I agree with Deputy MacDermot that a good deal more could be done by the Post Office administration to popularise the post office services. Such a campaign has been undertaken in Great Britain with good results not only from the point of view of extending the services but from the point of view of additional employment. The Minister for Posts and Telegraphs might well consider the possibility of advertising the Post Office telephone services and many other services which the Post Office possesses but which are not used extensively because of the fact that the public are not sufficiently aware that these facilities exist. These facilities are not used as the best means of harnessing the service to the convenience of the public.
I should like to make another suggestion to the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs. While advertising the telephone service would undoubtedly help to extend the use of the telephones, I suggest to the Minister if he wants to be really up-to-date and advanced in the matter of extending the telephone services he might take an example from the Dublin Gas Company. The Dublin Gas Company put in gas meters in various houses at a very low cost. As a matter of fact I understand that even to-day they instal gas meters and gas ranges free of charge in houses. If the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs would try to work new ground in that respect, I think he would find that quite a considerable number of people would instal telephones and put their penny in the boxes when they want to use them in the same way as people, where gas meters are installed, put their pennies into the slot when they want to use gas. This would be especially useful in the case of large buildings used by a number of families. The Department of Posts and Telegraphs would break new ground and get away from the traditions which characterise the outside of the administration in this respect if there were an installation of telephones in certain kinds of apartment houses. I think such an advance and such a breaking of new ground would yield increased revenue to the Department and would help to popularise the telephone. It would make people cultivate the mentality in which the question would be not whether they could afford the telephone but rather whether they could afford to do without the telephone.
On turning to page 271 of the Estimates there is one item that I find some difficulty in following. Perhaps the Minister would give the House some information on the matter. I see that the number of Class I skilled workmen has been reduced from 60 in 1932-3 to 44 in the present year. I do not understand the reduction. I find considerable difficulty in understanding it in view of the fact that a considerable number of people who are in "Class II skilled workmen" are acting in Class I at the moment. That is a reduction that I cannot possibly follow. Similarly in the case of skilled workmen, Class II, I find that the number has been reduced from 290 in 1932-3 to 256 this year. I should like to know from the Minister why the staff has shrunken in the course of the year. Is that in consequence of any special economies being carried out? But a more significant feature of this whole Estimate seems to me to reside in the fact that the Post Office employ a very large number of people and pay them very little. The Post Office Department is the biggest single Department in the State for employing a whole variety of groups apparently self-contained, one separate from the other. There seems to be very little case for the separation of the staff into groups except the excuse to pay one group less than the other. I have gone through this Estimate. I have obtained information in various ways and I have come to the conclusion that from the point of view of cunning and fiendish cunning this Department can squeeze more work out of persons for less money than any other single Department in the State. I have here some information that I have compiled from official sources. I find that there are in the Post Office to-day over 4,000 officers, part-time and full-time, at less than 30/- a week. I find that there are close on 7,000 officers in the Post Office with less than £3 per week, and I find that out of a total manipulative personnel of 8,411 officers employed in the biggest Department of the State only 358 of them receive more than £4 per week. When this House considers that position I think it will have no hesitation in saying that, so far as the Post Office staff is concerned, there is very little generosity in the matter of wages. Over 8,400 officers in part-time and full-time employment and of these only 358 are in receipt of more than £4 per week.
I do not know whether the Minister, during his short term of office, has had time to examine matters of that kind, but I think it is not a healthy position from a wage point of view and that it is evidence, from the figures I have quoted, of gross underpayment and that it is a reflection on the administration of the Post Office because, as a public department, it has no right to employ persons at sweated rates of wages or to find consolation in the fact that the service is paying without any subsidy from the general Exchequer. If it is able to carry on without any subsidy from the general Exchequer, it is because of the fact that the Post Office administration are employing persons at sweated rates of wages and I suggest that they ought not to stand over these rates of wages with any sense of pride in this House. Some time ago I asked for enlightenment in order to ascertain the information as to the problem of part-time labour in the Post Office. I found from an official reply that there are 3,059 persons employed in the Post Office at wages which do not exceed 25/- per week. I say that an enlightened Administration cannot console itself, nor can the Minister be very happy, on the fact that he is in charge of a Department which employs over 3,000 at less than 25/- per week. These are the persons who are carrying on the Post Office service. Those people are delivering letters and parcels and registered letters. Many of these items contain articles of negotiable securities. Many of these people are responsible for collecting customs charges on parcels and handling correspondence which contains cash many times in excess of their weekly wages. Whilst carrying on important services for the whole community and carrying important correspondence for the public, they are wondering at the same time how they are going to pay the grocer's bill on the following Saturday, how they are to pay the milkman, and where the money is going to come from for rent.
