The Minister, in the course of his speech on this Estimate, has apparently been in a generous mood because he has announced substantial reductions in telephone charges, some reductions in proterage charges, and further reductions in parcel charges. He has been enabled to do that because of the fact that, according to his own admission, after having a deficit of £104,000 on the telegraph service, he has been able to produce a net surplus of £206,000, as the postal and telephone services have yielded a profit of £311,000. This year the Minister is in the position of being able to extract a surplus of £206,000 from the Post Office service, and a substantial portion of that surplus is going to find its way back to the public in the form of reduced telephone charges, reduced parcel charges, and reduced porterage charges. But there are other considerations which ought to operate with the Minister in connection with the distribution of any surplus.
I think the Minister will have to admit that the possession of a telephone by any citizen is prima facie evidence that he is in no need of bread, not troubled with the problem of raising his rent, and that many other necessaries of life have been already well satisfied. It is to that section of the community who are able to pay £7 10s. for telephone lines, and £5 and £6 10s. in other areas, as well as paying for individual calls, that the Minister proposes to part with a substantial portion of his surplus. Might I suggest to the Minister that there are other classes for his surplus, and that if he were disposed to deal with the matter on a purely moral and Christian basis instead of on the basis of what scheme will get the greatest measure of political enthusiasm, he would have found a much more useful outlet for his surplus than that which he has discovered in the course of the debate on this Estimate to-day.
One would imagine from the manner in which the Minister has distributed his surplus that everything so far as the wage level of the staff and the conditions of employment were concerned was ideal. I would like to remind him, in case he has forgotten it, that he is still the worst employer in the State service and that there is no other single Department of State which employs people at such scandalously low rates of wages as does the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs. He can search the Departments of the other Ministers who are his colleagues on the Executive Council, and I have no hesitation in challenging him to discover a single instance in any other Department where the staff is paid at such intolerable low levels as the Post Office.
I want to give the House an instance of the kind of employer the Minister is in his capacity as Minister for Posts and Telegraphs. The latest information as to the wage grouping of the staff in the post office shows that there are 2,158 part-time employees working for the Minister at less than 20/- a week; that there are 900 part-time employees working at wages between 20/1 and 25/- per week; the Minister is the employer of 3,700 part-time employees at an inclusive wage not exceeding 30/- a week. In all, 4,131 persons employed at a wage not exceeding 30/- a week. Another 550 are employed at a wage exceeding 30/- a week and not exceeding 40/-; another 2,200 are employed at a wage exceeding 40/- and not exceeding 60/ a week. Another 1,000 are employed at a wage exceeding 60/- and not exceeding 80/- a week. Out of a total personnel of well over 8,000 persons, approximately 350 have a wage exceeding £4 a week. Even in these instances that wage is only reached in many cases after a service running upwards of 17 years.
So that side by side with a surplus of £206,000 made on the Post Office, the Minister is employing well over 4,000 persons at a combined wage not exceeding 30/- a week. He has the unenviable reputation in his official capacity as Minister, that he employs persons in the State service at less rates than are paid in any other Department. I have no hesitation in challenging him to find any private industry employing over 8,000 persons where only 350 of them have wages exceeding £4 a week. While that state of affairs continues, while these people are paid such wretchedly low rates of wages—wages incapable of sustaining them and enabling them to meet their responsibilities as citizens—incapable of providing a bare reward for the onerous, responsible and trustworthy services which they render to the community—I submit that the Minister should have apportioned his surplus towards relieving the plight of those poor people for whose wages he is morally and legally responsible. He should do that instead of—as he is doing—sharing so much of the surplus with those who are fairly well-to-do, and apparently holding the remainder so that it will be utilised by the Central Exchequer.
It is true that the Minister moved a little since last year. After having the wage scheme under consideration for 15 months he ultimately announced his decision on the scheme. That decision was a miserable and disappointing one. As the Minister has intimated a large portion of the surplus is going to go back to the telephone users, while the main problem in respect of the wage issue remains unsolved. If one looks at the position of the wage rates and of how this surplus is being disposed of, one must come to the conclusion that the only way in which the Post Office staff would get any benefit would be by becoming telephone subscribers and paying £27 per annum for their telegraph lines. In that way they would get much more benefit than could be gained by working for the Minister. By becoming telephone subscribers they get a benefit of £22 10s. a year, and by working for the Minister they get a miserable increase of a few shillings. Even that miserable increase is not paid to all the staff. It is not paid to the people between the minimum and maximum, but only to officers on the maximum of the scale. Even those who are on the maximum are in many cases excluded from any participation in the increase.
