I liked micmclo 's post above, many very good points. I wonder if the legislation will be long-fingered because of a visceral dislke of unions in FG and little public demand for change. Especially now. Overly powerful unions have done little to advance their causes. They overstep the mark so much and so often, the public have little appetite for increasing their power.
Likewise people are wary of dodgey employers and reckless financal institutions with little regulation or obvious accountability. The lessons of the last few years surely are that no vested interests should trump the will of the people or hold too much power. People should be able to join unions but unions should concern themselves only with employee issues and not try to extend their influence in the political sphere.
The public should indeed have little appetite. Proponents of unions trot out the same old tired justification again and again i.e. that dodgy employers need to kept in line to protect low paid vulnerable workers. This is a mere smoke-screen, unions are mainly all about protecting higher paid workers, especially in the public sector.
The reasons most multinational firms are anti-union are founded on very sound analysis of what unions will do, once recognised. For example, take a company that needs to quickly adapt to changes in the market place - perhaps by retraining workers so that the company can produce a new product to compete with a new-product launched by a competitor.
In a non-union company,management meet employees - share information as to the challenge faced, and explain what needs to be done to protect market share. Employees would most likely make required changes, to protect theirs and the company's interests.
If unionized, the company could not approach employees directly about the issue. They would have to negotiate any changes with the union, who would demand payment for change. Eventually, agreement would be reached, however, costs would be increased and the time lost negotiating would have given the competitor an advantage. Thus the company's competitive position is eroded.
You may think this is an exaggeration - it isn't. My personal experience as a manager,is, when forced to deal with unions, that, absolutely everything is negotiable, even very very trivial things. And, that no amount of logical argument will move unions off completely irrational positions.
Furthermore, in Ireland, unlike most other countries in Europe, unions can negotiate on absolutely anything they wish - there are no limits. In most other countries they may only bargain on a limited range of issues.
Also, there is no binding step in Irish industrial relations (except in very limited circumstances) - which means, that even after months of negotiations, culminating in a recommendation from the Labour Court, that unions can refuse to accept the outcome, which they often do.
So, the multinationals are absolutely right to be against forced recognition. And, lets be clear, they will not accept it. Their opposition will be silent.....they just wont come here.......