Social Partnership and Union Revitalisation: The Irish Case

The Irish model of social partnership is sometimes hailed as a success story for unions. According to a familiar storyline, the unions avoided marginalisation and devised a strategy to balance competitiveness and equity (Hardiman 1988). They were given a political voice and were able to lessen the worst effects of neoliberalism. Unlike their British counterparts, who followed a path of confrontation and support for ‘old Labour values’, Irish trade unionism modernised and reaped the rewards. This, at least, is the storyline developed by its advocates. Paul Sweeney (2008: 125), of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU), suggested that social partnership has brought about a fundamental change in the relationship between workers and employers, claiming that ‘for unions and employers the biggest accomplishment has been getting into the heads of each other, to understand unambiguously what the deep concerns of the other side are’. Critics, however, might suggest that the communication traffic has mainly been one-way, with the unions taking on the employers’ problems. Statistics on the distribution of wealth do not indicate that Irish workers benefited more than their counterparts elsewhere. Living standards certainly improved as a result of a long boom but the share of the economy distributed to wages declined. Table 4.1 presents data on the adjusted wage share of the total economy and indicates that the share distributed to wages declined faster in Ireland than in the original EU-15.