The overwhelming majority of the staff gain nothing whatever from the miserable rate of increase provided by the Minister. The Minister's decision reveals that to get an increase persons would require to have a minimum service in the main classes of 15 years before they could get an increase of 1/- a week. Part-time postmen, struggling to exist on the miserably low rate which the Minister pays them, would require to have ten years' service before they get any increase. Then the increase is a miserable one of a halfpenny per hour. There you have the halfpenny per hour for the part-time employee and a reduction of £22 10s. to those who have telephone lines. The Minister's decision was probably the most wretched decision on wage conditions ever given in the history of the Post Office wages. That is something of which the Minister cannot boast.
A large number of grades were excluded from the increases granted, and they were excluded for no definable or logical reason. It was not on the basis that their wages were higher than those who secured an increase, because a number of grades with less wages than those who got an increase were definitely excluded. We have here a most illogical decision by the Minister who decided to grant increases in the case of the persons who had the most wage, namely those on the maximum scale, and give nothing to the men on the minimum or intermediate points of the scale. I do not know on what grounds he can defend a decision of that kind which excludes other classes from participating in it, particularly as amongst the classes excluded were people at less wages than those who actually received the small increase granted. If one wants to get a picture of an illogical increase, he can get it by reference to the scales now set up by the Minister's decision. By this decision the Minister admits that it is necessary for postmen at Bray and Cobh to have increases in their wages of 1/- a week.
In the same decision the Minister, who realised that there is a necessity for an increase in wages at Cobh and Bray, says that there is no necessity for an increase in wages at Waterford, Galway, Dundalk, Mullingar and many other areas. I should like if the Minister would say on what logical ground these later places were excluded, when the increases were granted, in the case of Cobh and Bray. Is it cheaper to live in Mullingar, Waterford, Galway, or these other places that I have mentioned, than in Cobh or Bray? On what ground does the Minister seek to defend an illogical decision of that kind?
We had from the Minister, during the course of his speech to-night, a tribute to the engineering staff for the commendable way in which they repaired dislocated telegraph and telephone services during the recent storms. The Minister was loud in his praise of the manner in which they worked to repair these services, but when we come to ask the Minister for something tangible to indicate the esteem in which he holds his engineering staff, we find the Minister in his decision deciding that he would not give the engineering staff one halfpenny of an increase. All the talk about a tribute to the engineering staff for their work during the break-down has a very hollow ring about it, in view of the very definite decision of the Minister not to grant them one halfpenny per week increase. If that portion of his speech was not intended to be deliberately ironic, it might have been left out, as far as its application to the engineering staff was concerned. To talk about the conditions under which the engineering staff worked, to pay tribute to the manner in which they restored the services, to say: "I am prepared to pay an oral tribute to them, but I am not prepared to give them a halfpenny per week of an increase," seems to me to be a demonstration of irony—probably a curious little foible or an idiosynerasy on the part of the Minister. His recognition of their services is limited to words and does not extend to cash benefits. Instead of giving some of the surplus to the engineering staff, the Minister proceeds to shovel out £70,000 to the telephone subscribers. There is not a word in the way of an increase for the people who make the telephone service possible, and to whose efforts the Minister has been compelled to pay tribute.
Last year the Minister, in discussing this Estimate, indicated that one of the reasons why he could not meet a claim for a decent standard of wages which was made to him, was the fact that the surplus on the Post Office amounted only to £35,000. The Minister has now a surplus of £206,000, and whatever niggardly decision was based on the £35,000 the Minister should certainly open the purse further now in view of the fact that he has a surplus of £206,000 and that according to himself he anticipates that that surplus will be still greater after the commercial accounts for the year ending 31st March are made available. So far as that portion of the Minister's speech in which he indicates that he has shared some of this surplus with his staff is concerned, I would advise the Minister to ascertain the views of the staff. I can arrange to get him a monster meeting of the staff in Dublin; let him make the same speech to them, and I doubt if he will get even one in the audience to believe that he has the paternal interest in them that he has professed. The increases granted to the staff, having regard to the extent of the staff, were miserably low. The Minister has the unenviable record, in respect to the wages decision, that it is the most miserable decision that has ever been given in the long history of wages claims in the Post Office. It is recking with anomalies and inconsistencies and is based on some kind of illogical reasoning that one cannot follow by any process of understanding.
