III. The positions of the social partners on flexibility
F. The position of workers' organizations -- trade unions
It is possible to discern the broad perspectives of ICTU, which is the sole trade union confederation operating in the Irish Republic, from published material. In addition material was supplied by SIPTU, the largest general trade union in Ireland and interviews were also conducted with the representatives of ICTU, SIPTU, TEEU, and MANDATE. Interviewing several trade unions was considered essential as trade union views on flexibility are more differentiated than employer views. Those views are summarized in table 2.5.
The areas of flexibility and new forms of work organization, which are strongly associated with team working and flexibility, received particular attention from the Irish trade union movement in the 1990s. The representative of SIPTU offered the opinion that flexibility and new forms of work organization had received more attention in Ireland than in other European countries. The underlying strategy which he perceived in this development was an attempt by the trade union movement to gain an alternative involvement to that which Irish trade unions have traditionally used. In contrast to the position in countries like Denmark and Germany, trade unions had traditionally used the introduction of new methods of working, or the introduction of new technology, as a means of negotiating enhanced productivity payments or a "new rate for the job". These disputes often revolved around the issue of who should observe the status quo where change in work methods were proposed and were often the subject of unofficial strikes (Wallace and O'Shea, 1987, Wallace, 1989). Under pluralist norms there is an obligation on management to observe the status quo until procedures have been exhausted. A change in this approach was made necessary by the new methods of flexible working which arose in the 1980s.
1. ICTU views
The ICTU published a document entitled New Forms of Work Organization in 1993 and subsequently Managing Change: Report of the Review Group on Union Involvement in Company Restructuring (1995). This latter document, which was approved by the Biennial Conference of ICTU in July 1995, had the following recommendations:
2. Trade unions in the commercial Semi-State sector must critically examine their own practices and procedures, including industrial relations procedures and adapt them to meet the commercial reality which they will be forced to confront.
The document goes on to demand greater union involvement in the traditional areas of management and argues that "this will involve shifting the boundaries of accepted trade union involvement in the industrial relations arena" (ICTU, 1995, p.26). It also sets out demands which the trade union movement should have for actively embracing the new forms of work. It was recommended that Congress [ICTU] and unions "develop a detailed programme for a World Class Working Environment. Such a programme must be both attractive to union members, complementary to drives to improve competitiveness and be capable of implementation". It could include, but not be limited to, the following items:
(h) Provision for an enhanced provision for sick or illness care.
(ICTU, 1995, p.21).
The report endorses the vision of increased casualization of the labour force, associated with the flexible firm model claiming, that a growing gap will develop between those who have full-time permanent employment, who will be engaged in core activity of the enterprise and those who work in the periphery in less secure well-paid jobs. Trade unions have a responsibility to seek to ameliorate these negative aspects of change. The type of emerging structure is highly undesirable from the point of view of workers and society as a whole (ICTU, 1995, p.22, italics in the original).
The document recommends that "the current drive towards competitiveness must be matched by a parallel drive towards improving the general quality of employment and standards for workers". In effect the ICTU argues that world class companies have an obligation to offer world class terms and conditions to employment.
While interviews were not conducted with any public sector union the Assistant General Secretary of the ICTU, Kevin Duffy, said that there was now an acceptance by public sector unions of the need to embrace flexibility in the interest of delivering a better service to the public. He indicated that public sector unions saw it as being necessary to co-operate in modernization as their best protection against attacks being made on the public sector.
2. TEEU views
While the views of the ICTU may represent the general policy view of the trade union movement, the issues for individual unions vary considerably, as the interviews with the representatives of three different types of trade unions show. The TEEU considers it necessary to embrace flexibility because of competitive pressures but are opposed to any development of atypical working within the two main trades they represent - electricians and fitters. The types of flexibility they favour are functional flexibility and temporal flexibility. In the former category the development of add-skilling is seen as more realistic than full multi-skilling. It is less costly for employers and necessary to meet competitive pressures. In addition it is seen as a necessary development to forestall the growth of a third skilled trade, the instrument craftsperson. They consider that electricians and fitters should be up-skilled, in the areas of instrumentation and computer numeric control (CNC), in order to enable them to undertake the additional work this involves. In the area of temporal flexibility they are particularly favourable to negotiating the introduction of annual hours provided that this leads to an enhanced salary system with a consequently enhanced pension and the working in practice of only a limited number of the reserved hours.
Developments such as Total Preventative Maintenance (TPM) are seen as complementary to functional and temporal flexibility. The key to understanding the TEEU attitude is the belief that there can be mutual gains to both employers and employees in such ventures. The representative of the TEEU indicated that this required a new approach to collective bargaining. In his view, although the adversarial system would continue to exist, it was necessary to appreciate the need for a partnership approach. He felt that many managers did not understand what this involved, did not appreciate what was involved and that many managers and workers were not really interested in developing partnership.