I hope I will not be told that this is a problem confined to rural areas. It is not. The Post Office in Dublin employs 50 persons and pays them, approximately, 15/- a week for part-time labour and all efforts to try to absorb them into full-time employment have proved unsuccessful so far, not that I believe it is an insuperable problem but because the Post Office approaches this whole question of underpayment and part-time labour with the mentality that has been going on for years and, consequently, this objectionable thing is right.
The Minister said that the Post Office was now asking for no subsidy from the State. Around about 1922, the Post Office Department was losing over £1,000,000 per annum. To-day, the Minister tells us, the Post Office requires no subsidy from the State. I wonder if the Minister has probed that matter to find out in what way economies totalling over £1,000,000 have been effected. If he has probed it, well and good. I suppose we will hear from him in respect of the particular headings under which these economies have been effected. I want to tell him very candidly that the economies in respect of this sum of £1,000,000 have been effected in a large measure by disemploying 500 persons in 1923. If the Minister would look up the first Post Office Estimates presented to this House and look up the Post Office Estimates to-day, he will find that the extent to which wages have shrunk in the interval represents a very considerable portion of the saving which has been effected in the Post Office. I would say, having had an intimate experience on the matter, that the Post Office staff have paid more than anybody else or more than any other service in helping the Minister to balance his Post Office budget.
I want to pass on to this question of part-time labour in the Post Office. I find, on page 279, that there are 2,478 auxiliary postmen in the Post Office. That means 2,478 persons employed on an average, I suppose, for twenty-three hours per week or less. I find that there are 956 officers described as allowance deliverers. That means 956 officers employed for not more than 18 hours per week. As a matter of fact, I came across a case some time ago where an officer was employed by the Post Office and his weekly wages were 2/9 per week. It is much less now with the reduction in the cost-of-living bonus. On the Post Office side we will hear it said that they could not possibly manage to organise their service except on the basis of employing this person for twenty minutes per day. This whole question of part-time labour in the Post Office is synonymous with low wages and exploitation in the Post Office. They receive miserably low wages for performing responsible duties on behalf of the community. I will tell the Minister now that if he and his Department are genuinely desirous of tackling the problem of part-time labour they can end it in ten years, at the outside, by the absorption of the part-time officers into full-time employment.
That claim has been made here repeatedly to the Post Office Department on behalf of the officers affected. The Minister and his Department trot out costs and money as an answer to the claim that has been submitted. It has been suggested times out of number that the occurrence of vacancies in full-time posts ought to be utilised by amalgamating the part-time posts with the existing posts and thus create a method by which the survivor could be employed. If that were adopted it would result in the complete elimination of the part-time employment in a comparatively short period. Each year it would mean that a certain number of part-time officers would be rescued from the mire of poverty and misery which they are compelled to endure on low wages to-day. The only answer we can get is that it costs too much. I give the Minister credit for progressive views personally on social and economic matters. Does the Minister consider costs an answer to the human and the moral claims of these people who are looking for a decent wage for the responsible duties they perform for the public? Post Office administration acts, in relation to these people, as if they were simply robots and had no human feelings, as if they were not supposed to get married and have children and, if they did get married and have children, to explain to them that they could not be fed properly because they were part-time officers in the Post Office. I should like to ask the Minister to say definitely where he stands in regard to that matter. It is a human problem. Those people are entitled to expect that a Government Department will make some effort to rescue them from the deplorable position in which they find themselves to-day. No Minister for Posts and Telegraphs can divest himself of moral responsibility for the plight of those people merely by saying that it costs too much money to rescue them from that appalling position.
In the course of his speech the Minister referred to the fact that it is hoped to start the reconstruction work on the Pearse Street premises. If it is, the staff in Pearse Street, who have been compelled for the past eleven years to work in a disused distillery, will be very glad to hear that information. This promise and this carrot have been held out before the staff for many years. We have been told repeatedly that it is hoped to reconstruct the Pearse Street premises. This is probably the sixth or seventh year in which that hope was expressed. I should like if the Minister would tell us very definitely that there is no doubt whatever about the reconstruction of the Pearse Street premises this year. The staff are "fed up" listening to promises about the reconstruction of the premises. If the Minister has had an opportunity of visiting it I think he will have no hesitation in saying that it is the kind of premises which is no ornament to the Post Office service of the country, and is certainly a disgraceful building from the point of view of being the main sorting and delivering office in the capital of the country, in what is the main artery in distributing mail traffic in the country.
