scholarly journals Industrial Relations in the Republic of Ireland

1970 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Brosnan

The Republic of Ireland and New Zealand are alike in many respects. They have similar-sized populations and similar climates; agriculture has an unusual prominence in their national economies and industrial development is strongly encouraged. In addition, both were once British colonies and have similar legal and political systems with English as their majority language. Despite these, and many other similarities, the two countries have markedly different industrial relations systems. In contrast to New Zealand's state-regulated system, the Irish system is notably voluntaristic, multi-unionism is the norm and Irish unions compete for membership with British-based unions. There are many other differences and this paper highlights the main aspects of the Irish system, covering the collective bargaining system, the union and employer organisations, legislation, Ireland's experience with national pay agreements, participation in management, picketing policy, union restructuring and public sector industrial relations.

1970 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gordon Anderson

This issue of the Jounral introduces the first of what the editors hope will be a regular series of synoposia on industrial relations topics of special relevance to our predominantly New Zealand readers, but also to those abroad. The first topic "Industrial relations in smaller countries" was chosen because the editors hoped that it would allow a comparison of how some smaller countries have developed their industrial relations systems to cope with the problems that small size creates. The four countries represented: Austria, NorWay, Switzerland and the Republic of Ireland are all apparently similar to New Zealand in certain obvious aspects. These include their small populations, a high percentage of G.D.P. involved in foreign trade and the fact that they all are developed, western, democratic societies with a high standard of living.


1979 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
David F. Smith

Industrial democracy and worker participation have become important topics for international debate, with developments taking place in many countries. Despite its former reputation for advances in the social field, little has been heard about developments in worker participation in New Zealand. The aim of the present paper is to report and assess such developments whilst placing these within the context of developments in industrial relations in that country. The strong reliance upon legal arrangements and government intervention in industrial relations matters have had a marked effect upon the development of the industrial relations system in New Zealand. Yet, despite this tradition of legalism, successive governments remain singularly reluctant to legislate in the field of worker participation. Recent initiatives by employers have been strongly unitary in nature, whilst the trade unions appear to be concentrating their efforts upon extending the scope of collective bargaining, an opportunity afforded to them due to recent changes in the law. The present Government's wish that voluntary arrangements between employers and trade unions will eventuate to cover worker participation seems less than pragmatic, since employers, unions and the Government itself differ so fundamentally upon what constitutes worker participation, and the forms it might take.


2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 501-524
Author(s):  
Siti Suraya Abd Razak ◽  
Nik Ahmad Kamal Nik Mahmod

The trade union recognition process is a pre-requisite to the collective bargaining action of a trade union. The recognition is important to ascertain the competency of a trade union and the acceptance by the workers to represent them in the collective bargaining action with the employer. However, the ambiguities in the existing legislations on the trade union recognition process in Malaysia and the anti-union practices of the employer are currently depriving the workers of their rights to negotiate for better working conditions. The primary focus of the present work is to identify the weaknesses of the recognition legal framework and the anti-union practices of employers in the recognition process of trade unions. Secondly, is to critically analyse the good faith bargaining practice in other countries and its significance to the recognition process in Malaysia. To explore the anti-union tactics perpetrated by employers, semi-structured interviews have been conducted to analyse the trade unions’ experience in their recognition claims. This research employed a qualitative approach as the instrument to study the good faith bargaining practices in the Australian and New Zealand labour law framework. The findings reveal that the good faith bargaining practices in Australia and New Zealand have improved the odds for trade unions to represent the workers in negotiating collective agreements. The study finally concludes that in order to reform the recognition process of trade unions in Malaysia, the good faith bargaining practice should be implemented in the nation’s industrial relations law framework.


