Mac Bride Principles - The Principles

The Principles

1. Increasing the representation of individuals from under-represented religious groups in the workforce including managerial, supervisory, administrative, clerical and technical jobs.
2. Adequate security for the protection of minority employees both at the workplace and while traveling to and from work.
3. The banning of provocative religious or political emblems at the workplace.
4. All job openings should be publicly advertised and special recruitment efforts should be made to attract applicants from under-represented religious groups.
5. Lay-off, recall, and termination procedures should not in practice favor particular religious groupings.
6. The abolition of job reservations, apprenticeship restrictions and differential employment criteria, which discriminate on the basis of religious or ethnic origin.
7. The development of training programs that will prepare substantial numbers of current minority employees for skilled jobs, including the expansion of existing programs and the creation of new programs to train, upgrade, and improve the skills of minority employees.
8. The establishment of procedures to assess, identify, and actively recruit minority employees with the potential for further advancement.
9. The appointment of a senior management staff member to oversee the company's affirmative action efforts and the setting up of timetables to carry out affirmative action principles.

In addition to the above, each signatory to the principles is required to report annually to an independent monitoring agency on its progress in the implementation of these principles.

Some of the principles were seen as unrealistic and impracticable, such as protection of employees on their way to and from work. Besides, they were perceived as throttling foreign investment in Northern Ireland and by that increasing the economic problems of the province. No cases were mentioned where a specific American investment had led to discrimination.

This resulted in their rejection by both the Government of the Republic of Ireland, and by moderate nationalists in Northern Ireland, amongst them the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP). This is subject to debate because in 1987 the then Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs, Brian Lenihan is quoted as follows regarding the McBride Principals “The Government's policy is to press for action by the British Government on measures in the short and medium term aimed at promoting equality of opportunity…”. He later wrote in 1989 “The Government's view is that there is nothing objectionable in the MacBride principles”.