TRADE UNIONS:THE IRISH Congress of Trade Unions has backed the Lisbon Treaty and will recommend to the 600,000 members of affiliated unions in the Republic that they should vote Yes in the forthcoming referendum.
At a meeting yesterday, Ictu's executive council voted by 14 votes to five in favour of the treaty. There were eight abstentions including representatives of the country's largest union, Siptu.
The executive of Siptu is expected to make a decision on its stance on the treaty next week.
Among the unions which voted to support the treaty were the State's largest public sector union,Impact; the Civil, Public and Services Union, which represents lower-ranking staff mainly in the public sector; the Public Service Executive Union, which represents mid-ranking civil servants; the main teaching unions; the Irish Nurses' Organisation; the Communications Workers' Union and the craft union Ucatt.
The Technical, Engineering and Electrical Union (TEEU) and Unite were among the unions which voted to oppose the treaty. Mandate abstained.
Speaking after the meeting, Ictu general secretary David Begg said the issue had been debated internally within the trade union movement in recent months and different affiliate members had adopted different stances, but it was necessary to reach a collective position.
He said the debate at the executive council had been "cathartic" in terms of allowing people to say what they needed to say.
However, asked whether he expected workers to vote in favour of the treaty on the basis of it being backed by Ictu, Mr Begg said: "People are not automatons; they do not follow what we say in that way no more than they follow what political parties or business or any other groups say.
"It is a question of having a voice on this and I think it would have been equally unacceptable for Ictu not to have a position on it.
Asked whether Ictu would be engaging in a campaign on the treaty, Mr Begg said he did not think that there was a lot of time for such a move now.
"We put our position out and we will debate it and defend it but I don't see us being involved in a campaign in the sense of putting up posters or anything like that."
Unions which had voted at the meeting to oppose the treaty were still free to campaign for a No vote, he said.
The TEEU said it would continue with its campaign against the treaty.
Its general secretary designate, Eamon Devoy, said: "Some trade union leaders may talk optimistically about the social charter and what it might achieve but recent key judgments by the European Court of Justice show the direction in which the EU is heading, and it is in favour of big business.
In the circumstances it would be foolish to provide the institutions of the European Union with more power."
He said that in two of these judgments, the Laval and Viking cases, the court had accepted that workers had the the right to organise in unions "only to negate its value by saying they could not undertake industrial action where it conflicted with the provision of goods and services, regardless of the social consequences".
He said that in a third case, the Ruffert case, the court found that a Polish subcontractor operating in Germany was entitled to pay workers less than half the agreed minimum wage for the construction sector, because the right to provide unrestricted services took priority over collective wage deals.
Blair Horan, of the CPSU, however, said that the new charter of fundamental rights, which would be given legal effect in the treaty, would be very important in reversing some the decisions which had come out of Europe recently about which unions had concerns.