Tech giants base their European operations in Ireland because they don’t have to recognise unions, conference told

The fact Ireland is only one of two countries in the EU27 that does not legally compel companies to engage in collective bargaining mean union busting practices are commonplace, Communications Workers Union (CWU) conference in Galway heard today.

This is a modern country in the EU and we put ourselves forward on the world stage as progressive but when it comes to our workers we are not what we claim to be, attendees were told.

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Fionnuala Ni Bhrogain, head of organising and campaigning at the CWU, told the Irish Independent that many multinationals, including tech giants, have based their European operations in Ireland because, legally, they don’t have to recognise unions.

“There is a spectrum of union busting before being a worker is sacked (for trade union organising). This includes everything from having your hours reduced, being isolated or even being called out in meetings and being denied training.

“We also have contractual non-disclosure agreements, which require workers not to talk about pay with each other or with trade unions.

“Certainly in redundancies in the tech sector, we are trying to support workers who are asking to be represented in their individual meetings and they are being told you can’t have union representation in your meetings.

“Even when we look after them in an unfair dismissals claim and we win, they are still out of work and the union campaign is killed because other workers see what happens.

“In the tech sector, workers will receive an email that there will be hundreds of lay-offs and you need to elect amongst your peers someone who will go and negotiate on your behalf.

“This happened to 890 staff at Accenture, they had no trade union representatives whatsoever.

“So you have experienced senior management teams on one side of the table and someone who was elected a few days before to represent hundreds of their colleagues.

“Without the collective power of a trade union behind them, they can’t effect any change on the consultation process. “They are told what the redundancy package is, they go through the motions of the process and they are gone.

“Up until the pandemic and the changes that came in the world of work and then mass layoffs, a lot of the workers in tech sector believed genuinely they were in good employment and had direct engagement with management.

“But they have increasingly become aware that when the rubber hits the road and real issues are at stake and they want to be represented collectively that they cannot exercise that right in Ireland at all.

“And the multinational companies are based her primarily for that reason. They know they can come to Ireland for that reason that they will not be compelled to collectively bargain with a union.

“We are one of only two countries in the EU 27 where there is no right to collective bargaining in Ireland. An employer still has a veto. We can go all the way to the Labour Court with a group of workers and an employer can say, No, we won’t attend.

“Even if 100pc of their workers have memberships with that union, they can still say no to collective bargaining.

“The workers in the 999 call answering service, which is a state contract, have been fighting for years and BT and will collectively bargain with their workers in the North of Ireland because the legislation requires it but in the Republic of Ireland where they are not legally required, they simply say no.”