Madam, – The controversy over the right of members of the Garda Síochána to hold a ballot, or even an opinion poll, to ascertain their members’ feelings on a number of issues, including industrial action, reflects a much deeper flaw in Irish democracy, and that is the fact that we are one of only three EU member states that do not make provision in law for the right of workers to collective bargaining.
That defect was masked for more than 20 years by the existence of social partnership and national pay agreements. With its collapse, gardaí are simply the most prominent group of workers in the economy who now lack any meaningful terms of reference for assessing how fair their pay and conditions are.
Like those workers, gardaí also lack access to any meaningful form of collective bargaining to fill this vacuum.
The representative bodies of the Garda Síochána only exist today because members of the force broke the law 48 years ago by holding a protest meeting to air their grievances in the Macushla Ballroom, Dublin.
Members of the force secured pay rises of between 9 per cent and 11 per cent 11 years ago only because of the “blue flu”.
Less than 200 years ago it was illegal for anyone in this country to be in a trade union and workers resorted to various illegal and sometimes downright criminal activities to protect or advance their pay and conditions. Eventually it dawned on the powers that be to repeal the Combination Acts.
Surely the time has come to at least give members of the Garda Síochána the same limited rights as other workers?
Provision can be made to ensure there is emergency cover in the event of a dispute, as applies with other groups of public servants involved in delivery of essential services, or even to retain the bar on members of the force engaging in all-out strike activity. But there is no reason why members of the Garda Síochána should not be granted full trade union rights in other respects.
There are some people who would be delighted to see the right to join a union withdrawn from all workers and take us back to the halcyon years of the industrial revolution in all their red-toothed glory. Then a police force would definitely be required – a very large and well paid one – to keep the rest of us in line.
Changing the law to recognise police unions is an inevitable step along the road to creating a society based on consensus rather than conflict. Just as rolling back those rights will take us in the opposite direction. – Yours, etc,