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IN MY JOB as a Trade Union Organiser, I often find myself saying “Ireland is different” when talking to colleagues who work for unions elsewhere in Europe.
Comparing Ireland with say France is like comparing apples with oranges.
In France, wages and terms and conditions at work are set down by a collective bargaining model, where workers have a voice on what happens in their jobs. Despite ongoing changes in the law, the vast majority of workers in France are covered by sectoral agreements which set standards for pay and terms and conditions at work.
According to the OCED, collective bargaining arrangements cover 98% of workers in Austria and 96% in Belgium.
Collective bargaining
In Ireland, however, the idea of setting down wages and conditions through collective bargaining is barely discussed. When the labour market is discussed at all, we generally deal with simplistic and often completely misleading debates about the public and private sector.
In reality, we have the weakest trade union recognition laws in Western Europe. Not only do we have very poor legislation for extending collective agreements, the very basis of our laws for even being part of a trade union are weak.
Incredibly, there is no legislation in place to guarantee trade union recognition in the Republic of Ireland. Even the UK, which generally is considered to have a “liberal market” approach to industrial relations, if the majority of workers want to be part of a union, a company must reach a recognition arrangement. But not here.
Legal backdrop
This legal backdrop has led to a situation where unions in Ireland are weaker than they ought to be. Our “voluntarist” approach to industrial relations is often referred to as an “opt in” system.
The problem is some employers are choosing to opt out, even when workers do want to be part of a union, as shown in the ongoing campaigning involving Mandate and Lloyds pharmacies.
We don’t hear near enough about the bread and butter issues of work-how much people are paid, what they should be paid, and how this should be regulated and managed.
Not a high wage nirvana
In truth, Ireland is not the high wage nirvana it is sometimes made out to be. TASC, the think tank for action on social change, estimate that 29% of working women are categorised as “low paid”. Our salaries are behind EU averages, despite occasional claims to the contrary from employer organisations.
In Northern Ireland, the situation is starker still. Invest NI deliberately stakes the claim that salaries in financial services in Northern Ireland are 40% below London and 30% below Dublin.
Even within companies, there are serious divides. Take the gender pay gap in financial services, for example; Morgan McKinley estimates that the pay gap stands at 29% in the sector.
Gap between salaries and rents
The CSO evidence suggests that pay has not kept pace with increases in productivity. Meanwhile, the gap between average house prices and rents and average salaries has exploded exponentially.
House prices in Ireland were remarkably stable until the mid-90s. In 1996, the average second house in Dublin was 3 times annual earnings. By 2016, average second hand house prices were 7.5 time average annual earnings.
Consider the gap that has opened up, and you get sense what has happened to wages in Ireland. Consider also that our childcare costs are the second highest in the OCED and you get a sense of the comparative weakness of workers’ earnings in Ireland.
For those concerned about widening inequality and the decline in real wages, there is a solution – join a trade union. The research shows that unionised workplaces are better paid. Some international studies have estimated the union premium to be has high as ten per cent.
A host of other benefits
Trade union membership has a host of other benefits. For example, trade union members have the capacity to challenge outcomes in the workplace which they deem to be unfair.
Research from the Financial Services Union (FSU) shows that Performance Related Pay (PRP) is often a major cause of frustration at work. With a union at your side, you can challenge PRP outcomes. Without a union, you have no independent voice.
A route to improved terms and conditions
Even in the absence of Government will to protect and uphold standards in the workplace through sectoral agreements that are the norm elsewhere in Europe, there is hope in that trade union membership offers a route to improved pay and terms and condition.
There has recently been an upsurge in activity in previously un-unionised sectors such as Archaeology, English Language teaching and parts of the Film and TV sector which were non-union. The progress made by pilot and cabin crew in Ryanair reflects a very real change-there are now very few “no go areas” for trade unions in Ireland.
The Financial Services union has noticed an upsurge in membership, and now has members in more than 50 companies.
All of this offers cause to believe that change can happen when workers get together and seek a better deal at work. Our relatively poor legal situation for collective bargaining and trade union recognition should change, but trade union membership will still lead to better outcomes at work.
Paul Dillon is an Organiser with the Financial Services Union. He also presents the Office Block podcast. The latest edition of the Podcast, dealing with pay, productivity and performance management is available at https://soundcloud.com/theofficeblock/episode-3-productivity-performance-and-pay-in-the-workplace. See @TheOBtweets and follow Paul at @pauldonaldillon
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I grew up in USSR and we had DIY lessons in school, I can confirm – most of the skills I use all the time in my life after that, must have!
For “cold war” fans – I also learned in school how to throw a grenade and what to do in case of a nuclear strike :)
Sh*t, you played with hand grenades and we learned about Peig!
Our sex education included elements of DIY…
… literally “daddy then puts his plug into mammy’s socket”.
