As we reported last year the Irish Labour Court performs a variety of functions which have no equivalent in the UK. However its ability to intervene in disputes where no trade union is recognised, has become more problematic since a Supreme Court judgment in favour of Ryanair. Now unions want a mandatory recognition law.

Where trade unionists in Ireland work in companies which do not recognise them for collective bargaining purposes, they have recourse to a 2001 law that allows the Labour Court to investigate disputes and impose settlements. However after the Supreme Court found that the existence of a trade dispute at Ryanair had not been proved by the Labour Court, and accepted that the company’s ‘employee representative councils’ were genuine bargaining units, the unions believe that any employer can circumvent the legislation. As well as setting up spurious ‘internal forums’ rogue employers could also victimise individual union members as the Ryanair judgment said that their identities must be disclosed. The solution, according to the unions, is compulsory recognition.
They raised the issue during the current talks with the government as part of the national partnership agreement known as ‘Towards 2016’. The Irish government does not favour mandatory union recognition because it believes that employers would not agree to it. If it was then imposed, the government feels that there would be negative effects on the social partnership which has helped to attract investment to Ireland as a country that settles such issues by consensus. Some lawyers also consider that a constitutional referendum would be required to validate legislation. Instead, the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment is proposing amendments to the existing law to tighten up rules on what constitutes a negotiating body in a company and to allow the Labour Relations Commission to verify union membership figures confidentially.
This issue and others such as pay and the positon of temporary agency workers are set to bedevil the national talks now being held in a tougher economic climate.

THIS ITEM IS BASED ON INFORMATION FROM EUROPEAN EMPLOYMENT REVIEW

ECJ turns Posted Workers Directive on its head
In our last issue we reported on the Rüffert case in which the court had quoted the Posted Workers Directive to prevent a local authority from enforcing wage levels in companies to which it contracts out work. Now the ECJ has extended this approach in restricting how a Member State can interpret the directive. It upheld a complaint by the European Commission that Luxembourg laws requiring foreign contractors to provide a written contract of employment, to raise pay with the cost of living and to respect collective agreements and rules on part-time work went further than the directive intended. Originally brought in to guarantee minimum standards for workers posted abroad it is now being used as ‘an aggressive internal market tool’ according to John Monks of the ETUC who demanded its revision.

Survivor’s benefit must be paid to same-sex partners
A Mr. Maruko from Germany has won his case in which he claimed discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation against the Theatre Pensions Institution. In 2001 he entered a long-term relationship as a registered life partnership under German law. His partner had worked in the theatre since 1959 and was bound by law to join the pension scheme. When the partner died in 2005 Mr.Maruko applied for a survivor’s benefit but was refused. The court agreed that the Pensions Institution rules were discriminatory as a widow’s or widower’s pension would have been payable. There may be interesting side-effects for British law because the ECJ did not limit the retrospective application of its judgment. The UK Sexual Orientation Regulations restrict the qualifying period for same-sex survivor’s benefits to starting in 2005 when Civil Partnerships were first instituted here.