Demand overwhelming labour relations body, says Mulvey

THE LABOUR Relations Commission is overwhelmed by the number of workers looking for help in recent months, its chief executive Kieran Mulvey has said.

Speaking at a conference at the weekend, he said the economic downturn had caused a surge in referrals with employees seeking to secure protection of pay or prevention of pay cuts.

There were 47,500 referrals to its rights commissioner service over the past five years but almost 8,500 of those were in the first six months of this year alone.

Rights commissioners investigate disputes, grievances and claims that individuals or small groups of workers refer to them under a number of acts.

Mr Mulvey was addressing a conference marking 20 years of the Industrial Relations Act 1990. It was organised by the UCD School of Law.

Speaking later to RTÉ News, Mr Mulvey said everyone was entitled to a hearing and an investigation of their case. "We are trying to see if we could have these heard in groups but we are meeting some resistance to it. But secondly as an outcome of the recession . . . in a considerable number of cases there's no employer left – what is left is a liquidator."

At the opening of the conference, Minster for Labour Affairs Dara Calleary urged employers and trade unions to be more responsive and flexible in operating statutory wage-fixing machinery. The Government supported the retention of the National Minimum Wage and the Joint Labour Committee system, as protections for low paid workers, he said. “The challenge we face is to ensure that these wage fixing mechanisms work effectively and efficiently and that they do not have a negative impact on economic performance and employment levels.

“Rather than challenging their very existence, I believe it would be more productive to ensure that all parties use these mechanisms and use them with skill.”

Mr Calleary said a tangible recognition of the “unprecedented economic turbulence” might see fewer legal challenges being mounted and less vociferous demands for the scrappage of the entire system.

“A wage-setting mechanism which demonstrates its capacity to make adjustments in both directions would, in my view, go a long way towards garnering political, public and business sector goodwill as well as securing jobs.”

He said he would like to see a simplification of the complaints and enforcement procedures regarding industrial relations and employment rights.

Former taoiseach Bertie Ahern recalled the strikes and industrial unrest of the 1980s and said the introduction of the Industrial Relations Act and social partnership were “ushered in a new climate of industrial and economic stability which this country reaped the benefit of for over two decades”.

Mr Ahern said it was “nonsense” to throw out the baby with the bath water by ending social partnership.