Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 8 Mar 1933

Vol. 46 No. 4

Adjournment Debate. - Wages Paid to Relief Workers.

Mr. Norton

To-day I asked a question of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance as to whether he was aware that the low wage of 4/- per day which, incidentally, I mentioned was subject to broken time, is being paid under certain schemes of work carried out by the Office of Works, and whether in view of this low wage he would issue instructions forthwith to increase such wages. The answer of the Parliamentary Secretary to that question was just studied flippancy, a complete disregard of the issue involved, and apparently, from the nature of the reply, a studied contempt of the sufferings of the people who have to try to exist on this miserable wage of 24/- a week. But the studied flippancy was not confined merely to the studied reply we received from the Parliamentary Secretary. His answers to the supplementary questions also bore the hall-mark of flippancy. Apparently there is little possibility of being able to get from the Parliamentary Secretary anything like a serious appreciation of the issues involved in this dispute. I am not making this a personal complaint against the Parliamentary Secretary. If it were just a personal complaint the matter would not be so serious perhaps. But the replies and the attitude of the Parliamentary Secretary involve the whole policy of the Government in the matter of wages. It is because of that, that we on these benches have seen fit to raise the matter on the adjournment to-night

I should like the Parliamentary Secretary, when he is replying, to say whether the transparent flippancy of his answers is his own, or whether in this matter he represents the Government and especially the Minister for Finance. The flippancy does not rest there. On Wednesday of last week we had the Parliamentary Secretary of a Fianna Fáil Government, a Government which, day in and day out, has stated that it stands for a Christian social policy, telling the House that he had a certain sum of money to expend, and that he was expending it at the rate of 24/- a week in wages to people employed on drainage work, road work and quarry work. These people have an average working week of 48 to 56 hours and 24/- is the rate of wages prescribed by the Parliamentary Secretary. If there was any meaning clear from the Parliamentary Secretary's replies to our interrogations on Wednesday it was that 24/- a week was being paid because if more than that was paid a lesser number of people would be employed. That kind of reasoning and that kind of philosophy came strangely from the Parliamentary Secretary of a Government which has accepted the principle of providing work or maintenance for the unemployed. Are we to have it now that if work is provided it is only going to be work at the lowest rate of wages that it is possible to enforce on these people in their economic plight? The end of the answer was this: "I am paying them 24/- a week to employ a certain number. I won't pay them any more, even though 24/- is low, because I would employ a lesser number of people." The end of that argument surely is to pay everybody 5/- a week in order to employ a still greater number of people. I dissent from the reasoning, philosophy and morality, if there is any morality behind the view-point of the Parliamentary Secretary.

I stated last Wednesday that the action of the Parliamentary Secretary in prescribing 24/- a week as wages on minor relief schemes was inciting farmers to cut the rate of their wages below an inclusive wage of 24/- I said the Parliamentary Secretary was employing persons on work which had always been paid for at a higher rate than agricultural work, at wages lower than the agricultural rate. The Parliamentary Secretary said he was not paying rates below the agricultural rate, and he added: "If it is being done, it is done in violation of orders." I do not know what point the Parliamentary Secretary hoped to make by a reply of that kind. I have here a printed document headed "Office of Public Works. Minor Relief Schemes. Instructions to Inspectors," and I find by looking at the key letters that 250 copies of the leaflet were reprinted in October, 1932. This is not an old leaflet, coming over from Cumann na nGaedheal times. This is not merely a case of implementing an old Cumann na nGaedheal document. This is a new leaflet, 250 copies of which were printed in October last. What do I find in it? In paragraph 22, which apparently the Parliamentary Secretary was not aware of when he spoke last Wednesday, it says: "The rates of wages in the case of relief works are, where possible, to be fixed on a lower scale than that normally paid to agricultural workers in the district." In the face of that statement issued from the office of which the Parliamentary Secretary is in charge, we find the Parliamentary Secretary professing to be astounded at a statement from these benches that a rate lower than the agricultural rate was being paid on minor relief schemes. I hope the Parliamentary Secretary is wiser now and realises that this printed instruction, issued presumably with his authority—with the authority of his Government—is a direct incitement to farmers to cut the rate of wages paid to agricultural workers.

Mr. Davin

County councils in particular.

