ICTU General Secretary David Begg
David Begg the General Secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions has warned that the Irish trade union movement is ‘not fit for purpose’ and needs to be re-structured.
He was speaking at the conference of the Communications Workers’ Union in Killarney, County Kerry.
Begg said all sectors of Irish society had a duty to examine how they operate post-Troika and that it couldn’t be business as usual.
He went onto that having 48 unions to represent just 800,000 people is not ‘compatible with the objective of securing change’.
He said the structure of the trade union movement is too fragmented, too under-resourced, too prone to internal disputation, too reform-resistant and too anchored in inertia to deal effectively with the challenges facing trade unions.
The structure of the trade union movement here is currently being examined by a Trade Union Commission, which has recommended that trade unions be re-organised along sectoral lines.
