A new legal framework is required to protect both Irish and foreign national workers from exploitation, Irish Congress of Trade Unions (Ictu) general secretary David Begg said yesterday.
He told a conference in Dublin that unions were offering the Government "a bargain" in the current partnership talks. This would involve retaining the principle of labour mobility, "but it has to be on our terms", he said.
"Our terms will require the protection of indigenous and non-Irish nationals alike from exploitation and displacement.
"The measures we propose . . . will invoke an equal commitment to social justice."
He was speaking at a conference at Croke Park on the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, organised by the Irish Catholic Bishops' Justice and Social Affairs Commission.
Mr Begg said that Europe had been built on the heritage of Catholic social doctrine and therefore offered the best hope of a just society. However, the European Union faced an "acute challenge" in managing migration flows and Ireland was "in the cockpit of that challenge", he said.
With the opening of the labour market to the 10 new member states, the non-Irish national component of the workforce had risen to 9 per cent in less than 18 months.
"Germany took 30 years to get to this point. This poses a unique challenge, in justice, to our society," he said.
He added that Ictu had campaigned in favour of the Nice referendum and had opposed those who claimed the country would be "swamped by people coming to take Irish jobs".
"We do not regret taking that stand but we have to admit that we underestimated the push-pull factors that subsequently attracted people here."
Given the higher-than-forecast number of immigrants since EU enlargement in May 2004, unions were seeking a range of measures to protect all workers from exploitation. These included "a new legal framework, the allocation of sufficient resources to ensure enforcement and strong enough sanctions to promote a culture of compliance".
Mr Begg said a working assumption had to be made that, at some time in the future, there would be "another Irish Ferries or another Gama".
"If we do not now put in place an architecture for regulating our labour market which is robust enough to deal with such an eventuality then we will have failed in our duty both to the immigrant and the indigenous worker."
Employers have told the Government that they are opposed to increased regulation of the labour market.
Formal talks on the issue are expected to resume next week.
Taoiseach Bertie Ahern told the conference that the emphasis in Catholic social teaching on the rights of labour was, to him, one of its most attractive features.
"When it was, in many quarters, deeply unpopular to say so, the church asserted that trade unions were an indispensable element of social life. It saw them as promoters of the struggle for social justice and for the rights of workers, rather than against others," he said.
The church's teaching was, and continued to be, accompanied by a focus on the rights of property and of those who owned and managed businesses, "accepting the proper role of profit as the first indicator that a business is functioning well".
He said the transformation of Ireland "from a land of emigration and unemployment, to one of immigration and virtually full employment is, for me, the most satisfying of the achievements of modern Ireland". This had been "significantly facilitated" by social partnership, he said.