Mr. Norton

Deputy MacDermot's Party, judging by their activities for the last ten months, probably will not need much incitement. The plain fact of the matter is that we have a Fianna Fáil Government actually issuing instructions to cut the rate of wages below the rate paid to agricultural workers. Where is that policy leading? We had every right to expect that with the advent of a Fianna Fáil Government the wage mentality that we had experienced for ten years would disappear. We had every reason to expect that the disciples of low wages, who held sway on these benches for ten years, might see a reversal of the policy which, with fiendish ingenuity, they put into operation. Instead, we have the Parliamentary Secretary, apparently delightfully happy, endeavouring to enforce a wage of 24/- a week and the only justification the House got was that that wage was paid by the Cumann na nGaedheal Party for ten years.

Mr. Morrissey

Oh, no. That is not so.

Mr. Anthony

Bad and all as they were, they could never stoop to Deputy Flinn's attitude.

Mr. Norton

Is Deputy Anthony a new apologist for them?

Mr. Anthony

There was a point raised about a wage of 29/- a week and we beat them on it, but they never stooped to Deputy Flinn's level. Deputy Flinn is the apostle of low wages—24/- a week.

Mr. Norton

The Parliamentary Secretary said Cumann na nGaedheal paid it for ten years. I ask the Cumann na nGaedheal Deputies, particularly those who are trade unionists, and who are progressively - minded people, whether they are prepared to stand over a wage policy of that sort. This rate of wages is a direct incitement to farmers to cut rates of wages. It is a direct incitement to county councils to cut the rate of wages paid to their road workers. Many of those people engaged on the minor relief schemes are employed at work which is analogous to, if not almost identical with the kind of work which road workers employed by the county councils do. We can see already that the Parliamentary Secretary's policy is beginning to take root. Last week we had an example of this at a meeting of the Clare County Council. At that meeting a motion was moved asking that the rates of wages to the road workers employed by the county council should be reduced to the rate of wages paid by the Board of Works. We had another example of this mentality in Cork where at a meeting of the county council a motion was also moved to reduce the rate of wages paid to the employees of the county council to 24/- a week—the standard set by Cumann na nGaedheal and endorsed by Fianna Fáil and the whole thing marked with the stamp and authority of the Parliamentary Secretary and also, presumably, with the stamp and authority of the Minister for Finance.

Mr. Corry

We made short work of that motion in Cork.

Mr. Norton

I congratulate Deputy Corry and everybody else who was associated with the attempt to strangle this thing of low wages. I hope Deputy Corry and those who think with him within the Fianna Fáil Party will strangle the mentality that is enshrined in the idea of low rates of wages. I hope when the Parliamentary Secretary is replying he will try to tell the House in what way this low rate of 24/- a week is compatible with standing for a Christian social system. We all read of that as one of the principles of this Party of Fianna Fáil. I know, too, that the Party organ refers to the Christian social system with commendable pride. I do say that it is a policy to be referred to with pride if it is to be implemented. But is this Christian social policy implemented by standing for a wage of 24/- a week for the workers? I say definitely that this rate of wages is a scandalous one. It is a starvation rate and could not be justified by anybody except those who believe that poverty, misery and squalor must be the destiny forever of the working classes in this country.

While on this matter I have looked up some statistics and I find that it costs 2/- a day to feed a pauper in the Dublin Union. Remember this is for food alone, to say nothing about housing and clothing. It costs 14/- a week to feed a pauper in the Dublin Union. But a man with his wife and six children is expected to be able to live on an extra 10/- a week and then they are not supposed to be paupers. I looked up some Army estimates and I find that it costs 8/10 a week to feed a soldier. And remember that the Army can buy its food supplies at wholesale prices. In face of that figure a man and his wife and children are to live on 24/- a week. In the Dundrum Asylum it costs approximately 7/6 a week, at wholesale prices, to feed one of the inmates. Yet we have a Government paying people who are not inmates of asylums nor paupers the miserable rate of 24/- a week.

I hope the Parliamentary Secretary, if he is replying, or whoever is replying in this debate, will tell us definitely that they are going to abandon this low wage policy. A low wage policy never yet made a country prosperous. If a policy of low wages could have done so, pre-war Ireland would be the most prosperous country in the world. Everybody knows that it was not prosperous. A low wage policy is not to-day going to make this country prosperous. Such a policy will only bring the people down to a life of starvation and poverty. Such a policy never yet carried the people through an economic or industrial crisis. I suggest to the Government that they have an opportunity to-night of redeeming their pledges of endeavouring to create a Christian social state. If they are standing for social justice they should pay to the road worker a rate of wage sufficient to keep himself and his family in the decency in which they are entitled to live if we are to have a Christian social policy in the country.

