God bless IBEC. If it didn’t exist we’d have to invent it – if only to fully understand how you can manipulate an argument out of all recognition from the conditions that gave rise to the argument in the first place. Take the agency workers’ directive, for instance. IBEC is getting all agitated. Apparently, they insist it would be ‘quite inappropriate’for workers doing the same work to be paid the same rate and enjoy the same conditions. Hmmm. Apparently we shouldn’t do not to anything in this area that ‘would make us uncompetitive and enhance costs that are already crucifying a lot of companies’. Hmmm hmmm.
IBEC and other employers’ organisations have argued for ‘flexibility’. Agency workers provide that. Never mind the current exploitation and abuse – there is a reasonable argument for companies to take on and let go workers at different cycles of their production process. Does the new directive interfere with that? No. So what’s IBEC’s problem?
Let’s do some straight talking. IBEC is not concerned with ‘flexbility” – that’s already factored in. It’s concerned with cutting pay and living conditions. It’s concerned with taking the hammer to non-national workers. Here’s how SIPTU’s Patricia King described one transport company’s concern:
At a meeting of the Oireachtas committee on enterprise, trade and employment earlier this month, Patricia King of Siptu instanced one truck company which paid their regular drivers €18.50 an hour plus bonus. But King discovered that up to a third of the drivers were non-nationals hired from an agency and were paid €11.20 per hour. “They received no overtime shift premium, were not covered for sick pay and if the employer did not like the look of them he would ring the agency and say, ‘Get rid of him and give me someone else, ‘” King said.
This has nothing to do with flexibility. This has nothing to do with facilitating cycles in the production process. This is about exploitation, pure and simple; about driving down wages and conditions; about our very own ‘race-to-the-bottom’. Enhance costs? No one is arguing that agency workers be paid more – just the same. With this slash n’ burn mentality – an endemic short-termism that eschews quality of product, re-investment, consumer servicing – no wonder we have stunted enterprise base; no wonder we can’t export, trade or grow ourselves into sustainable prosperity.
In one way, I don’t mind IBEC getting all agitated about having to treat employees equitably. After all, that’s their job. But at least, let’s not pervert the language. If IBEC only exists to show us how not to degrade the language, then their existence is more than justified – day after recessionary day.
Notes on the Front 
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