Government faces litmus test on protecting working people – Cullinane

Sinn Féin TD and all-Ireland Workers’ Rights spokesperson David Cullinane has said that the new government faces ‘a litmus test as to whether it is serious about tackling vested interests in our society and protecting working people and or whether it will simply deliver mothballed reports and a wringing of hands’.

The Waterford TD said:

“It is obvious that IBEC will resist any attempt to treat working people as anything more than pawns.

“The Expert Examination and Review of Laws report presented to the Minister for Jobs is quite clear that the disquiet arising from the Clery’s case ‘stems from the fact that the employer’s insolvency was preceded by a company restructuring which involved a separation into two different entities of the principal property asset and the operations of the business’ and that this separation was used to allow the entity to avoid its obligations to its employers, leaving the State to foot the bill. This was all within the existing legal framework.

“IBEC, while accepting that something needs to be done, does not want any new legislative framework to address the issue, instead putting forward an argument that advocates keeping things as they are and using a form of moral suasion on directors to do the right thing.

“Clearly lessons have not been learned from the crisis as this was the approach taken with regard to our banks.

“IBEC continues to put forward a view of company-employee relations where directors and vulture funds are treated as princes with working people their acquiescent subjects.

“The Programme for Government talks about a new dawn in Irish politics and Irish society.

“The Expert Report on Clery’s is a litmus test for the new government as to whether it is serious about tackling vested interests in our society and protecting working people and or whether it will simply deliver mothballed reports and a wringing of hands.”