Trade unions yesterday announced a campaign to allow them to engage in collective bargaining on behalf of performing artists and freelance journalists.
The Competition Authority insists that it is illegal for unions to collectively represent actors, musicians and other freelance workers. It says such workers are independent contractors and are therefore to be regarded as "undertakings" under the terms of the 2002 Competition Act. The Act, it says, prohibits "undertakings" from entering into anti-competitive agreements.
Union leaders yesterday strongly criticised the authority's stance, claiming it was misinterpreting the Act to the detriment of some of the lowest-paid workers in the State.
Siptu and the National Union of Journalists (NUJ), which announced the campaign, said a recent Arts Council report had found that average weekly earnings for artists were €513.
"However, this figure is boosted by a fortunate minority in steady employment. About half of those surveyed earn €140 a week - less than unemployment benefit and on a par with the new rock-bottom rates at which Irish Ferries wants to recruit staff."
Ictu general secretary David Begg said at one level there was a complex legal issue involved. "But at another level it's very fundamental and very simple, because it strikes at the heart of the right of ordinary working people to be able to band together and use their labour to extract a reasonable living from their employers."
The Irish secretary of the NUJ, Séamus Dooley, said that the union had represented freelance journalists in the regional newspaper sector for more than 20 years, but it was now denied the right to engage in collective bargaining on their behalf.
Siptu's president, Jack O'Connor, said that in the first instance the campaign was about raising awareness of the issue, but ultimately industrial action could not be ruled out. Equity, which represents performing artists, is a branch of Siptu.