3. MANDATE views
The retail-distributive union MANDATE was extremely concerned with the whole area of atypical work, particularly as it related to numerical and temporal flexibility. Issues of concern were numerical flexibility (as exemplified by the growth in part-time and temporary contracts) and temporal flexibility (as in the growth of zero hours contracts and Sunday and late night trading). Overall, MANDATE considered that these developments have resulted in a deterioration of the quality of employment. There has been a very substantial increase in the number of part-time workers in the retail trades and a consequent reduction in the number of full-time employees. While concerned over the dangers in atypical work, they considered that there is a certain inevitability about such developments. It was driven by changing patterns of shopping and some desire among employees for part-time jobs. They were, however, very concerned about the failure of governments to regulate these developments and the fact that it has been left to collective agreements. While approving of the idea of extending partnership to the workplace, in theory, the MANDATE representative (Brian Higgins) did not see this as having any reality in the retail or distributive trades. He could not see management embracing a partnership approach. In contrast to the IBEC views, he did not consider the JLC system as being adequate to regulate wage rates of atypical workers and he was also sceptical as to whether the proposed minimum wage would be set at a sufficiently high level.
4. SIPTU views
The concerns of the SIPTU union could be described as embracing the disparate concerns of the TEEU and MANDATE. On the one hand they were concerned with the growth of atypical work and, in line with MANDATE, wished to see it regulated. The SIPTU representative, Martin Naughton, did not believe this could be done through the JLC system preferred by the IBEC representative and favoured a national minimum wage of IR £5.00 per hour. He said that the mechanisms to enforce JLC rates were not as effective as they should be, with problems in reviewing employment regulation, regulation orders, having them adjusted, having them applied and so on.
On the other hand SIPTU considered it essential to adopt a progressive approach to functional flexibility and new forms of work organization. Martin Naughton said:
we should be trying to develop our competitive position based on the production of high quality goods and services, produced by highly skilled and highly well paid workers … we see that the employer's requirement … for flexibility as providing us with an opportunity to get involved in re-skilling our members and getting into the area of re-grading and generally using re-skilling and training and development as a means of improving the pay and job content for our members. SIPTU were aware that while it could be difficult to sell union members on the need for a partnership approach, many managers were equally quite unprepared to embrace such an approach. In addition, initiatives could be made difficult by 'job definition, job content and work organization that is fragmented … and complex pay structures'.
On the issue of profit sharing, there was a predictable disagreement with employer views as represented by IBEC. As Martin Naughton stated, referring to a provision in Partnership 2000 which allows employers and unions to get involved in what is called financial involvement.
Our experience tells us that IBEC interpret that as share ownership. We interpret that to mean, any sharing of the profits or the gains produced by our members, so we are looking at a wider picture, we are looking at share ownership schemes, profit sharing based on end of year accounts and we are looking at various ways of relating elements of pay to improvements in operational process. So we are looking at gain sharing as well. … We are most anxious to get money in any area that we can but we recognize that multinational companies in particular - it is very difficult first of all to identify the profit, to have any influence over those factors that go into determining the bottom line and it is also difficult to argue a relationship between the companies operational performance here in Ireland and the profits as determined by the multinationals.
The SIPTU representative went on to link the issue of flexibility to concessions on profit sharing. He said:
if they [employers] want functional flexibility, particularly functional flexibility where people are multi-tasking and not only horizontal but vertical in the organizations as well, particularly those organizations that are developing flatter structures … there have to be concessions in that area.
Table 2.5. Summary comparison of different union views on flexibility
| Union | Numerical flexibility | Functional flexibility | Temporal flexibility | |||
| ICTU | Atypical working needs to be legally regulated | Generally promoted through a positive approach to managing change and new forms of work | Need to legally regulate certain forms
Opportunities in annual hours |
|||
| TEEU | Of no concern
as it is not an issue for the two trades the union represents
Atypical working no acceptable to union |
Generally desirable due to completion
and need to add-skill union members
Should be part of a "mutual gains approach" Sceptical of multi-skilling -- too costly for employer and employee; cannot be equally skilled in all areas |
Significant opportunities for mutual
gains in the area of annual hours
Worker benefits: a consolidated salary; enhanced pension; reduced hours Employer benefits: Eliminates overtime culture; increased productivity and flexibility |
|||
| MANDATE | Legal regulation of atypical working
essential
Direct negotiations can yield better results than Labour Court National minimum wage essential - concern this will be set too low |
Inter-changeability a fact of life and
not an issue
Only gives rise to issues at the level of individual grievances |
Sunday opening: need for adequate compensation
for all employees
Zero hours contracts: need for protection i.e. guaranteed number of hours of work; adequate notice for call-outs |
|||
| SIPTU | Legal regulation of atypical working
essential;
National minimum wage of IR£5.00 essential |
Favour co-operation in new work forms
and flexibility
Union involvement essential |
Needs to be regulated in case of atypical
workers
Can be options for mutual gains as in annual hours |
|||
| Source: Interviews conducted for the study with representatives of ICTU, TEEU MANDATE, and SIPTU. | ||||||