2011 ◽  
pp. 1557-1557
Author(s):  
Brian Mulligan

There is a major contrast in the Republic of Ireland between e-learning content production and the actual use of e-learning technologies. Per head of population, Ireland has one of the highest participation rates in e-learning content production in the world. CBT Systems was set up in Ireland in the mid-80s, and subsequently evolved into SmartForce and later SkillSoft. The original founders of CBT Systems later went on to set up other e-learning ventures such as Riverdeep. In addition to these well-known companies, there are many smaller content-development ventures that either trade under their own names or contract to larger e-learning content providers. There has been some investment in content-development operations by overseas companies. NETg recently closed a major operation in Ireland as part of a restructuring process after their acquisition by Thomson. However, several international corporations have located internal e-learning content development in Ireland. Indeed, Ireland’s industrial development agencies have identified e-learning content development as a growth opportunity, listing availability of software and pedagogy skills as well as excellent international broadband connections as competitive advantages for such investment (http://www.enterprise-ireland.com/ or http://www.idaireland.com/).


2011 ◽  
Vol 01 (05) ◽  
pp. 63-70
Author(s):  
Anyim C. Francis ◽  
Elegbede Tunde ◽  
Mariam A. ◽  
Gbajumo Sheriff

The objective of this paper is to examine the dynamics of collective bargaining machinery in both the public and private sectors in Nigeria; with a view to bringing to the fore the peculiarities associated with both sectors with regard to the practice of bargaining. To achieve this objective, the paper adopts a theoretical approach. The author observes that the practice of industrial relations as a discipline and that of collective bargaining in particular emanated from the private sector the world over. Thus, much of the practices of public sector collective bargaining are modelled after the private sector collective bargaining. However, in Nigeria, the obverse is the case as collective bargaining gained its root in the public sector owing to the near absence of private sector at the turn of the century. However, in Nigeria, the public sector pays lip-service to the collective bargaining machinery. Governments at all levels (Federal, State and Local) have continued to set aside collective bargaining and to give wage awards to score political points in spite of its commitment to the ILO Convention 98 to freely bargain with workers. The State or the government in the course of regulating wages and employment terms and conditions revert to the use of wage commissions. Thus, wage determination is by fiat. This preference for wage commissions can at best be regarded as a unilateral system as collective bargaining is relegated to the background.Wage tribunals or commissions offer little opportunity for workers’ contribution in the determination of terms and conditions of employment and can hardly be viewed as bilateral or tripartite. Thus, the State preference for wage commissions is anti-collective bargaining. In spite of Nigeria’s commitment to Conventions of the ILO with particular reference to such Conventions as 87 of 1948 and 98 of 1949 which provide for freedom of association and the right of workers to organize and bargain collectively. Thus, the use of wage commissions is antithetical to collective bargaining.


1970 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Raymond Harbridge ◽  
Stuart McCaw

The on-going saga of the G.N. Hale redundancy dispute appears now to have run its course. From grievance committee, to the Labour Court, to the Court of Appeal, and back to the Labour Court, the case has attracted considerable attention - from the media and naturally from industrial relations practitioners, eager to learn the view of the New Zealand court system on the vexed matter of redundancy compensation. In the most recent Labour Coun decision on Hale (WLC89/90), Goddard C J held that while the employer was able to prove that the worker was genuinely made redundant the dismissal was unjustifiable because "the circumstances called for the payment of compensation; none was paid; and the amount that was offered and refused was fixed by unilateral decision of the employer and was inadequate". The effect of this decision is profound. Employers planning to make employees redundant have a new set of requirements to meet before their actions can be taken as justifiable. While it will remain the case that there is no right to compensation for a dismissal on the grounds of redundancy unless that right is conferred by a redundancy agreement or by an award or collective agreement, there may still be a right to compensation if the dismissal, although genuinely on the grounds of redundancy, is unjustifiable and thereby gives rise to a successful personal grievance. An employer will now need to focus on the circumstances of the redundancy to detetuaine whether it calls for compensation and where it does, the employer will need to offer, and have accepted, compensation that is both adequate and negotiated.


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