Industrial relations review urged

A complete review of the State's industrial relations structures may be necessary to deal with current industrial unrest, delegates at the Institute of Personnel and Development (IPD) conference were told yesterday.

"I believe the structures we have and the way we're organised need to be reviewed," Mr Finbarr Flood, chairman of the Labour Court, said. "What we're going through at the moment is a problem of success, where we have patched up a lot of issues on the basis that they were particular issues on the day and could be fixed. The consequences of them have not been realised."

Mr Flood was responding to a question on whether legislation should be changed to deal with industrial unrest caused by inter-union rows.

Addressing the conference, Mr Flood said speed of response and flexibility were future requirements of both Government and organisations.

"We're very good at consensus. In future, it's not going to be good enough. Multinationals are not going to wait," he said.

In the current climate of skills' and labour shortages, the key challenge facing companies now was to recruit, develop and retain the best, he said.

The Republic was now in the unprecedented position of needing foreign workers in significant numbers just to maintain the current level of economic development, the institute's chairman, Mr Peter Mulholland, said.

Employers and employees would have to change and adapt to cater for the diverse backgrounds and cultures of people coming to live and work in the Republic, he said. "There is perhaps no greater issue facing Ireland these days than diversity and equality," he added.

A broader holistic approach was needed to embrace the diversity of the labour force, according to Mr Mulholland. "We need to put a value on diversity, identifying the practical implications of difference and seeking to accommodate these in the way we do business." He also warned that employers should not see foreigners as a supply of cheap labour.

Some of the stories concerning the recruitment of foreign nationals made "grim reading", with reports of poor accommodation, pay and bonded labour, according to Ms Johanna Fullerton, a partner with Pearn Kandola.

"We run the risk of getting a bad name globally and we can't afford that," she said.

Echoing the comments of Mr Mulholland that simple acquiescence in or toleration of newcomers was not enough, Ms Fullerton said diversity awareness training was necessary for all employees.

Managing cultural diversity is going to become a greater issue as the world became more globally integrated, said Prof Ed Schein of MIT Sloan School of Management.

Within a firm, there existed different sub-cultures, he said - the line operations culture; the technical, engineering design culture; and the financially driven chief executive culture. Human resource managers had to find ways of accommodating these cultures, he said.