As Deputies will have noted, this amendment proposes to repeal the entire Section 18 and to substitute a number of new provisions therefor. In so far as the ordinary class of workers is concerned, the outstanding point of these new provisions is a slight reduction in the number of hours of overtime that may be worked in a period of four weeks, or in the course of a year. There is no variation in the hours of overtime which may be worked in each week. The principal change, however, to which no doubt Deputies have directed their attention, is the introduction of a new period of 56 hours which will apply in respect of workers employed in hotels. When the Bill was introduced, it applied only to a certain limited class of hotel workers, and I informed the House during the discussion in Committee that it seemed clear that we should either have to exclude hotel workers altogether, or include them all. I came to the decision to include them all, but I recognise that, in doing so, we are creating new difficulties and that the circumstances applying in hotels are in many respects dissimilar from those applying in ordinary shops and that different provision in respect of hotel workers will be necessary.
The Conditions of Employment Act, 1936, distinguished between industries, making different provisions for those industries which were worked by day and those which had to be worked by a continuous process. For the day industries, a 48-hour maximum week was prescribed, and for the continuous process industries, a 56-hour maximum. I think we can see some similarity between the type of work done in a hotel and in a continuous process industry in so far as the work proceeds ordinarily around the whole period of the day, and that there is, therefore, a justification for a differentiation between the maximum hours permitted in hotels and those permitted in shops. There are other considerations which apply also. In respect of a very large number of hotel workers, it is correct to say that they reside on the premises in which they work and, consequently, there is no time lost by them in going to or proceeding from their place of work to their homes. The provision of a longer normal working week for hotel workers involved, as a consequence, a variation in the maximum hours of overtime permitted. I think that it is necessary that some liberality in respect of overtime for hotel workers should be authorised.
Many Deputies referred to the circumstances existing in hotels which cater particularly for a holiday trade, where a very large rush of business occurs at particular seasons, and very often very limited seasons, while considerable slackness is experienced at other periods of the year. To enable the proprietors of such hotels to cater for abnormal business of that kind, occurring in very restricted seasons, some exceptional provision in respect of overtime is necessary. It is proposed to make that here for hotel workers. While Deputies may be perturbed by the institution in the Bill of a longer working week than that originally contemplated for all shop workers, I think it can be said with confidence that the inclusion of all hotel workers within the scope of the Bill will mean a very great improvement in their working conditions. Even the 56 hours authorised by the proposed new section will involve in many cases a substantial reduction in their working hours, whereas the operation of the holiday and the half-holiday provision will confer on these workers benefits which they did not previously enjoy.
I think the general scheme, the sum total of all the various provisions, will mean a substantial improvement in the working conditions of this class of workers. I do not say that we are fixing 56 hours as the normal working week for hotel workers in perpetuity. It is, of course, necessary again to remind Deputies that what the Bill proposes to do is to fix the maximum limits beyond which workers cannot be employed. It establishes the minimum standards of employment which must be observed, and there is, of course, nothing to prevent any hotel proprietor observing better standards, or any hotel worker seeking to obtain them. In any event, the experiment in the regulation of hotel work which this Bill will commence will enable data and experience to be obtained which will perhaps permit of fresh legislation governing that type of work at some future date. I am satisfied that we should not go further than it is proposed in this new section at present in the regulation of the hours of work in such shops.