Mr. Flinn

I have no intention whatever of recommending the Government to abandon the inclusion in relief schemes of a proportion of money which will be paid to those who desire relief upon the basis of agricultural wages because they require it. That is perfectly definite and clear. There are a great number of very poor people in Ireland to whom 24/- a week which they have received in cash for a week's work upon relief schemes during this year is the largest amount of cash they have ever handled in their lives.

Mr. Anthony

This is fearful.

Mr. Flinn

There are people in the West of Ireland, people in the congested districts of Ireland whose cash economy is so restricted that it is impossible for those who have not lived in and known the actual conditions of that area to appreciate the significance of that amount of cash.

Mr. Everett

Work that out.

Mr. Davin

Why not reduce it to £1?

Mr. Flinn

If the Deputy prefers to make a speech now he can do so, or leave it to me. The Congested Districts Board in Ireland dealt with those people and tried to do what they could for them. The Land Commission or their organisation on the setting up of this State took over from the Congested Districts Board, which ought never to have been abolished. The Land Commission had been carrying out improvement works in these congested and poverty stricken areas at wages based on the pay of agricultural labourers for work done. The last £240,000 relief scheme money anticipated to come into our hands as payment from the British on the Road Fund was administered by the Land Commission and was administered on the basis of agricultural wages. It was not distributed outside the areas of extreme poverty and necessity. In this area, out of £2,150,000 which this Government, this un-Christian Government——

Mr. Morrissey

Hear, hear.

Mr. Flinn

——this Government, careless, indifferent and flippant about the sorrows and sufferings of the poor, have provided for unemployment relief a small sum of roughly seven per cent. is to be used for the purpose of carrying out the most necessary works and helping the necessitous so as to give them something more than what they were morally entitled to upon the ordinary basis—on the ground that their necessity was extreme, that they were so much more necessitous that they were entitled to get something more than the remainder. In a mistaken spirit of fairness—that is where all the trouble has arisen—and on pressure from Deputies in these particular constituencies in this particular year, part of that 7 per cent. was allowed to go outside the areas in which work of that kind has normally been done—has been allowed to go out of the places where men were anxious to take agricultural wages for relief work because it meant building a road through a bog over which they could, in their carts or otherwise, carry turf instead of having sometimes to carry it on their backs over the mountains. People were glad to do that kind of thing because they were living in a state of necessity in which they had to wade through the bogs into their houses and because they were getting, in return for their work, not merely their wages but the actual result of the work, which directly inured to their own benefit.

I have told the House that there are ten thousand people at present employed on those schemes. I have seen the people on the job. I have spoken to them and have seen them working. I know what they think and I know that the man who says that they regard as un-Christian or as flippant or as careless of their interests those who have provided them with work at that rate of wages—I know that those people would tear limb from limb the man who said that in their presence. I know that.

Mr. Everett

Why have you a strike in Limerick?

Mr. T. Murphy

You are a damned liar.

Mr. Flinn

I will make you an offer——

Mr. Murphy

A bloody foreigner. This is good enough for the native Irish in the opinion of the Liverpool man.

Mr. Derrig

Is that expression in order?

An Ceann Comhairle

Deputy Murphy must withdraw the expression he used.

Mr. Anthony

Liverpool bull-dogism.

Mr. Murphy

I will not withdraw.

An Ceann Comhairle

Then the Deputy must withdraw from the House.

Mr. Murphy

Very well, sir.

[Deputy Murphy withdrew.]

Mr. Morrissey

You are giving the Parliamentary Secretary what he likes —sensationalism. He wants to figure in the papers.

Mr. Davin

He is in fighting form.

Mr. Morrissey

He should be on the stage at the Abbey; he is a good actor.

Mr. Anthony

He should be put in khaki.

Mr. Flinn

It is suggested to me that I should raise the wages on the minor relief schemes to 32/- per week.

Mr. Everett

To the rate of wages paid by the public bodies.

Mr. Flinn

Remember, I have not an unlimited amount of money——

Mr. Davin

Is it your money?

