The Irish Congress of Trade Unions will hold the first major delegate conference to occur in Northern Ireland since the onset of the Covid pandemic in March 2020.
Postponed from July,
the ICTU BDC will now take place from 26-27 October 2021. The venue remains the same, the ICC Waterfront Hall, Belfast.
Another ‘first’ for the two-day conference will be its handling of safety measures and social distancing, further complicated by the cross-border status of ICTU, which means delegates from two jurisdictions attending in-person or online, all participating in debates and votes on motions which will determine the political, economic and social policies of the trade union movement across Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
For NI trade unions, the key strategic aims include fair employment, protecting the gains of the peace process and defending workers against the economic and social risks of Brexit.
The other focus for NIC-ICTU, and especially in the run-up to the NI Assembly election, is to build a political consensus across all parties to support workers’ rights, and to use the NI Assembly’s unique devolved powers over employment law to seal into legislation the promise of an under-discussed section of the New Decade New Approach agreement.
There is a particularly important clause around the whole issue of workers’ rights in the Agreement. Page 44, Clause X, of the Agreement is worth quoting in full. It says:
There will be an enhanced focus within the Programme for Government on creating good jobs and protecting workers’ rights. The parties agree that access to good jobs, where workers have a voice that provides a level of autonomy, a decent income, security of tenure, satisfying work in the right quantities and decent working conditions, should be integral to public policy given how this contributes to better health and wellbeing by tackling inequalities, building self-efficacy and combating poverty.
The key focus of the NIC-ICTU and the entire trade union movement is to use whatever influence we have to make these words a reality.
To that end we have engaged with a range of political parties in the last two years on this matter including the Alliance Party, the Ulster Unionist Party, Sinn Fein, the Social Democratic and Labour Party along with the UK Shadow Secretary of State for NI, Louise Haigh MP. More recently, we have held positive discussions on this clause with the new DUP leadership team of Sir Jeffrey Donaldson MP and Paula Bradley MLA.
We are pleased to announce that the leadership of all five parties in the NI Executive will, for the first time, share a single stage at a trade union conference and each will outline their party’s position on workers’ rights and the implementation of Clause X.
The party leaders will speak in alphabetical order for 10 minutes each and will be moderated by ICTU President Gerry Murphy.
The session will commence at 10:30 on the first morning of conference, Tuesday 26 October.
Full press facilities will be provided upon request.
For more information on the ICTU BDC, contact John O’Farrell on 07808 582546
