Employers groups and trade unions in Northern Ireland will learn on Monday how recently appointed Minister for the Economy Caoimhe Archibald intends to proceed with the proposals to update and reform employment legislation tabled by her predecessor Conor Murphy when she briefs the Assembly on Good Jobs Employment Rights Bill.
The statement comes more than six months after a public consultation on the wide-ranging proposals closed and with the respective representative organisations said to be deeply polarised on the scale of the measures originally envisaged.
Changes to the current employment legislative framework were set out under about 30 headings in the 159-page document that accompanied the consultation. They included new rules on zero-hours contracts, fire and rehire, union access to workplaces, work/life balance measures and a good deal more.
Roger Pollen, head of the Northern Irish Federation of Small Businesses, says the organisation’s membership was stunned by the scale of what was being envisaged and while some of the proposals are “common sense”, recent increases in employer social security, lingering post-Brexit challenges and now huge uncertainty around tariffs all combined to make this “a shocking time to be trying to impose a whole raft of extra measures on businesses”.
“Northern Ireland has fallen behind the employment law changes that have happened in both GB and in Ireland so there’s quite a significant degree of catching up required,” he says. “But in addition to catching up, there’s a lot of other things being included here, such as massive trade union involvement in small businesses, notice periods for strike action … a lot of really concerning issues that may be suddenly thrust on businesses.”
Gerry Murphy of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions remains confident the detail of the Bill to be announced on Monday by Ms Archibald will include most of his organisation’s key objectives and says the legislation, if passed, would, as originally suggested by Mr Murphy, be welcomed by good employers.
“The Bill will go some way in addressing the disparities between responsible employers, who offer fair wages and decent working conditions, and those who rely on exploitative, low-cost labour models,” he says.
“ Many ethical businesses face competition from unscrupulous employers using precarious and exploitative work practices to keep costs down. By establishing these minimum standards, it will help create a fairer environment that encourages and gives cover to employers who invest in their workforce.”
Mark McAllister, chief executive of the Labour Relations Agency, broadly equivalent to the Workplace Relations Commission, agrees many of the measures envisaged are either intended to bring the Northern Ireland position into line with British legislation enacted between 2016 and 2020 and also to ensure it is not left behind again by the Labour government’s new employment rights legislation.
“Much of that is relatively straightforward,” he says, “not big ticket items. But there is also some fairly some fairly radical stuff, including on sectoral collective bargaining, which would be more in line with some of the provisions in Ireland but would represent seismic change in this jurisdiction.”
The employers, he says, are arguing “the sheer volume of all this is overwhelming and the timing couldn’t be worse. The unions are saying they’ve been waiting for a decade for a new floor on employment rights, and it’s time the changes were implemented. So things have become very polarised.”
Whatever the Bill contains at this stage, it will have a potentially tricky road ahead as a measure of cross-party support is required and, says Mr Pollen, members of the Committee for the Economy, chaired by the DUP’s Philip Brett raised some significant concerns when department officials appeared before it.
Monday’s announcement then may simply mark a stepping up in tussle between the two sides.
