Is the sun setting on Irish trade unionism?

Union membership is dropping and workers’ pay and conditions are being cut. So, with May Day tomorrow, what does the trade-union movement mean for ordinary members?

JIM RYAN, a middle manger in the Civil Service and a trade-union member, has heard most of the lame jokes about unions and public-sector workers.

How many civil servants does it take to fix a light bulb? Twenty-three – got a problem with that?Or what about this one? A civil servant goes to his doctor with a sleep problem. "I get to sleep at night," says the civil servant. "And mornings are okay, but I'm having trouble dropping off in the afternoon."

Hardly thigh-slapping material. But it does, he says, reveal a greater truth about the wider perception of the heavily unionised public sector. “I suppose it can be funny initially,” says Ryan, who works in the Limerick office of the Revenue, “but when you hear the 20th joke that all we do is drink tea all day it’s a bit much.”

Jokes are one thing, but Ryan, a member of the Public Service Executive Union, which represents middle managers, says civil servants are facing a new kind of hostility. In particular, he says, much of the media have the knives out for trade unions, attacking what they see as a vested interest clinging on to generous pensions, permanent jobs and privilege days while much of the private sector has been ravaged by job losses.

“You get the feeling that we’re to blame for everything,” he says. “But we’ve been incredibly flexible. We’re changing the way we work. Public services are being run at a much cheaper level. On top of that we’ve had significant pay cuts. Many of us also have family members who have lost jobs, have big mortgages and are finding the going very tough.

“For myself being part of a union has been crucial. Otherwise we’d be looking at compulsory redundancies and further pay cuts. It’s a vital safety blanket when things are going bad, but it’s also a movement that’s pragmatic and open to change.”

THE ROLE of trade unions, and how they’re regarded more generally, is weighing on the minds of union leaders and their members these days.

Tomorrow is International Labour Day, or May Day, a holiday dedicated to recalling the social and economic achievements of the labour movement. In addition, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions is drawing up a discussion document on how to modernise the movement and improve its image.

Trade unions are at an uncertain crossroads. Union members’ pay and conditions have been cut like never before. Public hostility towards industrial action in the public sector has been unprecedented. Against a backdrop where the number of union members has been falling, the trade-union movement faces inevitable questions about its influence and relevancy into the future.

Just this week a senior union leader fretted publicly that attendance at branch meetings was falling away dramatically and warned of an increasing disconnect between the union and its members, with fewer people bothering to vote in crucial ballots.

“Some branches are barely functioning; some find it impossible to appoint branch officers,” says Philip King, general secretary of the Association of Secondary Teachers of Ireland. “Some are required to duplicate branch officerships. We have to be honest and truthful about this.”

In addition, a new report funded by the Labour Relations Commission has concluded that trade unions have been hit hard by the recession. The sheer scale of the downturn meant unions could do little more than acquiesce with priorities set out by management, the report found. The position of unions was weakened further by “subdued and compliant employees, fearful for their jobs, pensions and livelihoods”.

Unions also face a dilemma, according to the report’s co-author Prof Paul Teague, of Queen’s University Belfast. “If they go too far and are too compliant they lose the support of members,” he said at a recent event. “If they are not fully engaged they miss an opportunity to influence management plans. It is a careful balancing act.”

TOM GERAGHTY is general secretary of the Public Service Executive Union. It represents about 10,000 members, mostly middle managers earning between €40,000 and €60,000 a year. Membership has dropped by about 500 over the past 12 months as a result of civil servants’ not being replaced. It’s a worrying but not alarming development, he says.

“No organisation can afford to lose large numbers, but at least we’re not losing people who should be members. We estimate that around 90 per cent of middle managers in the public sector are part of our union.”

He says that although pay cuts and greater flexibility have been difficult to stomach, the union has played a key role in protecting workers. “If we weren’t representing our members’ interests, then pay cuts and compulsory redundancies would be on the table. Our role has never changed, despite the state of the economy. Our job, and the reason people join us, is to balance the forces between the employer and employee. That doesn’t change. That’s a fundamental reason why people continue to be members of unions.”

And what of accusations that unions are out of touch, trying to protect privileges that a bankrupt country simply can’t afford? “A review of the Croke Park agreement next month will show that hundreds of millions of euro has been taken out of the cost of running public services,” says Geraghty. “It’s remarkable that you can do that and still have unions that co-operate with change.”

The Association of Higher Civil and Public Servants represents about 3,000 high-ranking civil servants and managers. It has lost about 10 per cent of its members over the past year, also as a result of the recruitment embargo.

“There have been huge changes in public services, though Joe Soap on the street doesn’t always see it,” says Dave Thomas, the association’s general secretary. “The recruitment of staff has been opened to include the private sector. Our members are taking on much more responsibility and introducing performance management . . . We try to take a pragmatic approach to all of these issues.”

One union that boasts it is actually increasing members is the Irish Nurses and Midwives’ Organisation, which represents about 38,000 nurses across the public and private sectors.

Anne Burke, a nurse manager with Galway University Hospital, says that, if anything, there has been an increase in membership of the union. “I was at a branch meeting the other night and we asked ourselves, ‘Why would you be a member of the union?’ The words that kept cropping up were ‘safety net’, ‘security’, ‘advocacy’. They’re the reasons people are coming to join, to be part of a collective.”

As well as the fear of another pay cut, she says, nurses are terrified that they will be held responsible for mistakes caused by understaffing on wards or cuts to healthcare. “Many nurses are doing the job of two or three colleagues. When that happens there’s a risk of more mistakes and being referred to a fitness-to-practise committee. So the union for us is like an insurance policy, because they represent us at those meetings.”

The union’s general secretary, Liam Doran, says it is these kinds of issues – a safe working place, training, quality care for patients – that predominate over issues like pay. This is despite the fact that nurses have had pay cuts of up to 35 per cent.

Critics, however, are quick to point out that, through their involvement in social partnership, unions became part of the problem, securing ever-increasing and unsustainable wage increases that contributed to miring the country in debt.

“I hold the view,” says Doran, “that unions were doing exactly what they were expected to do: secure decent pay increases for members and decent public services. We didn’t force anyone into giving us 5 or 10 per cent pay increases. The employers were part of that as well.”

MANY OTHER union leaders, however, acknowledge that they have been deeply damaged by social partnership. As well as being perceived to be too close to the Government, many seemingly lost touch with the roots of their branches.

The industrial-relations expert Prof William Roche of University College Dublin says unions are facing a difficult period of transition. They have lost the access and influence they once had and won’t be getting them back anytime soon.

“It is clear that unions, especially in the private sector, are very much on the back foot,” he says. “Listening to delegates at recent agms, there’s been a lot of talk about ‘holding on to the Croke Park agreement’. If that goes belly up, then they’ll find themselves in an unprecedented position.”

But it’s not all negative. Unions also have a chance to get back to basics, says Roche, to reconnect and engage with members. Being free of social partnership could also help them to rediscover their roots as an energetic movement, grounded in a campaign for a just and fair society.

All of this is likely to feed into a wide-ranging review of how unions are organised, which is being finalised by senior members of the trade-union movement.

Although numbers of trade-union members have been falling, the proportion of the public sector that’s unionised remains very high. With more than 800,000 members, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions is still the island’s largest civil-society organisation.

“I certainly wouldn’t write off the trade-union movement,” says Jim Ryan in Limerick. “If they weren’t there for us, I wonder how many public-sector workers would be made redundant, and for what? And how low would the minimum wage be? During the good times people feel they don’t need to be part of a union. The more time goes on, I think, people will realise that we need unions now more than ever.”