Unions, management and the Government have been urged by the chief executive of the Labour Relations Commission to address an increasingly volatile industrial relations climate. Chris Dooley, Industry and Employment Correspondent, reports.
Mr Kieran Mulvey indicated that all three parties, in his view, were to blame for what is turning out to be a turbulent year for industrial relations, particularly in State companies.
He said that emerging problems relating to pay and conditions of employment, or arising from Government policy decisions, were producing a volatility not seen for some time.
In an editorial in the latest issue of the LRC Review, Mr Mulvey said the industrial relations discipline which had marked the benchmarking process in the civil and public service was "notably absent" in the State company sector.
High-profile disputes have taken place in a number of major State companies in recent months, including An Post, Aer Rianta and CIÉ.
Mr Mulvey did not refer to specific disputes. But he said external forces were changing the structural environment affecting State companies, while those working for them wanted consultation and agreement on issues like job security and conditions of employment.
"What is required is a more thorough and open engagement by management, unions and (the) Government on the issues that require to be addressed, and the methodology and the form of resolution in the event of disagreement."
These were the "basic fundamentals" that informed good industrial relations and high standards of human resource practice.
And in many of the current high-profile cases there was evidence that some of those values were absent, he said.
He said that unilateralism on either side achieved only short-term goals, which were not those underpinning the Sustaining Progress partnership agreement. Yet it appeared that this approach had been taken by both sides in a number of recent disputes.
Already in the first quarter of the year, the commission had been involved in a considerable number of high-profile disputes in both the public and private sectors.
The issues of restructuring and pay-related elements of such change, including redundancies, were featuring large in most disputes, he said.
Mr Mulvey said the commission's view was that the present difficulties could only be resolved through the parties adhering to the procedures under Sustaining Progress.
However, he said, the whole issue of restructuring State companies and the ability of national agreements to facilitate such change might need more definition in future national discussions.
In the first two months of this year, 242 cases were referred to the commission's conciliation service, 80 from the public sector and 162 from the private and health sectors.