Organising & Recruitment

This conference notes with concern the current decreasing membership numbers across the trade union movement. In particular, the young people currently joining the workforce are largely not joining unions. This conference also notes that a disproportionate amount of young people are currently working in environments that do not have a recognition agreement with any trade union. Many such workplaces have the worst labour conditions across Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. They also represent the single highest opportunity to increase union membership, especially among the youth, that is available to us today. Conference agrees that in order to turn the tide and start increasing union numbers (especially amongst young workers), we need to work together to develop an active strategy in the spirit of the 1913 Dublin Lockouts. This Conference notes that there is not always agreement between unions as to which union has the remit for which workplace and that lack of coordination on this issue sometimes leads to inter-union competition. However, attempting to compete amongst ourselves is a waste of energy and will lead to a cumulative loss for the entire trade union movement. To maximise union membership across all workplaces and sectors, we must ensure direct coordination between unions. This Conference commends the good work being done by the organisers in our movement, and feels that in order to maximise support for their work we need to ensure that our officers, representatives and activists are on board with the agenda of supporting union members in unrecognised workplaces and have the resources, tools and skills required to do so. This Conference therefore resolves to: encourage individual unions to commit to taking active organisational and representational responsibility for individual workplaces; establishing a new online union finder database covering as many workplaces as possible, directing workers to the union which has committed to taking responsibility for their workplace; set up a series of workshops focusing directly on issues of unrecognised workplaces, with a view to establishing a formal training programme for union officials and activists on strategies for organising and representation in workplaces which do not recognise trade unions; organise a series of public forums across Ireland (through ICTU Youth or similar) addressing the issues young people are facing today and encouraging them to join a union. This series should be promoted widely (e.g. at call centres, retail environments, job centres, etc.) and should involve as much media presence as possible; politically, mount similar campaigns across both jurisdictions, highlighting the very real need for trade union recognition for our young workers.