I would agree but their is people who haven’t the hands to bless them selfs with.
I remember in our Home Ec book there was a basic ‘How to Wire a Plug’ type section. Can’t hurt teaching these basic skills in school. Take away one of the Religion classes for it.
Do people now believe that if they have a go at religion everytime they open their mouths that they are somehow making some kind of comment that is intelligent or what. It is the new sheeple activity….lemmings
No Sheelagh, but replacing the teaching of it in schools is a valid opinion these days.
I remember that. It came in handy there a couple of months ago.. a good 15 years later!
@Hanley I was not picking on Religion classes just for the sake of picking on religion. I only suggested them be used because in a lot of schools they are used as free classes or study periods. I had three a week when I was in school and it would have been beneficial for myself and my classmates to take one of those classes and be taught how to change a tire or something to that effect. It wouldn’t have spoiled my religious education if I had two instead of three classes a week.
It certainly would be more useful than imposed irish!
Forced Irish! No choice but to ‘learn’ it.
I am pretty sure i had no choice in any of my subjects until Second Level.
They should teach basic computer maintenance too, along with the importance of/how to set your privacy settings.
Keyboard typing lessons (touch typing) would be also handy.
YouTube :)
Start by teaching them how to change a wheel. lol
This should be part of the driving test, if you can’t chance the wheel of your car then you can’t pass the test
Get rid of ALL religion classes and replace them with useful, practical things such as DIY. That’s how we save this country. Get on it!
Needs to be a separate “How to change wiper blades class”, especially for Halfords staff.
I think there has been what I call a “soft push” for people not to do things themselves. It has been viewed as good for the economy to phone someone else ie. a professional. I phone someone to install a dishwasher for example. They charge e100 to do the job. There’s a tax due right there. Their company takes 60% of the remainder while the man gets his 40% and both pay tax on that. Because we don’t trust anybody, we require this man to be certified to do this right in case it all goes pear-shaped, so that means he had to go to to school. There’s teachers get paid who pay tax…………….You see where this is going. Imagine if I go buy a few washers and a spanner and do it myself. Maybe I’ll teach my kids how to do this too. I could get in trouble!!
having been to many “diy experts” houses to put right their own attempts at small wiring jobs. i would imagine that a fair amount of those people saying they have a knowledge of diy possibly have a toolbox with a few tools and as a result consider themselves to be experts. if your not sure leave it to the pros. hope its not taught in schools for selfish reasons it would mean less handy jobs for me.
How many professional electricians are competent to use an oscilloscope for measuring timing of contact bounce/ release times of contacts. Or using generic meters to test rather than one click machines. Many DIYers are very capable. Of course some know their limitations. I have met loads of professional electricians who don’t understand peak, rms, power factor, and j notation, capacitive and inductive circuits etc. Few electricians would know how to measure peak voltage with an ordinary moving coil meter calibrated for rms. Few know the effect of using too high an input impedence meter on a dead cable when testing before working on.
@Aurfur 99.99% of domestic electrical call outs would never need any of what you mentioned.
only speaking from personal experience but then i don’t suppose those who are genuine need a sparks to fix it. Fas syllabus has everything you mention in it and if you know the theory and maths behind electricity an rms meter is all you need to get peak.
If you want to test a residual current breaker, or test a capacitor (well pumps) and subsequently change it you need to understand peak and rms values and how to use generic test gear. Also need to understand how to calculate capacitance in series and parallel if the correct value is not to hand on a call out. Whilst we are on that subject adjusting relay tension, follow through and residual gaps all come into play on switch gear for pumps. Surely the object of a competent person is to safely restore service to non working equipment as soon as possible.
I saw a professional electrician test a dead cable with a 10 Mohms per volt input impedance meter and then couldn’t understand why he had a 100 volt reading on it. I lent him a 20 Kohm per volt analogue meter and suggested he try that. He never understood why he now had a zero reading but was happy to then work on the cable.
Finally if a boiler doesnt work you can’t just change the boiler you need to be able to test which component is faulty before disconnecting and repairing or replacing.
Pauline K
True you can calculate peak from rms and vice versa, but to actually measure peak with an rms calibrated multimeter you have to make up some circuitry. Square root of two and reciprocal of root two only apply to pure sine waves. With modified waveforms found in inverters there might be some uncertainty. Certainly most analogue meters with the exception of moving iron meters are calibrated to measure full sine waves at rms and within some frequency limitations. Hence a half wave rectified non smoothed interface would give a false rms reading, and if smoothed would read peak even if not a sine wave, provided the components used were suitably chosen. And to be correct if making up an interface to measure peak the losses in the components would need also to be taken into account.
