The fight for job security, decent pensions and trade union recognition was part of the everyday life of some workers, the general secretary of the Building and Allied Trades Union, Mr Paddy O'Shaughnessy, told the ICTU conference in Killarney yesterday.
Building workers had the same aspirations as other workers, but threats of injunctions, jail and even moves to seize their homes were "part of the normal cut and thrust of industrial relations in the industry".
Calling for reform of the Industrial Relations Act, Mr O'Shaughnessy said it had made it far easier for employers to obtain injunctions.
"The Act has provided employers with an additional weapon with which to keep workers in their place," he said. "In one particular case, members of our union proposed to take official industrial action, having gone through the full procedures, only to be confronted with an additional leg of the procedures when the employers challenged the wording of the ballot paper."
He said the "net result was that ultimately the matter was resolved after a prolonged period of unofficial industrial action. This was the very outcome the 1990 Act set out to prevent."
Mr O'Shaughnessy said that last autumn two building workers in Dublin were jailed during a dispute and others were threatened with seizure of their homes by employers resorting to the courts.
In these disputes workers had been fighting for the right to be employed under the PAYE system "with all its attendant rights and protections".
Galway Council of Trade Unions delegate Ms Una Casburn called for greater legal protection for trade unionists. She said the Government had missed a great opportunity to outlaw discrimination against trade union activists in the Employment Equality Act.
She asked why, if the Government felt it was wrong for employers to discriminate against people on the basis of gender, family status, sexual orientation, religion, race or age, it did not feel trade unionists were entitled to the same protection.
Responding to the debate, the ICTU assistant general secretary, Mr Tom Wall, said trade union membership had reached record levels in the Republic, but it was not keeping pace with the increase in employment.
He said that the new legislation proposed by the Government's High Level Group on Trade Union Recognition would go a long way towards ensuring that the significant minority of antiunion employers would have to allow workers representation.
The legislation would give the Labour Court mandatory powers to summons recalcitrant employers and impose terms of employment and fair procedures on them.
It would ensure that "no employer can do as Ryanair did in the past and thumb its nose at the institutions of the State".