WORKERS MUST win collective bargaining rights in every firm and the Government must protect existing pay deals if workers' confidence in the Government is to be restored, the leader of the country's largest union has said.
Siptu president Jack O'Connor said Irish workers have felt threatened since 2004, following the arrival of large numbers of eastern European labour, the Government's opposition to concede extra rights to them, and court decisions which backed employers, not workers.
"Workers' concerns about deteriorating security and quality of employment were manifestly evident in the Lisbon vote and the Government must move to address them and work to create a sense of belonging," he said.
However, Mr O'Connor said the union was flexible on how collective bargaining - which is deeply disliked by multi-nationals and companies such as Ryanair - could work in many firms.
Every other country in the European Union operates such rules, he said, "and the world doesn't stop for them. It happens in Northern Ireland and across the water, and there have not been problems".
In a pamphlet entitled The Lisbon Treaty: What Next?, Mr O'Connor rejected charges that workers had rejected Lisbon because of anti-immigration feelings, insisting there was no evidence of this to be found in workplaces. "The situation will not be helped by dangerous and ill-informed commentary representing workers' concerns in terms of anti-immigrant sentiment. Thankfully we have little or no evidence of this in our workplaces, and we want to keep it that way, but we do have a great deal of concern about exploitation and the ratcheting down of employment standards, he said.
"... Those promoting the interests of business are already busy at work, shaping the agenda. According to them, the big issues are about protecting the low level of corporation tax and other business-related issues," he said.
"An amazing amount of coverage of the Lisbon referendum has focused on issues that are relatively peripheral to the lives of ordinary working people, rather than core concerns," he said.
The right to collective bargaining is enshrined in Article 28 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights, which would come into force if Lisbon had been ratified - though it would not have effect in Ireland unless domestic law was changed. "Such a commitment would also signal clearly to the Republic's workers that the new EU structures would benefit them, as well as employers, and it would tell those same employers they must learn to live with collective bargaining when their employees wished to avail of it, just like their counterparts in the rest of Europe," he said.
"The post-Nice experience is not something most workers want to revisit. My own union could not recommend a 'Yes' vote precisely because of that experience."
Rejecting charges that Ireland has become less European, Mr O'Connor said: "Europe has been blamed - but actually most of the problems are down to decisions taken in Ireland. These include the refusal to put robust employment protection legislation in place before opening the labour market to workers from abroad. "This facilitated the exploitation of these workers and also undermined employment standards in many industries. It could all have been avoided and it can still be rectified," said Mr O'Connor.
"We believe that there is an urgent need to address these concerns.
"There is an urgent need to heal wounds that have been opened up. We believe that steps are needed to restore a sense of belonging between ordinary people and their government," he said.