Gavin Mendel-Gleason

The Workers’ Party have called for the introduction of legislation to “put manners” on rogue employers such as Ryanair which refuse to engage in the state’s industrial relations resolution mechanisms and employ bully-boy tactics against workers.

Workers’ Party Dublin North West representative Gavin Mendel-Gleason, said Ryanair’s industrial relations style was based on stonewalling all approaches by workers’ representatives and deliberately ramping up confrontation.

Mendel-Gleason said that while Ryanair and other employers could thumb their noses at the Workplace Relations Commission with impunity, workers and their representatives constantly had to fight for justice with one hand tied behind their backs as a result of the 1990 Industrial Relations Act while no parallel legislation imposes such constraints on employers.

He said: “Ryanair’s contempt for workers and its ramping up of the current dispute by threatening to sack workers shows it to be a rogue employer of the worst type. Rather than legislating to bring Ryanair to heel the present coalition is content to turn a blind eye in the knowledge that Ryanair’s actions are an encouragement to other rogue employers to do the same”

The Dublin North West activist said there the trade union movement as a body needed to unite and campaign actively and vigorously for the repeal of the 1990 Industrial Relations Act which Mr. Mendel Gleason described as a “strait-jacket for workers”.  In the meantime he called on unions to look for imaginative ways of showing practical solidarity with striking workers at Ryanair, Lloyd’s Pharmacy and other rogue employers.