EMPLOYERS’ GROUP Ibec has called for a radical overhaul of the system for determining pay and conditions for about 170,000 workers in sectors such as hotels, catering and security.
Ibec said the system of joint labour committees was out of date, inappropriate under current economic circumstances and was now acting as a barrier to employment.
Speaking in advance of an Ibec employment law conference in Dublin today, its director of industrial relations, Brendan McGinty, said the rationale for the system had largely disappeared with the introduction of the minimum wage in 2000.
Under the joint labour committee system, representatives of workers and employers, under an independent chairman, can make proposals to the Labour Court for a legally enforceable employment rights order governing pay and conditions for a particular sector.
Mr McGinty said that if employers were to be persuaded to support a joint labour committee system, a number of minimum reforms should be introduced immediately.
He said there should be a mechanism by which an employer could apply to the Labour Court for a temporary exemption from an employment regulation order on foot of financial difficulty.
“Secondly, the retrospection period for claims should be brought into line with the limitation periods under the Payment of Wages Act, 1991 – namely a maximum of one year,” he said.
Mr McGinty also said that instead of having chairmen who can have a casting vote, in future joint labour committees should be “chaired” by professional industrial relations officers from the Labour Relations Commission. He said that these should be non-voting and conciliate between employer and employee members to achieve “true agreement”.
Last week Fine Gael also criticised the existing system of employment regulation orders and proposed significant reforms. The party said such orders were binding on workers who were not members of the unions represented on the committees.
Last month chairman of the Labour Court Kevin Duffy, in his annual report, said a number of legal challenges to the system of regulation provided by employment regulation rights orders and the constitutionality of the legislative provisions underpinning this had been launched last year.
Mr McGinty said yesterday that some aspects of the existing systems for determining pay and conditions had been established in the early part of the last century and were no longer appropriate.
“Unsustainable wage levels and unduly restrictive practices make it too difficult for us to compete with other countries,” he said.
But Siptu president Jack O’Connor last night rejected the Ibec proposals, describing the existing committee system as unquestionably fair.
He criticised Ibec’s call for limiting payment of retrospection on entitlements to a year’s maximum and asked: “Why should law breakers be exonerated from their responsibility and why should vulnerable workers bear the burden of it?”