Have to admit though, nothing like a recession to force you to learn these skills. Only yesterday I replaced the Alternator on my car, I still feel a little glow of achievment! I think it would be an excellent idea to teach it in schools along with basic cookery skills and diet advise. Youtube is a great resource of knowledge for these things, and you can have it on your smartphone or PC tab while you do it!
I learned most of this stuff myself as a kid from doing it myself or from the oul lad. What’s happened to kids who now have better access to the info? Too mollycoddled that’s the problem.
It amuses me what people don’t know what to do, and pay people to do for them
- Bleed rads
- Bleed oil boilers (seriously easy to do!)
- Replace a plug socket (also very very easy)
- Wire a plug (seriously)
- Wire a light socket (again also seriously easy)
And yet people pay other people to do these very easy things…the bleeding a oil boiler is as easy as bleeding a rad in fairness,
Interesting points!! Now when the person adjusts the oil pump pressure instead of bleeding the oil pump on a Riello G3b what happens or when they bleed the radiators and it drops the system pressure so much the circ pump cavitates and the boiler shuts down what do you do?
Call a plumber? You wouldn’t know any would ya Thomas? ;)
Make sandwich (easy) but i still go to subway;)
Buy a gauge, bleed the fuel, look at the pump manual, follow fault finding flow chart and reset procedure. Adjust pressure to manufacturers settings.
Recharge the primary water system with the filling loop to about 1bar. Get system going and calculate correct running pressure for system and size of pressure vessel.
How many plumbers over here fit a micronic filter to the fuel supply and a capillary fuel cut off outside the building with internal and external manual fuel shut off valves as per most boiler manufacturers manuals.
Sorry forgot wont have to buy a pressure gauge or smoke pump or gas analyser as I already got them in my tool box some years ago. Competent DIYer.
Parents are the primary educators of a child-let them learn DIY in the home!
Leave it to us teachers lads. We can shows kids how to wire plugs, fix tyres, drive cars and throw grenades in between solving all the ills of society from drunkness to morality, and teach, all at the same time.
Agree. Let teachers teach.
Getting teachers to teach DIY is like parents abdicating responsibility for teaching menial tasks which should be taught at home.
No one should leave high school with learning to drive. Seems crazy not to have that as part of the curriculum. Learning to wire a plug, change a tap, fix a puncture – where do you stop with basic DIY?
I work in the community centre where I live and we are offering a DIY class for €10 for 10 weeks not beyond anyone’s means especially if it saves them any money long term.
Very reasonable and good on you
FFS, this is DIY. Let the teachers teach. Mums and dads should teach kids how to do DIY. A teacher has no business doing this.
but if there is a gap in the passing on of these life skills then somewhere along the way it needs to be taught. I think most people point out that maybe as part of the TY programme not everyday teaching.
Don’t need classes Plenty of DIY books and DVDs out there for basics. Anyway most people are struggling so can’t afford classes
I learned how to change plugs in school, we did all that stuff in Home Economics.
Bleeding a radiator is simple?? What happens when you bleed your radiator and the system pressure drops so much the boiler shuts itself down? Why is there air in the radiator in the first place? How did it get in there? It didnt magically appear! How many times can you bleed the radiators before you cause serious damage to your system? And they said it was easy! The act is easy the consequences and reasons might not be so easy hence the experienced professional!
Pressure drop? You must have some sort of a gague (manometer) somewhere in your hotpress or around boiler where you can see current pressure and add more water from the mains using tap provided to increase the pressure. Pretty simple thing, there must be even some sort of a red arrow which points to the safe limit value, just keep adding water until black arrow reaches red one. If you do not have red arrow, no problem : usually safe limit is about 1,5 or 2 bar. Rocket science?
Agreed and then you clear the leak from the potential fault that the plumber left some years ago cos either he didn’t solder the joints properly and clean up afterward, or the compression joints weren’t tightened properly. How many plumbers can lead weld (burn) and know how to solder lead today.
We’ve had or view shifted to view many things as disposable and replaceable rather than repairable. Repair a mobile phone? Repair a Playstation. Even Sony have a policy of replacing rather than repairing returned units. It’s no wonder we don’t fix things ourselves anymore. Those ” warranty is void if opened/removed” stickers are not exactly or emoting self repair. Fixed my washing machine last month, after a mammoth amount of calls to get a repairman out ( still under warranty ). Gave me a big old jolt of masculine pride…
basic cooking skills should be taught too, everyone eats. everyone should be able to prepare simple meals for themselves. I have spoken to loads of people who live on take away because of total inability to cook for themselves, could this be part of the obesity problem.
On a similar note I had someone out to look at my dishwasher as its been playing up and I was told the part would be more expensive than a new machine white goods aren’t designed to last anymore.
Helena,
With the greatest of respect but if someone cannot cook a simple meal, it is due entirely to laziness or personal choice, not inability.
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