The Stage

Irish actors win collective bargaining right

Published Monday 27 September 2010 at 16:24 by Anthony Garvey

Actors in the Irish Republic, struggling against funding cutbacks and the recession, are celebrating a rare victory - the right to negotiate collectively on pay.

As part of a national industrial relations agreement with trade unions, the government has undertaken to amend competition law, which currently prevents Irish Equity negotiating payment on behalf of its members on issues such as voice-overs for radio and TV advertisements, an important source of revenue for the profession.

This ban on collective bargaining, strictly policed by the Competition Authority, also applies to other workers in the arts such as session musicians, and Equity has been lobbying for some time to have the law changed.

Now the Department of Trade and Enterprise has promised to put legislation amending the competition law before parliament by the end of the year.

Irish Equity secretary Des Courtney, who recently led a protest picket on the arts ministry in Dublin over falling incomes, welcomed the planned change but claimed it was long overdue.

“At present, actors are among the most vulnerable workers in Irish society, given the scale of the cutbacks, and they are being penalised by this restriction. As a trade union, we want to negotiate on behalf of our members and protect their rights, but in this particular area of voice-overs we’re not allowed to do so. The result is that actors are being paid well below what they should be getting for this work, and have lost substantial sums as a result of this ban being kept in place for so long,” he said.

Courtney added that some actors “depended heavily” on voice-over work, which could be their only source of revenue at a time of high unemployment.