The Irish Congress of Trade Unions is to seek an urgent meeting with the Government over the way the National Training Fund Bill was rushed through the Oireachtas earlier this month.
ICTU complains that the Bill withdraws the statutory rights of trade unions to oversee workplace training and apprenticeships .
Introducing the Bill in the Dail, the Tanaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Ms Harney, said the 1967 Act was "outmoded".
The National Training Fund would provide "more flexible, responsive and dynamic structures for the training needs of our economy today. I will be establishing a new national training advisory committee in the new year which will be representative of key stakeholders in the area of enterprise training." However, the assistant general secretary of the ICTU, Mr Tom Wall, said it had sought a meeting with Ms Harney about the Bill.
ICTU had also written to the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern. Union leaders have had to make do with brief discussions with officials "who told us there was no possibility of changes in this Bill because it had to be passed before the Finance Act. What annoyed us was that the policy decisions had already been taken."
Mr Wall said the only concessions in the legislation were made in the Dail when the Government accepted amendments from Labour TD Mr Pat Rabbitte. These widened the consultation process under which new structures would be put in place after the Bill becomes law.
The general secretary of the Technical Engineering and Electrical Union, Mr Owen Wills, whose union represents 3,000 of the State's 22,000 apprentices, said the way the Bill was handled "flies in the face of social partnership". It would be much harder to ensure the rights of young workers are protected under the changed legislation, he claimed. AS and statutory agencies.
"The Bill was put through with great haste. The Trade Union Recognition Bill which the trade union movement has been pressing for the past three years was put back on the basis that this was more important."
Ireland would now be the only EU state "that doesn't have a social partnership type structure to provide for dialogue and consultation on industrial training", Mr Wills said.
The Bill passed all stages in the Oireachtas on December 15th and has been sent for signing to the President, Mrs McAleese. Unions are also unhappy that Ms Harney has replaced the outgoing chairman of the FAS board, Mr Patrick Lynch, chairman of Modern Networks Ltd, with another employers' representative, Mr Brian Geoghegan, the director of economic affairs for the Irish Business and Employers' Confederation.
Normally the post alternates between union and employer representatives. Mr Wall said there was no objection to Mr Geoghegan on a personal basis "but there is a feeling the Government is operating to an employers' agenda on training".
The new Bill provides for a national training fund. This will be resourced through a levy on employers equivalent to 0.7 per cent of PRSI contributions. The cost of the levy will be offset by a comparable cut in employers' PRSI.
It will yield over £120 million on a full-year basis. In anticipation of the introduction of the fund, the former Apprenticeship Levy and Levy Grant Schemes operated by FAS were suspended this year.