical high of 62 per cent in 1980 to an estimated 44 per cent in 2000. As the returns of some unions include members who are self-employed, retired or not up-to-date with dues payments, the real level of unionisation may be significantly lower than this. The decline is concentrated in the private sector, where virtually all industries have been affected.
The continuing decline in unionisation since the economy picked up from about the middle of the 1990s is ominous for unions and is without precedent. Never before has the level of unionisation in Ireland declined in a period of sustained economic prosperity.
In accounting for recent trends some commentators have pointed to what they claim are overriding or secular trends, such as the growing "individualisation" of the workforce, cultivated by sophisticated "human resource practices" that preclude or corrode collective solidarity among employees
However, research conducted at UCD shows that such factors are only helpful in understanding the forces at work in a group of multinational companies, usually of US origin, in high-technology sectors. Another position, sometimes argued by opponents of centralised bargaining, is that national agreements have damaged unions' capacity to organise. Again, no compelling statistical evidence has been found that union membership growth has been higher in periods of free collective bargaining than in periods of centralised pay determination.
We can account for the decline in unionisation in terms of a series of factors working in combination. These include the growth in high-technology and service industries, rising levels of skill, growing part-time and contract employment, modest pay rises during most of the 1990s and, until, recently, a low rate of inflation.
Also significant has been a change in the public policy climate towards unionisation. Irish unions have reached the pinnacle of their power under social partnership. Yet it is no longer a basic tenet of Irish public policy that incoming multinationals or indigenous firms should recognise trade unions and adapt to "local traditions of industrial relation". The Irish institutional environment now sustains multiple models of employment relations. Non-union regimes, or regimes in which employers compete with unions for the commitment of staff, are now quite sustainable.
Irish unions have responded to this in three broadly sequential ways. First, they have introduced new services for members, such as legal, advisory and commercial services (preferential health insurance coverage, etc). Second, they have initiated the largest merger wave in their history, bringing their numbers down to almost half that in 1980. Third, and more far-reaching, they have begun to examine what the priorities and nature of representation should be in the context of an increasingly dynamic and global economy.
To suggest that the trends of the last two decades point to the terminal decline of the Irish trade union movement is premature and highly speculative. If unions sustain the membership growth rates of recent years as employment creation slows, they could soon turn the corner and again enter a phase of growing unionisation.
Increasing inflation in the context of a tight labour market will encourage unionisation and so will accelerating pay rises. Recent changes in regulations relating to union recognition might assist recruitment in areas of employment where it is employers rather than employees who are resistant to unionisation.
The growth of "workplace partnership" might give unions a new role in a host of areas of decision-making hitherto subject to managerial prerogative, bolstering their capacity to organise. But the best evidence available also shows that progress has been modest to date.
Unions also show signs of adopting a more proactive stance in areas such as training, life-long learning and extending greater "time sovereignty" to employees - critical work priorities in the knowledge economy that Ireland hopes to develop.
Some unions also appear to be deploying more established approaches to recruitment, with considerable success. A sizeable share of recent membership growth is concentrated in the construction industry, where in keeping with long-established practice, activists have been deployed to organise new members.
Bill Roche is Professor of Industrial Relations and Human Resources at University College Dublin and teaches at UCD's Smurfit Graduate School of Business.
