At all times democracy is a very delicate and sensitive concept. This is particularly true in industrial relations. The normal principal of “majority rule” does not and should not always apply; it is easy to fall into the trap of the “tryranny of the majority” whereby a majority can steamroll over a minority thereby ignoring the legitimate interests of that group.This is not democracy which should always be judged by how it deals with legitimate minority interests.
A clear example of this tyranny would be if a pay offer was made to 100 workers where 60 were to get a pay rise at the expense of 40 who were to suffer a pay cut. The 60 would outvote the 40 if they looked at the proposal in a selfish manner looking only at how it affected them. This is the tyranny of the majority in action.
It seems that some senior trade union leaders fell into this trap recently in addressing the overall outcome of the proposed Public Service Agreement when they suggested that it would be a majority rule at the end of the process.
They suggested that the acceptability of the proposals be decided by a vote of unions at the Public Services Committee of ICTU. On first look this all seems very democratic, particularly when each union has a voting strength at the committee related to its size. But in reality and practice it is quite the opposite.
Let us consider one of the minority groups - teachers who have recently reacted very strongly against the proposals.
As part of the proposals they would be required to work an extra hour, at a time when an independent survey, conducted for TUI shows they already work an average of 43 to 46 hours a week, and such proposal having been described by the editorial in a national newspaper as an insult to the great majority of teachers who work very long hours. In addition teachers are being asked to agree to have their contracts renegotiated without any idea as to what changes might be brought into these contracts. The obvious question arises. Why should any group other than teachers decide on the acceptability of this proposal in this situation?
Similarly, some workers in the Health Services are being asked to spread their normal working day to any time between 8am and 8pm and to work over any five days of the week, weekends included. It is not the right of any group other than health service workers to decide on the acceptability of this proposal.
It has been said that this is the way that these agreements were always dealt with. Even if it were true, this on its own is a very dangerous argument. If we never learned from the errors of history we would throw out all equality legislation because at one time “that was the way it was always done”. Apartheid would be OK as would capital punishment even for minor crimes. We must evolve our thinking and decide what is right or wrong on the merits of the issue, judged in today’s terms.
But is this true, was deciding on agreements of this nature always done this way in the past.
Pre 1987 public service pay agreements were just that – agreements to do with pay which did not involve changes in conditions of service for workers. They were quite appropriately decided by the majority rule principle by workers across the public sector. Since 1987 the Government and the social partners, including trade unions, have engaged in negotiations on social policy issues that resulted in a social partnership agreement. The first social partnership agreement was the Program for National Recovery in 1987 and since then there have been seven agreements. The first five did not directly affect conditions of service and were, again I believe, appropriately, decided on a majority rule basis. A variation to this was the Program for Competitiveness and Work (PCW) in which as an alternative to a straight pay increase for groups of workers there was a local bargaining clause in which changes in work practices could be negotiated in return for greater pay increases. These agreements outside of the main agreement and were exclusively decided on by the workers to whom the proposals applied.
The last two social partnership agreements, Sustaining Progress (2003-2005) and Towards 2016 (2006-2015), have imposed changes on conditions of individual minority groups of public service workers. These changes were written into the main proposals and as such were voted on by workers in all unions, whether the agreements applied to them or not. They were then adopted on a majority rule basis by a special delegate conference of ICTU, minority views being suppressed. TUI believed this was entirely inappropriate and tabled the following motion at the ICTU Biennial Congress in 2003.
This Conference respects the integrity of each union or group of unions in both the negotiation of the conditions of service of their members and of the decision-making process in relation to any such negotiation.
This Conference directs the Executive Council to respect these principles in any future negotiations towards any proposed National Agreements and to utilise approaches such as the local bargaining clause in the PCW in order to implement such principles.
This motion was carried. It determines that only the workers concerned in changes of conditions of service would decide on the acceptability of those changes if they are in return for pay rises; for example that teachers should decide on teachers’ issues, health workers should decide on their issues etc. This position is now ICTU policy and it is a policy that must be adhered to – even if it is inconvenient.
It certainly appears that this policy was being ignored when several union leaders recently pronounced on the majority rule principle, presumably doing so in the belief that only a few extremists would take the view that the present proposals were unacceptable and that the tyranny of the majority could be brought into play to crush this minority and leave them isolated. This is not in accordance with good trade union principles.
ICTU sees itself as a democratic organisation dedicated to the protection of the rights of all including minorities. It wishes to bring about greater unity within the affiliate unions. This is surely brought about by adherence to policies democratically developed and not by talking about majority rule in such a sensitive proposal which affects different workers differently.
Peter MacMenamin
General Secretary
Teachers’ Union of Ireland