The Minister, as an employer on behalf of the community, has imposed on him the obligation to be a model employer. So far as the wages scales in operation in the Post Office are concerned the Minister is far from being a model employer, and, as has been demonstrated to him on numerous occasions, in many respects he employs persons at much lower rates of wages than are paid in outside industries. The Minister has not challenged that statement or denied the accuracy of it. The Minister himself knows perfectly well that many of the rates of wages paid to employees in private industries are very much higher than the rates of wages paid to employees in the Post Office.
I should like to remind the Minister, realising that he has now a surplus of substantial dimensions, that that surplus has been yielded to him by the very severe reductions in the rates of pay of the Post Office staff during the past 15 years. This surplus would not have been made possible were it not for substantial reductions in wages. Realising that prosperity has now returned, and that he has a substantial surplus, the Minister should now share with the staff some of that surplus, a surplus made possible only by the sacrifices in wages that they have suffered in the last 15 years. In respect to the classes excluded from the recent decision, with the information in his possession now, the Minister ought to reconsider that decision so as to extend the increases all round, and to raise the figure to a level which will lift the staff above the low-wage classifications in which they are to-day, to grant an increase which will bear some relation to the surplus which has been yielded to the Minister on the operations for the year under review. That surplus is only yielded to the Minister by the ability, the energy and competence of the staff. The efficiency of the Post Office is only made possible by advertence to the same factors. With a surplus of such substantial dimensions, the Minister ought not to be hesitant in realising the obligation he owes to the staff to raise the wages to something like a tolerably decent level.
In previous years, I pressed the Minister to endeavour to have the new central sorting and delivery office at Pearse Street completed. During 1933 the Minister was so confident that he was going to get things done, that he stated that he had no hesitation in saying that the first portion of the building would be commenced in September, 1933; 1933 has passed, 1934 has passed, 1935 has passed, and we are now in March, 1936, and there is no sign of this work, which the Minister indicated in June, 1933, as likely to commence in September, 1933, being undertaken by the Department responsible. I do not know if the Minister has ever suffered the discomfort of remaining very long in the present disused distillery which serves as a post office in Pearse Street. I can certainly congratulate the Minister on the fact that he has never had to work in that place, During the wet weather the roofs leak constantly, it is impossible to make it draught proof, while the interior of the building is utterly unsuitable for use as the chief central and delivery office. Mails are congested in it and the interior structurally is in a dilapidated condition. Generally, it is probably the most unsuitable building in Dublin that could be selected for use as a central sorting and delivery office.
In practically all the capitals of Europe one of the objects of interest is the chief post office. Many visitors to continental cities often pay a visit to the central post office there as something well worthy of interest from the architectural point of view. Visitors to this city desiring to see the central post office, wherein the mail traffic is dealt with might be introduced to a place in Pearse Street which was formerly utilised as a distillery. That building is anything but edifying from the point of view of visitors wanting to see the manner in which the central postal authority distributes mail traffic throughout the country. I can scarcely imagine that any difficulties could have arisen to delay the erection of the new central sorting and delivery office over such a prolonged period. The Minister was confident in 1933 that it could be erected in the course of a few months. Now, almost three years afterwards, the Minister is unable to get the work done which he indicated would be done in 1933, and apparently is no nearer providing a new office in Pearse Street than he was then. I would like the Minister definitely to tell the staff how many years they are to be compelled to remain in the filthy, insanitary place that serves as a central sorting and delivery office in Pearse Street. If the Minister were there for 24 hours, or if he had to put up with the inconvenience of doing night duty there, with the lack of heating, and draughts all around the place, he would not be long in realising that a new office would have to be built. If the Minister shifted his own office from O'Connell Street to Pearse Street I suggest it would not be long until he would discover that there was need for improving the structural condition of the ramshackle building that serves as the central office. At all events, we ought to know from the Minister, when he makes the next guess, the latest date at which the office will be erected. I hope the Minister will be much more accurate in the next guess than the one he made three years ago.
