There is only a 50-50 chance that a replacement for Partnership 2000 will be agreed in two years' time if employers do not introduce profit-sharing schemes, the Labour Party leader, Mr Ruairi Quinn, has said.
Mr Quinn, addressing a Labour Youth conference in Trinity College Dublin at the weekend, said that in cases where profits greater than expected were being made but workers' salaries were being limited by the current partnership agreement, some form of profitsharing would have to be introduced. "If not, then I would be fearful for the future of partnership," he said.
Mr Quinn said he believed multinationals which located in Ireland could have their attitude to trade unions changed. "The problem is not so much with them as with small indigenous companies who are refusing to recognise unions."
The party leader was replying to questions after he had delivered an address in which he called on those present to retain their involvement in politics and to help shape the Ireland in which they would live out their lives.
Mr Quinn said the "effective resignation" of Mr Michael McDowell from the Progressive Democrats "sounds the death knell for the PDs as an effective ideological force".
With half that party's TDs looking like they might retire at the end of the current Dail, and the others coming from "volatile" constituencies, "I can't see a very positive future for the Progressive Democrats," Mr Quinn said.
He said he believed the Labour Party had defeated the political thrust of the PDs.
Mr Quinn invited Labour Youth to get involved in the debate on the future of the Labour Party which he was now initiating. History had not come to an end with the collapse of the Berlin Wall.
The right believed the market was innately fair and would deliver the goods and services required to the people. The left did not believe the market could deliver the goods and services needed by the people and believed the State had to interfere to ensure that the values of freedom, equality and social solidarity were promoted, he said.
However, methods the left had used in the past, such as state monopolies in areas like telecommunications, were no longer available. The challenge for the left was to find "new methods to achieve old aims".
Mr Quinn said he intended to bring a "fundamental reappraisal to Labour Party thinking" over the next 12 to 18 months.
