A LEADING trade unionist has warned that workers will make a very harsh judgment on the value of national pay deals" if social partnership does not become widespread quickly.
Mr John O'Dowd, who has just been made an executive director of the new National Centre for Partnership, said "the big challenge is to devise more constructive ways of approaching change, so that both sides get something out of it and reduce the level of conflict".
Mr O'Dowd has just stepped down as general secretary of the largest Civil Service union, the CPSU. The NCP is being set up under the new national agreement, Partnership 2000, to promote social partnership in the workplace and give practical help to unions and employers in achieving it.
Generally accepted as one of the key ingredients in Ireland's decade of economic boom, he believes there is growing acceptance of the benefits of partnership.
"One of the most important tasks of the new centre is to assist the two sides in getting partnerships up and running and get them to work together, especially through training."
"Some of it is quite radical. For instance, trade union representatives and managers will attend joint training programmes. Traditionally each side has trained its people separately.
"The centre will take account of the best practice in systems in other countries, but apply it in the unique conditions we have in Ireland. It's an absolutely huge task, when you think of the public sector alone, the number of organisations and sheer diversity within those organisations. Literally thousands of people are going to have to develop new ways of working together.
"The last thing we need is a few pilot projects here and there. A pilot approach will leave the generality of employers and employees unaffected. We need a strategy with real depth, not a superficial approach.
"It can only work if unions and employers want it to work. And the level of demand for the centre's services will obviously depend on the level of employer/ trade-union interest in making partnership work for themselves.
"Partnership 2000 itself said there is no single best model and all the international research suggests there is no one best way to develop workplace partnership. The most successful component appears to be a genuine commitment by managers and trade unionists to make the system work. If that commitment is there, different kinds of systems and processes can be adapted to fit different situations."
He accepts that partnership will develop very differently in the public and private sectors. The spur of competition does not exist in most of the public service. At the same time there remains the danger of "privatisation or contracting out services if the public are not satisfied they are getting a quality service". There was a growing realisation at management and staff levels in the public service "that the old ways cannot last forever".
In the private sector competitive pressures mean that "change might have to happen at a very rapid pace", and this could create difficulties. "But there are examples in Ireland of very successful approaches being adopted to partnership in competitive situations, such as Aughinish Mumina.
"The ESB is another good example of partnership, at the macro level within an organisation. What Partnership 2000 is all about is bringing that partnership down to the micro, or workplace level."
Mr O'Dowd said that "in very many cases commitment to partnership is too much confined to top levels in organisations". This applies to unions as well as managers.
However, Mr O'Dowd added that, "if you talk to junior civil servants they respond very positively to being given more of a say in how work is organised or discretion in what they actually do."
Trade unions had become more pro-active on the partnership issue because they saw that employee participation in systems like team working was happening anyway.
He believes that the next 3 1/2 years of Partnership 2000 will be crucial for the development of social partnership in Ireland. "I think that if only superficial progress is made in the public and private sectors then, at the end of that period, workers will make a very harsh judgment of the whole partnership idea.