Competition (Amendment) Bill 2007

Public bill · Private Member · Introduced

The proposal would protect collective negotiations by trade unions for people who personally provide work or services under contracts, including many self-employed or atypical workers. Competition law would not treat their union as a business association or prohibit agreements about their working terms, provided they work for businesses or public bodies—not private consumers. It would also allow professional groups to negotiate collectively with public bodies about publicly funded services where the Government declares this to be in the public interest, subject to approval by both Houses of the Oireachtas. The aim is to prevent workers losing the ability to bargain together simply because they are classified as contractors rather than employees, while leaving ordinary price-fixing and anti-competitive conduct covered by competition law.

Formal long title

Bill entitled an Act to delimit the application of the Competition Act 2002 to trade unions and trade union members and to certain agreements negotiated with public bodies, and to provide for related matters

Last updated 12 April 2018