We are witnessing a full-court press of business lobbying against workers’ rights – specifically, for the focus of this article, but against so-called ‘gold-plated’ regulations more generally.
Pay Transparency is meant to be legislated for and in place from June by the Government in Dublin. However, they have now said it will not be legislated for until the end of the year, and IBEC is seeking further delays and further watering down.
Statutory sick pay was meant to increase from a measly 5 paid days to 7 paid days by this Government, but on the eve of this marginal improvement – for often the lowest-paid workers – business lobbying kicked in and the Government indefinitely paused this increase.
Pension auto-enrolment, again a modest improvement for usually the lowest-paid workers, was first discussed twenty years ago. So, this small gain took two decades and was subject to active lobbying by business opposing it and weakening it. Even at the end, it was further delayed by a number of months.
The Adequate Minimum Wages and CB Directive was not transposed at all – even with a Supreme Court Judge Hogan saying, in reference to the Irish constitution, that it “is arguably implicit in these provisions that the right to form trade unions implies in turn at least some – perhaps as yet undefined – zone of freedom for those unions to organise and campaign. The effet utile of this constitutional provision would otherwise be compromised” – and with a Minister who allegedly supports the right to collective bargaining.
74% of the population support a legal right to collective bargaining, and still the Government will not provide for a legal right to collective bargaining from this process because of the active lobbying by big business.
Ireland was also fined €1.5 million for delays in enacting flexible working rights, and again, as we have seen, this was weakened so much as to be largely ineffective. The move from Minimum Wage to Living Wage was delayed by three years, again directly attacking the lowest paid.
So far this year, as of 6 June, 223 registered acts of lobbying have occurred specifically on legislation relating to employment and industry matters.
Of those 223, a conservative estimate of these (as some returns may include more than one act of lobbying) shows 60% have been explicitly business lobbyists (Chambers, IBEC, ISME, Google, Meta, etc.) and only 5% were trade unions, with the other organisations and individuals harder to categorise but less likely to be pro-worker than pro-business.
If one expands that search out from legislation to also include matters of policy, then we see 1,195 lobbying returns. The top ten lobbying organisations in order are:
- Chambers Ireland: 209
- IBEC: 179
- Cork Chamber: 85
- Dún Laoghaire Rathdown Chamber of Commerce: 43
- Dublin Chamber of Commerce: 39
- The Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA): 38
- American Chamber of Commerce Ireland: 19
- Chartered Accountants Ireland: 15
- Dungarvan & West Waterford Chamber: 14
- Janssen Sciences Ireland UC: 14
Not a single trade union in sight! Organised workers are not at the races in lobbying on even the measliest of reforms to assist most often the lowest-paid in jobs.
Obviously, as communists, we understand the class nature of the State and so, when IBEC rock up to Government, it is friends meeting friends, whereas when workers do, it is different. And we appreciate that lobbying with power is just meetings. But this is even more reason why we need the trade union movement to increase its political organisational efforts significantly if we are to secure even small improvements for workers, not to mention the harder task of securing a positive right to collectively organise and bargain. And, as indicated by NC in June’s Socialist Voice, this lobbying needs to be based on a strategy of power, not of petition, for the movement as a whole.
