My kind of Social Partnership

I generally glaze over when it comes to pensions and associated financial matters. However, Jim Power, the Friends First Economist could convince me to take out a different life assurance policy every day and start my own additional voluntary contributions. He's just so interesting, straight forward, articulate and ... well lets face it, incredibly sexy.

I've heard Jim's polemic on Social Partnership several times now. How it is a cosy club for non-elected special interest groups to get to make all the key decisions and ignore the fact that there isn't really a true social partnership. Jim is most convincing. It is a joke - agreeing not to strike (and being rewarded for it) in a small open economy with near full employment and where wages get bid up/down by the market. Social partnership has brought us years of industrial rest but at the price of benchmarking. The 'one size fits all' model just doesn't work for sectors which are so radically different and so differently competitive. Jim argues that the unions want to have an additional negotiation clause for those industries which are doing very well. The unions have been the real winners ; Employers have allowed there competitive base to be eroded and the Catholic Church are still setting the agenda.

Then I thought. I remember when the country was held to ransom by the trade unions. I remember how two or three unions regularly competed with each other for the mantle of defenders of the working class and at the same time, really couldn't give a tinker's curse for the plight of the workers. I remember having a shit salary, tiny pay rises and no prospect of getting another job. I recall wage restraint for years on end for the prospect of 'jam tomorrow'. I remember how US companies wouldn't set foot in Ireland 'cos of it's militant unions.

I remember that in previous partnership agreements a clause was put into effect that allowed employers who couldn't pay the chance of opting out. If a hardship clause could be invoked by IBEC surely it was reasonable to implement a 'time of plenty' penalty also. I notice how despite programmes for prosperity, partnership & peace and sustaining progress we've done nothing about social housing, the poverty trap or the plight of family carers.

I know the current talks performance is all about posturing and pretending to solve an intractable problem. Jim is right, they'll come to an agreement and everyone will slap each other on the back. Crisis averted. However, I'm just glad enough people woke up to the fact that 'win/lose' is always less satisfactory than 'win some/lose some'.

So I wonder who has gained most from Partnership? I wonder if Jim is really just rattling the sabre outside of the tent on behalf of IBEC so that Begg and the boys agree any deal is better than no deal.

Also I wonder why I even care, and why at 23:35 on a Tuesday night I'm writing about social partnership and not snuggled up in my bed. But then when Jim tells it, you've just got to listen. Balance of payments ..... interest rate hikes ....... market economy ....... I'm melting at his feet. Damn those Munster men, they'll send me to a home for the bewildered!