The Guide prefaces the listing of legislation with a short overview of the Irish legal system and discussion of the contract of employment. This is to provide an explanatory background and to allow Union Representatives to locate each Act in its wider context.  Individual Acts are then listed and divided into nine broad categories. This is laid out on the Contents pages at the beginning of the Guide.

This Guide Is Not The Law

This Guide is not a statement of the actual law nor is it a legal interpretation. Instead, it is intended to provide Union Representatives with accurate information on important rights and entitlements. For these reasons it is deliberately written in non-legal language. In the event of any doubt or in consideration of raising an issue in the employment, the actual Act in question should be consulted directly and carefully and appropriate advice sought.

In this context it is acknowledged that much of the information printed here is drawn from explanatory leaflets and guidance notes published by the Department Of Enterprise, Trade & Employment, the Equality Authority, the Health & Safety Authority (HSA), the Pensions Board, and the various industrial relations institutions.

Additional Sources Of Information

Additional information can be obtained from Union Officials and from Union Offices. It is available also from the Employment Rights Information Unit, Department Of Enterprise, Trade & Employment, 65 Adelaide Road, Dublin 2, telephone number 01 631 3131 or lo-call 1890 201 615. The Department’s website is also worth checking  http://www.entemp.ie Copies of Acts are available from Government Publications Sales Office, Molesworth Street, Dublin 2, or from good book shops. In many cases the legislation and guides to legislation can be downloaded from the websites of the Department Of Enterprise, Trade & Employment, or industrial relations institutions such as the Labour Court and the Equality Tribunal.  A list of important agencies with their full contact details is provided at the end of this Guide.

Trade Union Interpretation And Opinion

Occasionally, a trade union interpretation, opinion or qualification has been added to the text.  Such comments are always printed in italics – like this.An example would be to point out that the Redundancy Payments Acts, 1967-2001 are about to be amended to provide two weeks pay for every year of service for all workers irrespective of age rather than what is the current provision. This is a change that has been agreed by the Government, so it is added here in italics.

Comments have been kept to a minimum because the Guide is not intended as anything other than the most basic guide to rights available under current employment legislation.

The Guide And Union Representatives

The Guide is for the use of Union Representatives. It can be used for the following purposes –

What The Guide Will Not Do

The Guide will not do any of the following for Union Representatives –

The Guide gives virtually no case law. In other words, many of the rights expressed in the Acts cited have been qualified by decisions in courts of law or by Decisions and Determinations issued by a Rights Commissioner, the Labour Court, Employment Appeals Tribunal and the Equality Tribunal.

Information on relevant case law developments is available from unions. Union Representatives should never act on doubtful information. They should always check their facts, check their collective agreement for background information and preferably seek an industrial relations settlement at the level of their employment.

Labour Law And Union Organising

The Acts cited in this Guide and the rights that workers currently have are the result of the continuing activities of the trade union movement since the very earliest days of union organising. The high proportion of workers in Ireland that is organised in unions has enabled the trade union movement to make strong representations to successive Governments to provide a floor of legal rights for working people. Much of Irish labour law derives from European Union (EU) Directives and this is also the result of the lobbying of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC).

The effectiveness of trade unions in negotiating improvements in basic entitlements at the level of individual companies is often the first step in securing new rights for all workers.  Improved rights negotiated at workplace level establish ‘industrial relations practice’ and influence the decisions of industrial relations institutions to make recommendations to bring other workers in line. It also strengthens the ability of the trade unions at national and international levels to persuade governments and the EU to legislate in a more progressive way, continuously raising the standards of protection for workers.  Negotiations with employers at company level and with the Government and employer organisations at national and European levels have produced almost all of the basic entitlements mentioned in this Guide. Among the lessons learned by the trade union movement throughout these years of winning basic legal rights for working people are the following.

Working people need strong unions to improve and protect basic legal rights at work.  Having rights on paper is one thing – actually exercising them and benefiting from them is something else. Workers have a far better chance of knowing about their rights and getting their entitlements when they are organised in their union.

It is well proven that employees have a much better chance of securing improvements on legal entitlements when they are well organised in trade unions.

Union organising and securing and improving upon workers’ basic legal entitlements go hand-in-hand.