Prior to 1932, when the Post Office Estimates were under discussion, we had Deputy Little and Deputy Goulding calling for an improvement in the classification of the Waterford office. Both of these Deputies were regarded as the two official spokesmen of Fianna Fáil on the question of the classification of the Waterford office. One would imagine from the speeches made by both Deputies at that period that once Fianna Fáil Party came into office they would have no great hesitation whatever in adjusting the grievance. As the Minister knows, the classification of the Waterford office is an outstanding grievance. The staff there has been agitating since 1908 to have put right a grievous wrong which was inflicted upon that office when it was irregularly and erroneously classified in that year. Efforts were made to induce the last Government to realise the obvious injustice that had been done to Waterford. At times these efforts look like yielding success, but in the end nothing was done by them to adjust the obvious grievance from which the Waterford office suffers. However, Deputy Little and Deputy Goulding then on behalf of the Fianna Fáil Party pleaded for an improvement in the classification. One would imagine that it was only necessary to draw the attention of the Post Office authorities to be assured that the grievance would be made right without delay. Although that was done, the Minister seemed reluctant to recognise the outstanding claims of the Waterford office for an improvement in its present classification. There was delay in 1932 on the part of the Minister of the period in recognising the claim of Waterford for better classification. However, in February, 1933, Deputy Little took Waterford by storm during the general election of that month, and announced publicly that if the people there, and the Post Office staff in particular, had only the good sense to elect him and the Fianna Fáil administration, everything in the garden would be rosy as far as the classification of the office was concerned. Trusting a responsible, careful, cautious and prudent man, Deputy Little was returned with considerable support from those for whose votes he angled when he made that promise.
Now in March, 1936 the promise that Deputy Little made still remains unhonoured. Apparently the present Executive Council intend to treat the classification of the Waterford office in the same indifferent and cynical way as it has been treated by previous administrations both here and in Great Britain. However, the Minister cannot say that he has not had adequate time to consider the question. He is familiar with it for the past three years. Surely that is a sufficiently long time to enable the Minister to make up his mind, whether he is going to improve the classification of the Waterford office or whether he is going to allow the matter to drag on in the present unfair way. In 1933 Waterford was promised by Deputy Little that he would have the classification question raised. I do not believe that promise was made in an irresponsible way by Deputy Little. I believe it was made by the Deputy only after he received assurances that the classification of the office would be improved.
Quite apart from the merits of the case, the Government are in honour bound to redeem the promise that Deputy Little was apparently allowed to make on their behalf in 1933. To give an example of the outstanding injustice under which Waterford suffers, it is only necessary to say that post offices are classified for purposes of pay under three categories—Class I, Class II and Class III. Classification is based upon the local cost-of-living index figure, plus units of work. Where one is low the other must be correspondingly high. Waterford is classified for the purposes of pay of the postmen the same as Dunmore East, Portlaw, and Pilltown. Although Waterford is a big busy city, with a population in the vicinity of 30,000, for the purpose of pay, in the case of the indoor staff, it is classified in the same way as Abbeyleix, Cashel, Clifden, Callan, and a number of other relatively small offices of that kind. Nobody would defend the injustice in the classification of the Waterford staff on that obviously inequitable basis. Having had the matter under consideration for three years I hope the Minister will now give some indication that there is likely to be a decision on the matter in the near future.
One thing I can congratulate the Minister on this year—the only thing I can congratulate him on—is the reduction of hours in respect of the grades, chiefly in the engineering and stores departments. The Minister has in this particular instance reduced the hours from 48 net per week to 44 net per week. I believe that is a beneficial reform from the point of view of the staff, and I believe it is a reform which will be appreciated by the staff. I believe that the repercussions of that reform in other respects will also have beneficial reactions from the staff point of view. I hope, therefore, that the problem, which is allied with the problem of working hours, will not escape the attention of the Minister.
