On behalf of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions Unions and our affiliated unions I thank the committee for the invitation to discuss the statutory review of the operation of the legislation providing the right to request remote working, as well as AI in the workplace. It is pertinent we are meeting in the week May Day falls to discuss seismic changes in how work gets done. The 1st of May is an important date in the trade union calendar. It commemorates the power struggle for, and widespread adoption of, the shorter working day and improved work-life balance for workers as our share from the productivity gains from new technologies in the industrial age. It will be celebrated as a public holiday in over 80 countries this weekend, including Ireland.
Unions were the first to identify the gap in Irish employment law for employees requesting remote work in the summer of 2020. We worked tirelessly with Department officials and business representatives throughout the legislative journey and in the development of a code of practice to provide accessible guidance on the provisions of the Act. For large numbers of employees, remote and hybrid working arrangements are highly prized. According to the CSO’s latest figures, one third of the workforce, which is around 1 million people, work from home at least some of the time, with over 500,000 people working more than half of the time. The overall figure has remained high and stable since the Covid-19 restrictions ended.
The right to request remote working provisions under the Work Life Balance and Miscellaneous Provisions Act 2023 commenced in March 2024. The vast majority of remote and hybrid working arrangements are not made using this formal process. Instead, employees and employers rely on a company policy or collective agreement that is tailored to fit that employment in compliance with the legislation. However, ensuring the legal framework - that is, the rules - for making and managing requests is fit for purpose is key for setting minimum standards and for where there is no workplace policy in place or when the parties disagree.
On 5 March, the Minister, Deputy Burke, and the Minister of State, Deputy Dillon, published a statutory review of the operation of the legislation as required by section 29 of the Act. The review process comprised three strands, namely, a public consultation, a nationally-representative survey of 1,041 employees and separately a survey of 517 employers, as well as a series of one-to-one stakeholder interviews on the operation of the Act. Congress and our affiliated unions engaged in good faith with this review. We did so first by promoting and encouraging participation in the public consultation through our networks, at the request of the Department. The response was one of the highest ever for a Government Department public consultation, with a total of 8,181 survey responses received. Some 7,861 came from employees and 320 from employers or others, who were most likely members of the public. Second, representatives from four unions, two of which join me here, participated in face-to-face, in-depth interviews on their first-hand experience of the Act.
The review concluded the legislation is delivering and amendments to the Act are not proposed on the basis of a key finding of the national survey, which is that outright refusal is a rare event when the formal process is used. The refusal rate was 7% in the employee survey and 3% in the employer survey. There was a high incidence of approval, with 61% of employees requests being fully approved as submitted and 33% partially approved. This headline-grabbing 94% approval rate was reference four times in the Government press release. What was not mentioned was that it is based on a subsample of just 124 employees. The only reference to sample size was to the "more than 8,000 consultation responses" to the separate public consultation strand. Predictably, the two got conflated in the media reporting of the review. The review’s "most conclusive [finding]" that "when the formal legislative process is used, it is overwhelmingly effective" does not tally with our experience. Employers have not been overly perturbed by anything that is in the legislation.
It is at most an administrative inconvenience for an employer who does not want to give their permission or when they change their mind. This is not unions railing against an awkward truth. Recent high-profile examples of return-to-office mandates or changes to the minimum in-person attendance level and the close to 0% success rate for WRC cases taken by employees make abundantly clear that the right to request remote working as currently legislated is failing to deliver for far too many employees. My colleagues joining me today can share their members’ experience of the legislation. To be clear, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions acknowledges that no employee worldwide has an automatic right to freely choose where they perform their job. The 2023 Act provides a legal framework for making and managing requests to work remote, bringing us in line with statutory flexi-work rights across the EU and the rest of English-speaking world. However, we have legitimate concerns about the existing rules on refusing and withdrawing permission. The rules need strengthening and adding to the 32-page code of practice, as the review recommends, is not going to put the brakes on employers’ unchecked power to say no.
Turning to AI in the workplace, another national representative survey, a European Commission Eurobarometer survey of 1,006 people in Ireland - 26,400 in total across the EU - about their attitudes to the use of AI and the future of work in February 2024, found that two thirds of people are totally positive about the impact of new technologies including AI on their jobs while at the same time the survey reveals a strong appetite for protections on the use of AI in the workplace. Some 84% say it is important to have rules which protect workers’ privacy; 80% say it is important to have rules which involve workers and their representatives in the design and adoption of new technologies; 77% say it is important to have rules which enforce more transparency in the use of digital technologies to handle HR decision-making; 76% say it is important to have rules prohibiting fully automated decision-making processes; and 76% say it is important to have rules limiting the automated monitoring of employees. People in general and trade unions in particular are not looking to hold back the tide of progress. Most acknowledge the immense potential AI systems offer for improving their work and workplace when used in the right way, which requires guardrails around these largely invisible technologies and employers to consult with employees and their representatives. My colleagues joining me today can share their unions’ experience of consultation and agreements struck to secure AI protections for their members.
To ensure AI delivers for workers as much as for business, we need to equip employees with the skills required to keep pace with dramatic developments in the way we work. We also need to prepare for technological unemployment. We will need a just transition approach whereby policies are put in place so that where parts of jobs, whole jobs or whole industries become redundant, workers’ living standards are protected through pay-related income supports, retraining opportunities are available and the jobs of the future are quality jobs for displaced workers to move into. I thank members for their attention. We are happy to take any questions.
