Notes on the Front

ISME’s threat to the wage subsidy scheme is irresponsible and cynical.  According to the Irish Times: 

‘An employers’ group threatened to advise its members to ignore the State’s scheme to cover 70 per cent of laid-off workers’ wages, unless problems with the emergency Covid legislation being debated on Thursday were fixed.’

What is it that so concerns ISME – the employer body for small and medium-sized enterprises – that they threaten the wage subsidy scheme, threaten to undermine the living standards of hundreds of thousands of workers, threaten business survival and threaten a more rapid recovery once the emergency is over?. 

They are opposed to the provision that all companies that avail of the scheme will have their names published on the Revenue Commissioner’s website.  They describe this as ‘red tape’ though there is no administrative cost on businesses arising from Revenue publishing their names (when you want to have a go at something, call it ‘red tape’).

But they go further.

“Publication by Revenue is something that is usually reserved for tax defaulters,” Neil McDonnell, Isme’s chief executive, told The Irish Times. The ostensible objective of the scheme is to get employers to continue to pay workers. But the notion of publication sends the wrong message. It is treating companies in a crisis as if they were tax defaulters. It is tone deaf.”

While the issue of making public the businesses who avail of the wage subsidy scheme is exercising the employers’ body, it is actually fairly common.  Businesses in receipt of state-aid are identified on this EU database (the State Aid Transparency Public Search).  This includes companies benefiting from IDA, Enterprise Ireland and other state agency grants.  Beneficiaries of Common Agricultural Policy payments are likewise identified on this database.  Further, General Medical Scheme payments to doctors are publicly available. 

The publication of the names of businesses and individuals in receipt of public monies is fairly routine.  So why is ISME opposed to this?  It is up to them to answer honestly but here is a surmise.

Transparency raises the question of accountability.  And therein lies the problem for some interests.  If they are seen to be in receipt of public monies, they may be asked (or it may be demanded of them) to act in an accountable way.  For instance, a company receives state-aid and, yet, they refuse to abide by the state’s industrial relations machinery.  Or they refuse to act in an environmentally responsible way.  Or they refuse to acknowledge any other stakeholder in their business, save the ‘owners’. 

Public monies bring (or should bring) public responsibilities.  This is something that various companies or employer lobby groups don’t want to abide. They want to take the state-aid and continue business as usual – which may mean continuing to deny their employees respect (e.g. won’t recognise their employees’ desire to bargain collectively, ignores health and safety demands, continues to operate precarious contracts, etc.).  Transparency opens up the possibility of employee and consumer scrutiny and public monitoring.

This crisis raises more than just the publication of the recipients of the wage subsidy scheme.  It raises the general issue of transparency.  Many companies are exempt from providing publicly-available financial accounts to the Corporation Registration Office (CRO).  And the office itself charges for access to these accounts (unlike in the UK where you can access this information for free).  Once the emergency passes, we should revisit these arrangements.  Not only should all businesses be required to submit to the CRO full financial accounts, those accounts should be freely accessible.

Most of all, we need to politicise transparency.  There is a reasonable demand that recipients of state-aid should act in a publicly-responsible way.  They should be required to engage with the state’s industrial relations machinery, respect their employees’ wish to bargain collectively, promote climate justice;  in many instances, the state should aid by way of taking equity in the company.  This will not be easy.  As we have seen, ISME is willing to tank the economy and the long-term interests of their own members just to maintain secrecy over who gets the subsidies that you and I pay for.

But when was the struggle for democracy ever easy?