We found out last year that three Filipinas had been working for as little as €2 an hour at the residence of the ambassador of the United Arab Emirates. The appropriately named Khalid Nasser Rashid Lootah confiscated their passports and never gave the maids a day off. Their “appalling” working conditions were exposed at the Employment Appeals Tribunal, where many a bad employer has been named and shamed.
Soon the EAT will be no more; it is disappearing into the Workplace Relations Commission, which will also take over the duties of the Equality Tribunal and rights commissioners. In future, employee grievances must first come before adjudication officers. But here’s the rub: their work will be done in private, and published decisions will not identify the employer or the worker involved. Or as the Workplace Relations Act 2015 puts it: “Proceedings before an adjudication officer shall be conducted otherwise than in public.”
So, will the entire employment grievance process now be “otherwise than in public”? Not quite. Those unhappy with a decision of the adjudication officer can appeal it to the Labour Court. Most of these appeals will be heard in public, though not all. The Labour Court can also operate “otherwise than in public” if, for example, a case features disability discrimination or alleged sexual harassment.
The secrecy over the new regime was challenged in the Seanad by Hildegarde Naughton, who said it “seems a backward step”. She got a most dispiriting answer from the Labour junior minister Gerald Nash: “There has not been any demand from the Irish Congress of Trade Unions or from Ibec for public hearings at first instance . . . We held an extensive consultation [about] these institutional reforms with the key stakeholders and did not detect any demand for hearings to be held in public at the first instance.”
Despite the collapse of social partnership in 2009, behold the influence employers and unions still wield in Government Buildings, effectively guiding the ministerial pen writing this legislation. Why would there be any “demand” from employers for their bad eggs to be cracked in public? Did Nash not consider that the prospect of being exposed might give stingy employers pause for thought before ripping off workers? And is he not aware that his party, Labour, introduced the Freedom of Information Act in 1997 (Eithne Fitzgerald) and restored it last year (Brendan Howlin) following its castration by Fianna Fail?
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The shutters going up around industrial relations are particularly curious given the increased transparency elsewhere in public life. Journalists can now report on family-law cases, with certain restrictions. The Medical Council and the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Ireland hold most disciplinary hearings in public. Even “fitness to teach” hearings will not be “otherwise than in public”, after another Labour minister, Jan O’Sullivan, bravely overruled the objections of trade unions.