Notes on the Front

What forced Niall Crowley out of his job in the Equality Authority?  Guess.  It was the same vindictiveness that saw the the scrapping of the Combat Poverty Agency as an independent body.  There is little doubt that the Equality Authority has been a thorn in the side of the Government for a long time.  So while Fianna Fail couldn't just abolish it (it was, after all, established on foot of an EU measure) it could effectively neuter it and make it effectively inoperable by slashing its budget by 43 percent.

The Government has argued that in these cash-strapped times it had to prioritise and in the Justice Department it was prioritising crime.  Was this the reason?  Not a bit.  The Authority met with the Minister on Wednesday with a counter-proposal that would have involved a cut of 32 percent.  It would have been onerous but there would have been hope that the Equality could still discharge its functions.  The Minister's response was to tell the Authority to take a hike.  All this for the sake of €676,000 – or about 0.1 percent of the entire Justice budget. That's paper clip money and the Minister wouldn't even give the Authority a few extra paper clips.

This was a political decision, pure and simple.  But it was an economic one as well – or at least a decision that will affect our economic performance.  For the effective standing down of the Equality Authority will harm our enterprise competitiveness.

Most people naturally assume that the Authority's function is to vindicate the rights of people who have been discriminated.  Yes, that is a major and important function  But one of its many other remits is to 'build a planned and systematic approach to equality in employment' and 'support the development of work life balance initiatives'.  For the hard-nosed men of business (mostly men) where profit is the bottom-line best delivered by can-do men working their companies in boot-camp like conditions, this equality stuff would be fluff at best and, at worst, one more burden on wealth creation.  No wonder we loiter at the bottom of so many business league tables.

The fact is that the promotion of equality, diversity and work-life balance makes more productive enterprises, workforces and society.  And the Equality Authority has been at the forefront of both researching this ground and working with progressive companies to put this in practice. 

Take their excellent study, The Business Impact of Equality, co-published with the National Centre for Partnership and Performance and written by Professor Kathy Monks. The simple message is that:

'. . . investment by organisations in initiatives that promote workplace equality and foster diversity has substantial benefits for both employees and employers.'

These initiatives go beyond just 'not discriminating'.  They constitute a sea-change in the workplace culture itself:  employee participation in decision-making, increased autonomy, enhanced and ongoing training and development, and new forms of working arrangements with special emphasis on family-friendly work practices.  Would investment in, and the transitional phase of implementation of, such intitiatives cost money?  Yes, of course.  But the gains to enterprise are considerable:

• Access to new labour pools
• Enhance corporate reputation (a considerable marketing and brand strength) 
• Attract highly talented people and Improve motivation and efficiency of existing staff
• Improve innovation and creativity amongst employees
• Enhance service levels and customer satisfaction
• Overcome labour shortages and reduce staff turnover (a considerable cost for some companies as this involves training new personnel) 
• Lower absenteeism levels and improve manager-employee relations
• Legal compliance, thereby avoiding litigation costs
• Internal culture change leading to improved collaboration and collegiality

These are not back-of-the-envelope deductions.  They are backed up by a plethora of Irish and international case studies of companies that have actually invested in equality and diversity strategies and have reaped the gains.  This is a win-win for all concerned – except that in Ireland our home-grown management prefer lose-lose.  A survey by the European Business Test Panel published by the EU showed Ireland lagging behind a number of countries when measuring the extent to which such workplace strategies have been implemented.

Germany leads the pack with 32 percent of companies with 'well-embedded policies and practices', followed by the UK (29), Norway (23) and the Netherlands (22).  In Ireland only 16 percent of companies had such policies and practices, trailing behind Poland.  And of that 16 percent, I suspect, most are multi-nationals.  Certainly the Irish case studies rarely refer to an indigenous company. 

This is all of a piece.  Studies by the National Centre for Partnership and Performance (a body which Fine Gael wants to abolish) has shown that companies which recognise trade unions and have employee participation schemes  are more productive thanthose companies that don't.  This is the high-road of employment, a slow, creeping democracy into our workplaces – one that must be done on employees' terms and imbue the entire organisation if it is to work.

But it is doubtful if we will hear protests from the business organisations over Mr. Crowley's resignation or the gutting of the Equality Authority.  While Mr. Crowley was writing his resignation letter, ISME was issuing yet another news statement, demanding the pay agreement to be scrapped; this in addition to previous calls to get rid of 30,000 public servants.  Would ISME take note that only 5% of Irish SMEs have equality and diversity programmes installed?  Probably not.  Not their thing.  Better to cut their employees wages and bash public sector workers.

There is little doubt that, to increase productivity and innovation, we need to up our game.  The Equality Authority is indispensable to that task, just as the National Centre for Partnership and Performance is in the related fields they study.  But Fianna Fail has effectively gotten rid of one while Fine Gael has argued for getting rid of the other.

And they say the Left and the trade union movement is anti-business.