We are ready for innovative investment, but not for the gombeen option, writes Jack O'Connor.
One of the conclusions that can be drawn from the Irish Ferries dispute is that exploitation will not be accepted in this country as an alternative to innovation as a means of achieving competitiveness. There is a sense of decency and fair play in Irish people that is repelled by the type of gross exploitation we might have witnessed if the original company proposals had been implemented.
This demonstrated itself dramatically in the course of the dispute. Looking ahead we are very fortunate this was the case. Apart from the immorality of such a scheme, exploitation as a route to competitiveness is nothing more than a cul-de-sac and a dangerous one at that.
The only effect will be to temporarily insulate the economy from global competition. It will distract us from confronting the challenge of dramatically increasing investment in research and development, and addressing skill deficiencies in our labour force. The Government and responsible employer organisations must face up to the reality that the fundamental and dramatic changes in our labour market, which have been occurring over the past five to six years, and which have been accelerated by the correct decision to open our borders to the 10 new accession countries to the EU in May 2004.
To do so we must have a complete overhaul of labour market regulation, protective employment legislation and enforcement.
We have been trying since early last year to persuade the Government of the necessity of doing this. Indeed, we withdrew from participation in talks in the mid-term review of Sustaining Progress until assurances were given that this agenda would be addressed.
While the issues were discussed, nothing of substance emerged. Yet, within months, the Gama scandal exploded to be followed by an endless series of minor (in terms of the publicity they attracted) disputes. Undoubtedly the tactics adopted by Irish Ferries enraged the public in a way that slicker, better marketed approaches to the same end might not.
People responded because the issues so glaringly presented in the dispute accorded with their own experiences and concerns for the future.
Irish Ferries will, in time, become a landmark. The dispute and the actions of all the main institutional and individual players will be recorded for posterity. But the challenge presenting itself to everyone is of absorbing the lessons it provides and translating them into a coherent response in terms of policy and concrete measures.
In the globalised economy, the challenge for what is described as social partnership here is of combining the highest quality employment with the maintenance of competitiveness. It is nonsense to suggest that this cannot be achieved.
The evidence is there in the experience of the Nordic countries. They are able to combine high quality, secure employment levels with some of the highest productivity levels in the world.
Investment, innovation and social and democratic participation are the key to success in achieving this objective.
Thanks to the efforts of Irish workers over the past 20 years, and indeed to a great many decent business people, we have managed to accumulate the wealth necessary to enable us to confront the challenge.
The model which is described as social partnership probably affords the best method of approaching it.
Regretfully, it seems that some of our entrepreneurs and policy makers would prefer to choose the traditional gombeen route of enhancing their own wealth at the expense of the weak and vulnerable, for as long as they can get away with it, irrespective of the social consequences.
If the Government and Ibec have the vision and courage to embark on the innovative investment route we are up for it. But if they succumb to the short term, gombeen option, they can forget it.
Jack O'Connor is president of Siptu