Collective bargaining for freelancers
Senator Bacik promotes her Competition (Amendment) Bill, which would provide collective bargaining rights for freelance workers, while the Chair reminds her not to discuss individuals.
It will be Labour Party Private Members' time later, for which I thank the Leader. We are taking Committee Stage of the Competition (Amendment) Bill 2016 which passed Second Stage last January. I thank colleagues on both sides of the House for expressing support to me for the principle underpinning the Bill and supporting the passage of the Bill on Committee Stage. It seeks to amend competition law to provide collective bargaining rights for freelance workers. Under the current interpretation of the Competition Act, that is not permitted. Unions, including the NUJ and SIPTU, in particular, back the Bill strongly and I am hosting a briefing with union representatives for all Senators who are interested in learning more about it in advance of the debate at 3 p.m. in Room C, LH2000. I urge colleagues to attend. There is a broader issue in terms of false self-employed, that is, people who are in all but name employees but who are being treated by their employers as false self-employed and who, therefore, lack various workers' protections, including collective bargaining rights.
I call on the Leader to schedule a debate on the Middle East and foreign policy in the light of the terrible suicide bombing in Baghdad. I condemn it and offer my sympathy to the people of Iraq. The Iraqi Government stated earlier that the number who had died in the bomb attack had increased to 250. Just a short while ago, the Chilcot report on the UK Government's decision to go to war with Iraq was published. The preliminary indications are that the report has delivered a crushing verdict on the UK Government's decision. The report states it was made before all peaceful options had been exhausted and that the evidence on weapons of mass destruction did not support the pre-invasion statements by the government. There will be more to come from the report and I would like us to have a debate on it. Many of us marched in Ireland and Britain in 2003 against that war.
I regret the resignation of Mr. Joe O'Toole from the position he had undertaken to accept as chairperson of the commission on water. He was a Member of this House for many years and many of us knew him as a fine, independent minded colleague. He was leader of the Independent group for many years.