The Post Office staff suffer from the peculiar injustice that they are denied any weekly half-holiday. Under the 1912 Early Closing Act, the workers in industry and commerce are allowed a weekly half-holiday. An obligation reposes in the State to enforce that Act to the extent of ensuring that workers in private employment are, under penalty, allowed a weekly half-holiday. Under the Conditions of Employment Act, recently passed by the Oireachtas, not only was that right which was then conferred upon industrial workers confirmed, but in some respects it was extended. You have, however, the curious anomaly that the State, which is charged with the responsibility of ensuring compliance on the part of employers with the 1912 Act and with the Conditions of Employment Act, the State, which pursues the private employer in that respect, will not grant in respect to the manipulative staff in the Post Office Department the weekly half-holiday which it compels private employers to observe.
The entire staffs of every other Department of State—the Departments of Justice, the Land Commission, Agriculture, Industry and Commerce, and Finance—secure a weekly half-holiday, although they do not work for such long hours as the Post Office staff. In these particular instances the weekly half-holiday is provided, but in the case of the Post Office manipulative staff there is no weekly half-holiday provided. The Minister as a member of the Executive Council, is responsible for seeing that the Attorney-General does his duty in respect of private employers under the Acts I have referred to; but the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, who ought to be in the dock more frequently than any private employer in relation to this matter, is, apparently, enabled to escape completely his obvious obligation to provide a weekly half-holiday for his own staff. That is an anomaly that has gone on for too long, and I hope the Minister will realise that in these days, and especially in view of the principle enshrined in the Conditions of Employment Act that a weekly half-holiday shall be provided for all industrial workers, a principle which is likely to be extended to other measures dealing with workers in other employment, he should take steps to ensure that a half-holiday is provided for the staff of the Department of which he is the administrative head. If he does that he will confer a substantial boon on the staff, and in any case he will ensure that they will have the same period for recreation, in respect of release from work, as the State is obliged to ensure that the outside employee is entitled to. A very grave anomaly at all events exists at present. It should not be allowed to continue, and I hope, now that the Minister has moved on the question of hours in respect of the stores and engineering staffs, that he will open his mind in a sympathetic manner on the question of arranging that the Post Office staff will no longer be denied the weekly half-holiday which has been withheld from them for all too long.
There is another question to which I must again call the Minister's attention, and that is the question of part-time labour in the Post Office. I have already told the House that there are 3,700 part-time officers employed in the Post Office. One finds it difficult to believe that it is beyond the wit of man or the organising capacity of the administrative staff of the Post Office to devise a scheme by which that substantial number of part-time officers could be reduced by providing them with full-time employment. So far as the Minister is concerned, he is the employer of more part-time labour than any other single industry in the country. Part time employment is socially and economically unsound and it is particularly so when the persons concerned are paid wretchedly low rates of wages as occurs in the case of the Minister's employees. These 3,700 part-time employees perform very responsible work which calls for a very high standard of honesty and integrity. They serve the Post Office and the community with a zeal and enthusiasm which is remarkable, and all the more commendable because of the very poor reward which they receive from the Minister in the form of wages. When we come to examine the problem occasioned by the employment of these people, part-time, at lower rates of wages, we see at once the obvious inequalities which arise in the matter. Many of those who are employed by the Minister, part-time, receive less in wages than they would receive if they were in receipt of unemployment insurance benefit, and although the rates of benefit provided under the Unemployment Assistance Act are lower than the rates of benefit provided under the Unemployment Insurance Acts, the Minister will find, if he consults the wage scales in respect of his part-time employees, that many people are working for him for a rate of wages which is less than they would receive under the Unemployment Assistance Act if they were not working at all. You have got, therefore, the peculiar anomaly that the Minister is employing persons for wages in the Post Office and is paying them less than they would get for doing nothing under the Unemployment Assistance Act.
That gives Deputies an idea of the measure of munificence which characterises the Minister's wretched wage levels so far as his own employees are concerned. It may be suggested, of course, that these persons can obtain outside employment, and that, in fact, many of them do that. Last year, I think, the Minister tried to get away with the suggestion that the Post Office took a test at certain offices as to the number of persons in part-time employment who had outside employment, and found that quite a considerable number of them had it. I do not know at what office the authorities took the test; I do not know whether it was in a town, city or a small rural area or whether it was confined to a few places where they knew the results they would get; but I have no hesitation in saying that the return is about as remote from realities as anything I have heard put up by the Post Office in defence of its action in any particular matter.