Mr. Flinn

If I had an unlimited amount of money, I could employ an unlimited number of men at an unlimited wage. If I have a limited amount of money, I have to employ a limited number of men at a limited wage. Is not that so?

Mr. Morrissey

Then why not give them 10/- a week? That is what you would like to do.

Mr. Flinn

Because the wage is based upon agricultural wages.

Mr. Davin

It is lower.

Mr. Flinn

It is not.

Mr. Davin

Read the circular.

Mr. Flinn

Wait a moment.

Mr. Morrissey

This is a Government responsibility.

Mr. Flinn

I have asked whether or not, in fact, any one has any knowledge of any particular case in which less than the agricultural wage is being paid. I should be very glad to know that. In practice, I do not believe there is such a case.

Mr. Davin

Why did you issue that circular?

Mr. Flinn

As a matter of fact, that circular is part of the ordinary instruction that has been issued in respect of minor relief works since their inception. The rate has always been based upon agricultural wages.

Mr. Morrissey

29/- per week.

Mr. Flinn

Upon agricultural wages, whatever they were. I challenge the Deputy to show that 29/- was ever the wage for these minor relief works.

Mr. Morrissey

It was paid until this Government came into office.

Mr. Flinn

Not a bit of it. You are dreaming dreams. The test was the agricultural wages and the rate was not 29/-.

Mr. Anthony

It was and we compelled them to withdraw.

Mr. Flinn

If I have unlimited money I can give unlimited employment and I can pay unlimited wages. If I have only a limited amount of money—and I have only a limited amount—what am I to do? What standard of wages am I to set up for minor relief schemes.

Mr. Everett

The rate paid in a particular area to men doing a similar class of work. These men are working at 24/- per week in the same area with men who are being paid 35/-.

Mr. Flinn

I have 10,000 men employed at present. If I follow out these instructions, I shall have to wire: "Dismiss 3,333 of them." This is all the money I have. All the money voted by the Dáil has been allocated. Who is going to take the responsibility for dismissing those men?

Mr. Anthony

You are the evil influence in that body—the Board of Works. There was a tradition of good wages there.

Mr. Flinn

Have I to put up with this? I am prepared to take charge of Deputy Anthony or any other interrupter, but they must not try to get away with it. They need not think that they can go on like this and that I will stay quiet. It is about time that we had an end of this.

Mr. Everett

The Parliamentary Secretary asked me a question and I answered it.

Mr. Flinn

I am not referring to Deputy Everett. Deputy Everett's was a contribution to the debate.

Mr. Anthony made a remark.

An Ceann Comhairle

Deputy Anthony must cease interrupting.

Mr. Morrissey

The Parliamentary Secretary does not himself interrupt at all.

Mr. Flinn

What standard shall I set? I am putting this to you as a problem. I have no more money to allocate. Am I to say to men who are to have employment on certain schemes up to 31st March or the middle of April that the number of schemes have to be reduced? Am I to say that the number has to be reduced because the wages of each individual have to be increased and, therefore, the number of men must be decreased?

Mr. Davin

You are telling the Laoighis County Council to reduce the wages to 24/-.

Mr. Flinn

I am doing nothing of the kind. I am saying that out of whatever money is set apart for the purpose of relieving unemployment I shall ask the Government to allocate a certain portion to be spent on works on which the wages are based upon agricultural wages because these works are to take place in agricultural districts. In many cases this amount is being paid to people who have never had these wages. I have seen men breaking stones on the side of the road in Clare and Kerry—men who have never worked before in their lives——

Mr. Davin

Temporary work.

Mr. Flinn

——for wages—men who have never had a cash answer to their day's work; men who are working for themselves on piece-work and anxious and glad to have an opportunity of working at this rate of wages. I am told I am un-Christian and flippant because I try to get some of that money out of the total fund for the purpose of giving benefit to those people who are more necessitous than you people, who pretend to speak for another kind of labour, have any conception of.

Mr. Morrissey

Brass hats.

Mr. Flinn

I am not going to ask the Government, in any future relief scheme, to leave out a definite provision for those who desire relief upon the basis of agricultural wages.

Mr. Norton

Low wages!

Mr. Morrissey

Pompous humbug!

The Dáil adjourned at 11 p.m. until Thursday, 9th March, at 3 p.m.