SIPTU and mushroom growers have failed to agree a Registered Employment Agreement for the whole Irish mushroom industry.
The disclosure of a series of abuses of legally recognised workers' rights in mushroom farms during the negotiations of a new Social Partnership in the first half of 2006 compelled SIPTU to demand the implementation of the existing regulations of the Joint Labour Committee for agricultural workers.
The argument of SIPTU's campaign was that the exploitation of Migrant workers was also undermining the wages and working conditions of Irish workers.
The proposed new agreement for the mushroom industry actually would have meant lower wages for mushroom workers.
The most important point is that they were not going to get overtime rates. But SIPTU demanded union recognition in each mushroom farm in the Republic as the only way to guarantee that the new wages would be paid.
Small growers were not ready to accept unions in their farms.
A commonly held view among growers goes like this: we understand that workers have to get their wages, and that they have the right to join trade unions, but mushrooms have to be picked and we have to earn our livelihood. This a view held in public. In private it means the current minimum wage is too high, so we won’t pay it; we don’t want unions dictating to us what to do. So, forget about trade unions.
One question here is that small and medium growers are in crisis because the pressure of the market has become unbearable for many of them. That is why there are less than 100 mushroom farms at present.
Retailer and market agents impose strict quality standards and pay very little money for the mushrooms. Like a sergeant in the army, the grower feels abused and bullied by the lieutenant and the captain. But he has the soldiers to command and bully in the same way that he is commanded and bullied.
Don't tell me, I'll tell you: SIPTU is not going to put the workers also against me.
Perhaps the problem is not greed or the "obscene" profits that retailers make. Perhaps it is not even a question of good and bad people.
Perhaps greed is built in the system. Perhaps the problem is the market economy, which is based on the very same competition that constantly pushes the price of mushroom down.
Under market conditions the small farmer is always going to be in crisis.
No co-operative structure, no central marketing is going to save him in the long term if the excesses of cut-throat competition, the real killer, are not controlled.
