Facing the Key Challenges of the
Directive
Damian Thomas
Presentation to the CISC Conference
7th March 2003
Overview
• The Irish Social Partnership Experiment
• Enterprise Level Partnership
• The NCPP
• Industrial Relations Context
• Transposing Directives –
• Facing the Challenges
• Reframing and Repositioning the Debate
The Irish Social Partnership 1987-2002
• PNR (1987-90) a consensus-based integrated
response to protracted economic, fiscal and political
crisis
• Macro-level economic and social concertation
• Aligned the actors to a consistent and coherent
consensus based strategy premised on credible nonaccommodating macro-economic framework, income
distribution and structural adjustment
• Institutionalised politically
• Dense and overlapping institutional networks
• Widening– participants / policy domains / policy
functions and objectives
• Evolving system of negotiated governance contingent, vacillating and bargained ‘authority’
Enterprise Level Partnership
• PESP and PCW contained aspirational commitments
to worker participation and employee involvement
• ICTU adopted a proactive approach to workplace
change and new forms of working
• ‘partners at the centre pariahs at the workplace”
• Chapter 9 P2000 – workplace partnership identified as
a strategic priority
• Chapter 10 – modernisation of the public service
through partnership
• National Centre for Partnership (1997)
• Reaffirmed in PPF – National Centre for Partnership
and Performance established June 2001
Chapter 9 – P2000
“Partnership is an active relationship based on the
recognition of a common interest to secure
competitiveness, viability and prosperity of the
enterprise. It involves continuing improvement in
quality and efficiency and the acceptance by
employers of employees as stakeholders with rights
and interests to be considered in the context of major
decisions affecting their employment. Partnership
involves the common ownership of the resolution of
challenges involving the direct participation of
employee/representatives and an investment in their
training, development and working environment
(P2000, 1996, p.62)
• Voluntarist – no quid pro quo relationship between
national and workplace partnership
• Highly generalised definition –strength and weakness
• Variable geometry of support between the social
partners (within also)
• Chpt 9 – provided a clear public policy presence
• Established a supportive institutional framework and
basis for exerting associational persuasion
• ‘Space’ for key actors to promote new ways of doing
business at the workplace
• Incrementally influencing the customs, norms and
conventions that shape IR practices in Ireland
Enterprise Partnership – the evolving
context
• Limited incidence of highly sophisticated, formalised
partnership models (UCD, SIPTU database)
• Important exemplars of good practice - platform to
build on (SIPTU)
• National level social partnership has not resulted in a
radical and fundamental regime shift in ‘IR’ / ER
• Considerable diffusion of new and innovative working
practices and experimentation with new employment
relationships/arrangements
• Gradual but discernible drift toward more co-operative
employment relations; partnership-style
arrangements
• Action-orienated: multiple models / highly customised /
National Centre for Partnership and
Performance
• State sponsored research and advisory body
• Set up under aegis of PPF and role reaffirmed in
‘Sustaining Progress’
• Support the deepening of partnership and
performance at the workplace
• Realign partnership with national policy objectives
• Organisational change through partnership-style
initiatives
- enhances performance
- facilitates flexibility and adaptability
- fosters innovation and learning
- delivers mutual gains
Initiatives and Activities
• Developing case studies of good practice
• Developing tools to assist organisations manage
change
• Developing networks to mainstream high
performance
• Creating a vision of high performing workplaces
- Forum on the Workplace of the Future
- Guidelines on Employee Financial Involvement
- Research and Review activity
- Project on Information and Consultation
Directive
Industrial Relations Context
• National level Social Partnership –associational
support for ‘partnership style’ arrangements
• Voluntarist
• Low levels of overt industrial conflict
• Diversity
- intra-regime fragmentation
- scope to craft and customise model of choice
- diverse and hybrid models (cherry picking /
pragmatic eclecticism )
- declining union density
- public / private dichotomy
Industrial Relations Context
• Experimentation and Co-operation
- diffusion of new and innovative working
practices and forms of work organisation
- increased functional flexibility and co-operation
with change
- increased direct and indirect participation /
involvement
• Institutional and Statutory (Re)Regulation
- Employment and Social Law progressed –
enhanced regulation of individual rights
- more robust set of institutional arrangements –
- gaps in institutional coverage
Transposing EU Directives
• Submissions from the Social Partners
• DETE - options document circulated and initiate
Tripartite Discussions (ICTU & IBEC)
• Parallel Bipartite Discussions
• Recommendations to the Minister - Legislative
Process - Drafting Phase
• Introduced in the Dáil (Stage 1) & Second Stage
Debate on the principles of the Bill
• Select Committee on Enterprise and Small Business
(Stage 3): ICTU / IBEC lobbying - opposition
amendments: Report (4) and Final Stages (5)
• Seanad (Similar Stages)- social partners may re-enter
amendments
• Bilateral Discussions
• Final Bill - Act
Facing the Challenges
• Government: align ICD with key policy objectives
– securing competitiveness
– capacity to attract FDI -moving upstream
– high levels of employment
– maintain national level social partnership
– labour market peace
– Industrial Policy Agencies - address client
companies uncertainty - link ICD to emphasis on
upstream activity
The Social Partners’ Challenges
• ICTU & IBEC - divergent positions on the ICD consensus position not easy
• ICTU - emphasis on its capacity to establish statutory
based employee representation within Irish companies
• IBEC -regulatory framework should not impinge on
flexibility and competitiveness -not de facto TU
recognition
• Managing the dynamic relationship between interest
group lobbying, traditional bargaining,effective
consultation and consensus building
Embracing the Challenges –
Reframing and Repositioning the Debate
• State - take the policy lead
• Social Partners - intensive inter and intra associational
deliberation
• Avoid debate being dominated by worst case or best
case scenarios
• Address uncertainty and recognise mutual concerns
• Bilateral Discussions and Tripartite Negotiations
• Generalised Framework Exists - problem-solving
deliberation• Intensive consultation on how to implement it ?
• Avoid lowest common denominator compromise
• Appropriate, viable and reflects reality
• Diversity / Co-operation / Experimentation / Relative
Peace and Regulation
• Identify the range of practical arrangements that
facilitate compliance with the spirit of the Directive
• Rally and Authorise support
• Emphasis on the potential gains generated by more
effective management of information and consultation
rights
• Companies with higher levels of involvement are more
competitive
• Stronger regulatory environment and intraorganisational adaptability and enhanced performance
are not mutually exclusive
• Enhancing organisation’s strategic capacity – strategic
& operational areas (
• Strategy & Effective Management of Change
• Fostering innovation and learning
• More participatory decision making – linking those with
expertise/experience to problem solving
• Making better informed decisions
• Open method co-ordination - shared learning and
emulation of good practice
• Social Partners/Civil Servants –tacit skills, perceptions,
strategies and experience
• Reposition the effective management of Information
and Consultation rights – should be doing (benefits)
rather than have to do (regulatory)
“In the past, I waited for plans to be passed down
from management; then analysed and responded
and usually fairly negatively; now I consult with my
members, synthesise views and suggest changes
and ideas to management to improve the original
plans”
Shop Steward