I was hoping that the Minister in the course of his speech might have expressed some views on the question of endeavouring to maintain for the Post Office the monopoly which it has enjoyed, and which I think it is legally entitled to enjoy, in respect of the delivery of letters, and to some extent in respect of the delivery of parcels. There has been a considerable decline in parcel traffic during the past few years, and the decline has coincided with the development of road transport in the country. At the present time buses are conveying small parcels which were formerly dealt with by the Post Office. Those small parcels are being conveyed by the bus companies from town to town along the main streams of traffic. There have been left for the Post Office the parcels which have to be carried over the mountain sides, which have to be carried down the glens, which have to be carried at uneconomic prices into the hamlets all over the country. As a matter of fact, it has been brought to my notice that one big firm in town hands over its small parcels to a bus company to deliver because they deliver them at a lesser rate than the Post Office charge. The bus company selects the parcels for the main streams of traffic, and hands over to the Post Office such parcels as it is necessary to deliver in some backward districts in Connemara, or Kerry, or Donegal. The result is that the Post Office is getting that portion of the parcel traffic which is hopelessly uneconomic. I should like to know from the Minister whether he proposes to do anything in that respect. The Post Office, acting as the agency of distribution for the whole community, is entitled to protect its services against that particular method of attack. I hope the Minister is alive to the serious hardship which is being imposed on the Post Office by reason of the cream of the traffic being taken from it by bus companies, while the uneconomic portion of the traffic is being left with the Post Office to deliver at a rate which is not commensurate with the charge made.
Similarly, you have had here in recent years the development of a service known as Messenger Services Limited. I should like the Minister to examine especially what his monopoly rights are in respect of Messenger Services Limited. I know perfectly well that this organisation which has been established in the City of Dublin is taking circular matter for delivery, is evading monopoly by its method of addressing those envelopes, but it is doing work to-day which was formerly done by the Post Office, and it is in my opinion a clear invasion of the monopoly which the Post Office have always had in the past. It is perhaps that they are evading the Post Office monopoly on technical grounds, but they ought not to be allowed to invade the clear monopoly which the State arrogated to itself on behalf of the whole community when the State claimed the monopoly of the delivery and collection of letters of that kind. That institution is eating into the traffic of the Post Office. In respect of local services it may yet cause just as much damage to the letter-delivering service of the Post Office as the buses are causing to the parcel traffic.
There is another matter to which I should like to call the attention of the Minister, and that is the question of the restoration of daily deliveries. At the present time in many portions of the country there are services of only three days per week. The result is that in those areas persons can have their letters delivered on only three days per week, while people in cities, towns and large sized villages can have their letters delivered to them every day. That restriction of services was one of the ways in which the Minister secured his economy of a million pounds. I want to put it to the Minister that the principle of a three-day delivery in one area and a six-day delivery in another area is a vicious principle so far as the activities of State services are concerned. After all, the citizens in an isolated rural area are entitled to expect the same facilities as persons in towns get. They are taxed in the same way. When a Budget is introduced here imposing taxation there is no stipulation that it will not apply in isolated rural areas where people get their letters on only three days a week. They are taxed no matter where they live, and if it is right and proper to tax the whole community for the purpose of State services it is only right and proper that the community should get in every area the same services as they at present get in certain selected areas.
That scheme of restricting services was introduced many years ago, when in a state of panic and in a clamour for cheap public popularity a certain Minister for Posts and Telegraphs adopted that form of economy. A halt ought to be called to that policy. I put it to the present Minister that he ought to end that short-sighted economy which was then introduced, and restore the daily deliveries in all those areas. Not only is it inconvenient from the point of view of the public affected, but it means that persons employed in delivering letters in those areas are not even getting six days part-time work, but are getting only three days part-time work in many instances. From both points of view there is a strong case for abolishing this hopelessly short-sighted economy, which was first introduced in 1923.
Looking at page 276 I find that it is stated in a footnote that 34 posts for grade A postmen are being blocked by redundant Post Office assistants. That means that in the Post Office establishment at Dublin there are 34 redundant Post Office officials. In case Deputy MacDermot should feel tempted to say: "Oh, I told you so; here is portion of the hordes I have been thoughtlessly referring to in some of my other speeches," I want to assure him that the fact that they are redundant does not mean they are doing no work. What it simply means is, that the Post Office Department introduced a reorganisation scheme in 1924. Work was re-graded under the scheme, but in such a clumsy and inefficient manner that it left a large number of officers in the service for whom there was no work of the class to which they were formerly assigned, with the result that they had to be down-graded and required to perform the work of a lower grade. It is true their old rate of pay was continued, but the work they were asked to perform was very much less congenial than the work they formerly carried out. They are now required to perform duties which are worse than the duties formerly performed by reason of the character of the work, the hours of attendance and the irksome nature of the duties in general.
