FIM

In Dublin on 8 and 9 September 2015, FIM, FIA, UNI-​MEI and EFJ organ­ised the sec­ond work­shop of their European project on atyp­i­cal work­ers. The meet­ing focused on col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing, with par­tic­u­lar regard to “free­lancers” who, in their immense major­i­ty, exer­cise their pro­fes­sion as self-​employed workers.

General Secretary of The Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU), Patricia King addressed the issue of the obsta­cles which Irish unions were encoun­ter­ing in nego­ti­at­ing col­lec­tive agree­ments to pro­tect pre­cise­ly the most exposed work­ers. The nation­al com­pe­ti­tion author­i­ty, an admin­is­tra­tion that is inde­pen­dent of polit­i­cal pow­ers, does not hes­i­tate to threat­en unions and their rep­re­sen­ta­tives with crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion if they take it into their heads to nego­ti­ate agree­ments that went against com­pe­ti­tion reg­u­la­tions. On this score, par­tic­i­pants found it sur­pris­ing that banks –often crit­i­cised for hav­ing plunged the coun­try into reces­sion– and multi­na­tion­als in a monop­oly posi­tion were not troubled

Nothing forces European insti­tu­tions to favour com­pe­ti­tion law over free­dom of asso­ci­a­tion and col­lec­tive bargaining

Irish unions do, how­ev­er, hold out hope for the cul­ture and media sec­tor. As the impact of col­lec­tive agree­ments on this mar­ket was neg­li­gi­ble, in 2009 the gov­ern­ment under­took to intro­duce a sec­to­r­i­al excep­tion. To date, this com­mit­ment has still not been ful­filled, but the next gen­er­al elec­tion and ICTU sup­port could change the story.

Generally speak­ing, the ten­sion between com­pe­ti­tion law on the one hand and free­dom of asso­ci­a­tion and the right to col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing on the oth­er has been the crys­talli­sa­tion point of dis­cus­sions. Mrs Karen Curtis (Director of the Freedom of Association Branch at ILO’s International Labour Standards Department) con­firmed that noth­ing forced European insti­tu­tions to favour com­pe­ti­tion law over free­dom of asso­ci­a­tion and col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing, and that the notion of work­er should not be inter­pret­ed in a restric­tive way. Several fun­da­men­tal texts, at both European and inter­na­tion­al lev­els, can pro­vide a sound legal basis for future procedures.

The ques­tion is acute in Ireland, Denmark and the Netherlands, but also in most cen­tral and east­ern European coun­tries where pub­lic author­i­ties some­times adopt a threat­en­ing tone towards unions which want to nego­ti­ate on behalf of non-​salaried workers.