It is the sheerest nonsense to pretend to anybody who knows anything about the condition of part-time employees in the Post Office that a majority of them have outside employment. Let the Minister inquire how many of the 35 part-time employees in Dublin have outside employment or how many in Cork, Waterford, Galway, Limerick, Mullingar, Thurles or Nenagh have outside employment. Let the Minister inquire in Roscommon, in Castlerea and in Boyle how many people have outside employment and I am sure he will get an answer which will completely surprise him. What is the prospect of these persons being able to get outside employment? There are 143,000 people available for whole-time employment, registered at the employment exchanges and available for work at any hour of the night, noon or morning, available to work eight, ten or 12 hours a day if their services are required. These 143,000 people cannot get work and what is the prospect then of a man being able to get work who is available only at certain hours that he selects himself. The postal authorities know perfectly well that these people have no outside employment; they know these people are compelled in the main to exist on the Post Office wages; they know, too, that these rates of wages are incapable of sustaining these people, having regard to their civic and domestic responsibilities. It is nothing short of a shame that the Post Office should expect them to exist on the miserably low rates of wages they are at present in receipt of, wages which are less than these people would get by way of unemployment insurance or in the form of unemployment assistance.
The Minister's proposal to share out certain moneys amongst telephone subscribers makes curious reading side by side with these facts. It has been suggested to the Minister time and time again that if he only had the courage and vision to face up to his responsibilities in respect of part-time employment in the Post Office he can substantially reduce the dimensions of the problem and modify substantially the wretched conditions of employment which exists. It has been suggested to the Minister that he should make a start in the cities and towns where persons are employed part-time and endeavour to build up part-time duties by the provision of additional services. In that way, he would help to create in a progressive manner an additional number of full-time duties. If that process were extended to the head offices throughout the country, and if the problem were tackled with vision, courage and some measure of sympathy, I have no hesitation in saying that not only could part-time labour there be abolished, but the public would receive a substantial improvement in the local services. In the course of time the examination might be extended to other offices, all aiming at the one objective, namely, reducing the amount of part-time employment in the service generally. There is no insuperable difficulty in the way of the Minister getting rid of part-time employment in the cities and towns. His advisers must know it if he does not happen to know it himself. Whatever justification you may try to advance in respect of rural areas, you cannot defend part-time labour in the cities and towns. The problem in the cities and towns could be solved almost immediately if the postal authorities would only recognise their responsibilities.
The Department has been asked to effect a remedy by the organisation representing the staff. I would like to know from the Minister whether we can look forward to a substantial diminution of part-time employment in the cities and towns and if we could have an assurance that efforts will be made by the Minister to ensure that those persons whose posts are extended from part to full time will be automatically established when the full-time positions are created for them. To suggest that persons of 45 and 50 years of age should sit for a literary examination is something which will strike any Deputy as an unreasonable imposition. In the case of those people who have served for 20 or 30 years, there can be no question as to their efficiency. Indeed, no such question has ever arisen. If the Minister will only bestir himself, take a personal interest in the matter, and give instructions to his officials to spend some of the Post Office surplus in taking those people out of the wretched conditions in which they find themselves, I can assure him that he can come to the House next year feeling that, in so far as that portion of the surplus has been spent in improving the conditions of wretchedly paid people, it has been well spent, and the Minister will derive more satisfaction from so spending it than by devoting it to other purposes which, in the last analysis, simply mean giving something more to some who have already a substantial sum. He might well direct his expenditure amongst those who find it extremely difficult to exist on the present low rates of wages.
These are matters that intimately affect the Post Office staff. It is through their brains and energy and ability that the Post Office service is maintained. I think it will be agreed by all sections of the House that the Post Office staffs have served the community faithfully, zealously and efficiently. It has always been their objective, no matter what they might think of the curious wage mentality of the authorities, to realise that they are the custodians of the interest and well-being of the public. They have not allowed their own domestic difficulties to intrude themselves in the matter of serving the public, and they have carried out their duties in as efficient a way as it is possible for any staffs to do. The Minister ought to recognise that that kind of service imposes an obligation on him to reciprocate. He has now reached the affluent stage of being in a position to command a surplus of £206,000. We earnestly trust that he will show his sympathy with those in the Post Office service in a practical way and that he will treat them in a much more liberal manner than they have been so far treated by this Government or their predecessors.
