In a first response to the National Development Plan 2021-2030 published today, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) said that the Government needs to clarify how the NPD will promote decent jobs over the coming years.
ICTU General-Secretary Patricia King said:
The plan is presented as being ‘rooted in an overall ambition of exceeding pre-crisis employment levels by reaching 2.5 million people in work by 2024. It also refers to a (pre-pandemic) 2017 ESRI forecast - when total employment was 2.2 million - of an additional 660,000 jobs by 2040, implying total employment of nearly 2.9 million by 2040.
The NPD does state that these jobs will be ‘more productive, innovative, resilient, secure, valued, and in new areas of opportunity’, but crucially does not say how this will be achieved.
There is no apparent consideration of the issues around precarious work and of the failure to respect the rights of workers to engage in collective bargaining.
The only apparent consideration of decent work is in that it is as one of the ‘ambitions’ of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, while the sole reference to the European Pillar of Social Rights ignores the fact that ‘fair working conditions’ is one of its primary objectives of this initiative, which is increasingly central to all European employment policy.
The NDP does not seem to recognise that social dialogue and collective bargaining are not just central to attaining and exceeding its employment targets but for promoting better jobs.
The reality is that the European countries with the highest levels of collective bargaining coverage – the Nordics and countries such as Austria, Germany and the Netherlands - were also the ones with much higher employment rates than Ireland before the pandemic; the only acknowledgement of the role and potential of social dialogue is in the context of a just transition towards decarbonisation – this should be across the board, Ms. King said.
‘ICTU will carefully examine the NDP and is committed to working with Government and other relevant stakeholders to ensure that it creates more and better jobs in the years ahead’ Ms King concluded.
