Despite their critics, unions have earned their place at the national partnership talks, writes Chris Dooley.
Barring any last minute hitches, the social partners will be at Dublin Castle tomorrow afternoon to begin talks on a new national agreement.
Like Michael Collins 84 years ago, they will be arriving late. In this case, however, the parties will not be a mere seven minutes late. They were due at the castle in mid-November.
The blame for the lengthy delay in starting the talks on a successor to Sustaining Progress can be laid at the door of just one of the social partners.
Only today, after months of procrastination, will trade-union leaders tell the Government that they are prepared to begin negotiations.
They will do so having secured personal guarantees from Taoiseach Bertie Ahern that their concerns about displacement of jobs and exploitation will be given priority attention.
For the past few months the other social partners - employers, farmers, community groups - have had to stand by while union leaders beat a path to the offices of Mr Ahern and his officials in pursuit of their demands.
The unions' success in forcing these issues to the top of the agenda has left some commentators asking how a movement representing a minority of private-sector workers can have such influence over the lives of all.
Membership statistics lend credence to the view that the power wielded by unions is disproportionate to their strength in numerical terms.
CSO figures published in October, for example, showed that only just over a third of all workers are members of unions.
The proportion of unionised employees had fallen from 45.8 per cent of the labour force in 1994 to just 34.6 per cent 10 years later.
But the picture looks even worse for unions when public-sector workers are discounted. In the private sector alone, only about one in five workers are now union members, according to the CSO.
Unions themselves claim the figure for private-sector membership is higher, at around 29 per cent, but even that represents a sharp decline over the past couple of decades.
Looked at in more detail, the CSO figures are even more discouraging for union activists.
While there has been a decline in membership rates in all age groups, it has been more significant in younger age categories. The percentage of workers in unions in the 20-to-24 age bracket, for example, fell by about a third to 21.7 per cent in the 10 years to 2004.
The decline is attributed to a number of factors. US multinationals setting up in Ireland tend not to recognise unions, and many are prepared to pay a premium for inhouse consultation structures.
And in a time of nearly full employment and increased job mobility, many younger workers simply do not see a role in their lives for unions.
However, statistics can be misleading, and the case for unions to hold their prominent place at the partnership table remains a strong one. As Siptu general secretary Joe O'Flynn puts it, the trade-union movement in Ireland represents more workers now than it has ever done.
While the growth in membership has not kept pace with the rapid increase in the labour force - hence the decline in union membership in percentage terms - unions represent a record 600,000 workers in the Republic.
More than half of these work in the private sector.
"Yes, the workforce has grown to almost two million, and we haven't kept pace with that, but we are the biggest civic society representing any group in the country," says O'Flynn.
"No other group at the partnership talks represents as large a number of people as the trade union movement does."
He also rejects the suggestion that unions have a significant presence in traditional sectors only, such as manufacturing, pointing out that the "vast majority" of Ireland's top 100 companies employ union members.
Nevertheless, union leaders acknowledge that insufficient attention has been paid to the recruitment of new members.
The Irish Congress of Trade Unions is currently working on a major recruitment and organisation campaign, in which it wants individual unions to pool resources and ideas.
Congress officials believe the huge turnout at the Irish Ferries protest in December is evidence of enormous public good will towards unions and their objectives.
Siptu, the State's biggest union, has been first out of the blocks and by March will have a staff of 20 in its organising unit, established to boost membership figures in 2003.
Its current recruitment team includes speakers of Russian, Polish, Lithuanian, Latvian, Turkish, German and French, and over 15,000 migrant workers have joined Siptu over the past 18 months.
A recent study by UCD industrial relations lecturer John Geary indicates that continued recruitment drives by unions will meet with success. He concluded there was sufficient "pro-union sentiment" among workers in general for trade union membership rates to double.
In the meantime, however, the charge remains that unions will be negotiating in the coming weeks without a mandate from the vast majority of private-sector employees.
Mark Fielding, chief executive of the independent business organisation Isme, is among those who claim that unions have too much influence. He describes unions as "the biggest cartel in Ireland" and says small businesses will suffer if the unions succeed in their objective of securing increased labour-market regulation.
Fielding's group does not have a seat at the partnership talks, but its members will have to live with the outcome nonetheless.
Workers not directly represented at the talks, however, will not be complaining if a deal is struck. Any gains secured by the unions are likely to benefit all workers. The minimum wage, for example, was negotiated as part of a previous national agreement. Those on the lowest rates of pay benefited, whether or not they were union members.
Any new agreement would be expected to enhance the pay and conditions of all workers, regardless of whether they get to vote on the outcome.