‘Taking on’ on striking workers not the way to go

In the face of the recent escalation of the Luas dispute and the impending possibility of a strike wave across the public sector, I’m often asked by students should workers have the right to strike when their actions give rise to public disruption and what can be done to curtail such disputes from occurring in the future?

My answer typically comes in two parts.

First, the right to organise and engage in strike action is a human right enshrined in some fashion in the laws of most advanced economies, including Ireland’s.

That said, however, the regulations as they pertain to strikes in “essential” public services are often more restrictive, principally because of their potential deleterious effect on other sectors of the economy.

The second part of my answer is to tell them that the Luas dispute is not that unusual when compared to other public transport disputes such as those witnessed recently in London’s underground, in the Paris metro, in Rome’s public transport system and on Germany’s railways.

While it may be no surprise to read of industrial strife in France or Italy, both of which have a long tradition of industrial militancy, in otherwise industrious and socially-disciplined Germany recent strikes in public transport, in schools and postal services have become a source of deep concern.

The leading German sociologist Wolfgang Streeck, writing in the Guardian last year, likened Germany's wage-setting system to that of 1970s Britain wherein a state of normlessness was seen to prevail – a fundamental absence of consensus on the legitimate principles of distribution between capital and labour, as well as between groups of workers.

In response, the German government’s social democratic labour minister introduced new legislation in an attempt to curtail the right to organise and strike by making strikes of sectional trade unions – like the train drivers – illegal.

Strange as it might seem to an Irish audience, this move is designed to shore up Germany’s unitary union structure and centralised system of collective bargaining to mitigate against increasing fragmentation and conflict. The reforms received the support of the main political parties, union confederations and employer associations.

In other countries too strikes are only permitted once strike ballots are held and periods of strike notice are adhered to (as in Ireland), and when defined minimum negotiating periods are respected and all stipulated efforts to arrive at a mediated settlement have been exhausted.

Unofficial actions

The benefit of such regulations is that not only do they reduce the likelihood of strike action occurring in vital public services, but they also guard against inchoate expressions of conflict where workers might be pressed into “unofficial” actions which are disruptive in their consequences such as refusing to accept over-time, arriving to work late, and not covering for or training new colleagues.

The UK government has taken a different approach to other countries. Its new trade union Bill not only seeks to make it more difficult for public sector unions to engage in strike action but it also plans to restrict the time available to union representatives to perform their union roles. Most informed observers believe it to be a blunt instrument, and that it will undermine social dialogue and the co-operation that exists between union representatives and management.

What then might we take from other countries’ experiences in regulating strikes in vital public services?

First, industrial relations are not just a matter of "regulation"; they are more broadly a matter of "governance". Labour law is inherently incomplete. Solutions revolve less around new laws and regulations and more around dialogue and exchange. Very often that which matters most to workers and their unions is their involvement in the arrival at solutions, and they not be taken for granted.

This brings me back to the lessons I might debate with my business students. The one striking similarity to the solutions put in place to address industrial conflict in Europe, notwithstanding the diversity of labour relations and political regimes, is that they all – bar the UK – involve some compromise and exchange.

Arguably, therefore, what should be emphasised is that solutions require less adherence to the much-touted canon of “take unions on” under the aegis of hard-headed managerial “leadership” and more engagement in social dialogue.

While pay and workplace change in essential public services can and should be professionally managed, they are better when they are socially negotiated.

Dire circumstances

In

Ireland

we don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Recent public service agreements have served us well in ensuring industrial peace and in initiating reforms. We may need to look again at the Lansdowne Road agreement. To object to doing so on principle is to overlook workers and unions’ agreement to the early abandonment of the Croke

Park

Agreement in dire economic circumstances.

In the recent past the employee-labour conference and the national implementation body that involved experienced facilitators with union and management backgrounds worked well in resolving and containing what seemed like intractable disputes. The danger now is that, notwithstanding the excellent services provided by the Workplace Relations Commission and the Labour Court, we lack the institutional imagination and/or political will to reconstitute such bodies which echo of social partnership.

In the face of such objections there is a real and growing risk of the fragmentation of wage-setting in the public sector, together with escalating radicalisation.

John Geary is professor of industrial relations and human resources at UCD