This matter has gone on since 1924. While I know I will be told the problem was greater then than now, there are no thanks due to the Post Office for having reduced the extent of the redundancy. The redundancy was reduced in a number of ways, firstly, because some people died, secondly, because people got old and were retired and, thirdly, because a certain number retired under Article X. The positive action of the Post Office in the matter of reducing the redundancy was negligible. How long does the Minister expect 34 persons to remain in that position? What are the proposals for remedying the matter? I suggest a redundancy which has continued for nine years is something that ought to be tackled in a more effective way than merely waiting for people to die, or be pensioned off when they are 65 years of age. If ever there was a Micawber-like policy adopted on the part of any Department, surely this here is a glaring example. I do not mind having a small bet with the Minister that when he is nine years older, if he is still Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, he will see a number of those redundant officials occupying the same positions, unless, in the meantime, the Department can be induced to wake up and solve the problem.
I know this matter is not solely in the hands of the Post Office Department, but at least they might be a little more energetic. The Minister ought to take the whole problem into immediate consideration and he might, as a result of representations to the Minister for Finance, have special steps taken to absorb these officers into the clerical officer grade. Examinations are held a few times every year for clerical officers in other Civil Service departments. Here are 34 officers in a grade and the work they are doing is not the work they originally contracted to do. The sensible course would be to put them into the clerical officer grade. Instead of that, the Minister for Finance prefers to recruit young boys from school. The commonsense arrangement is to transfer people redundant in one position into other grades where vacancies are available. I hope the Minister will assure us that this matter is going to be attended to with more energy than in the past.
The Minister mentioned that it is hoped to develop the Post Office motor service. Presumably the Department regard that as a good investment. I would like to call attention to the way in which the people engaged in the Post Office motor service are treated. I am sure the Minister, if he were left alone, would express astonishment at what I am going to tell him. What I am going to say is the absolute truth. In many country areas where Post Office motor services are in existence an officer leaves the office at six o'clock in the morning to do a motor run of 60 or 70 miles. He arrives at his destination about nine or ten o'clock and then waits until two o'clock in a hut. Sometimes even a hut is not provided and he is fixed up in some kind of accommodation. He returns at four o'clock and he gets back to the office at about six o'clock in the evening. That man is out from six o'clock in the morning until six o'clock in the evening, travelling perhaps 140 or 160 miles, and he is not paid a farthing in respect of his period of absence from his head office. He gets a driving allowance and an allowance for minor repairs to the car, but he is given no allowance for subsistence.
If the Minister had a motor driver travelling in that fashion, and being absent for such a long period, I think he would consider it mean, on his own part, if he were to say to that driver: "I do not think you need anything in respect of the meals you may have during the day." This Post Office official's colleagues in the town or city can have their meals at home, but he is not in a position to do that. He should at least be paid some subsistence allowance so that he might have a decent meal instead of being compelled, by reason of low wages, to endeavour to exist on a flask of tea and a few slices of bread and butter.
Another matter to which I would like to refer is the Minister's responsibility in respect of the employment of clerks in sub-offices. Recently I asked him for some information in connection with the number of sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses in the country. He told me there were 2,041 such officers in existence. Of that number I find 1,308 have less than £60 per annum, approximately 25/- a week. In a considerable number of these cases the sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses employ assistants. If the sub-postmaster is getting 25/- a week for the dignity of being a sub-postmaster, and he has to provide premises, light, stationery, etc., I wonder what salary does that man pay his assistant? The Post Office Department knows perfectly well that many of these sub-offices are dens of sweat. Young girls are employed at frightfully low rates of wages. In some cases fees are demanded for receiving training in order that the assistants may ultimately be qualified to receive sweated rates in some other office where the sub-postmaster is likewise badly paid.
Under the fair wages clause the Minister is bound to see, in respect of services carried on by, or on behalf of his Department, that a reasonably decent wage is paid. It must be remembered that out of 2,000 sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses only 198 have over £3 a week. I am sure the Minister will find it difficult to convince himself that in respect of the employees of these sub-postmasters a decent rate of wages may not be in all cases the fault of the sub-postmaster. No matter whose fault it is, the Minister is morally responsible for ensuring that the fair wages clause is complied with and that those persons are employed at a decent rate of wages, a rate which, according to the fair wages resolution, compares favourably with those rates paid by good employers in comparable employment in the district concerned.
I am sure that the Post Office Department do not exercise proper supervision in that particular matter. I put it to the Minister that the Post Office cannot ride away on the plea that they have no responsibility. They cannot shelter themselves by putting forward the defence that these people are not employees of the Post Office, but are employees of the sub-postmasters and postmistresses concerned. If the Minister will look into the other matters he will find that there is something that calls for investigation. I hope, when replying, that he will say definitely that even if it is necessary to increase the wages of those people in order to enable them to pay decent wages to their assistants that alternative will be resorted to in order to enable the Post Office to get off its conscience the heavy load that must rest upon it owing to the low rates paid to these persons. That is all I have to say at the moment. Such matters as I have raised are of tremendous importance to the staff and the public in what is one of the biggest Departments of State. I hope the Minister in reply will give some indication that he will go the whole way to meet the points raised in the course of my remarks.
