I move that the Bill be now read a Second Time. This is a Bill to amend in certain respects the Shops (Conditions of Employment) Act, 1938.
Shops (Conditions of Employment) (Amendment) Bill, 1941—Second Stage.
May I interrupt the Minister for a moment? Some of us understood that, at the request of Deputy Norton to-day, it was agreed to leave this measure over until the next meeting of the Dáil next week or the week after.
Deputy Norton mentioned his desire to postpone the Bill to me and I told him of my preference to go ahead with it. I gathered from my conversation with him that he was willing to withdraw his objection to the Bill being taken now, subject to his being free——
As I understand the position, after Question Time he asked that the Bill be postponed until the next sitting. The Tánaiste said that it would not be taken to-day and that it would be decided to-morrow whether it would be left over until the next sitting.
According to the message conveyed to me, Deputy Norton wanted to know if I would postpone it. I sent a reply to the effect that I did not wish to postpone it. I was subsequently on the 'phone to Deputy Norton and he conveyed to me his withdrawal of his objection to the Bill being taken to-day and I understood that he expected to be free from some meeting which he was attending at this time.
It was intimated to me half an hour ago by the Parliamentary Secretary that the Minister could not see his way to postpone the Bill and that he proposed to go ahead with it. I notified Deputy Norton of that by 'phone.
I do not think there is any reason why we should not go ahead with the Second Reading.
Is the Minister insisting on going ahead with the Bill? That is what I understood from Deputy Norton.
That is quite right.
The Tánaiste gave an assurance that the matter would be decided to-morrow.
Oh, yes.
Deputy Norton was left under no misapprehension as to my desire in the matter.
That is a telephone conversation. It did not happen in the House.
Whatever Deputy Norton's impression, the rest of the House was left under the impression that the Bill was not being taken to-day.
The Tánaiste said he would consult the Minister in charge of the Bill.
He said that, among other things.
And the Minister undoubtedly informed Deputy Norton that he was insisting on going ahead with the Bill.
The business has been ordered, and the Chair has no option but to take it.
The Bill has been before the House for a long time and Deputies knew it would be taken to-day. As I was saying, we are proposing to effect certain amendments in the Shops (Conditions of Employment) Act, 1938. Deputies will remember that that Act defined the normal working hours of members of staffs of shops; restricted the working of overtime; and provided for suitable meal intervals, weekly half-holidays and holidays in lieu of Sundays worked and holidays with pay. The meaning of the word "shop" in that Act was made wider than the ordinary meaning of the word. For example, it was made to include hotels and to cover any place in which, or any vehicle from which, a retail trade or business was carried on.
The Shops (Conditions of Employment) Act was experimental legislation. I stated to the House when introducing it that experience would probably show in relation to it, as it has shown in relation to a number of other Acts, that subsequent amendment of it would be necessary. I am sure there is no Deputy who would disagree with me when I say that it is almost inevitable that in legislation of this kind defects appear in operation which involve subsequent legislation. Our experience in relation to the Shops (Conditions of Employment) Act was, therefore, no different from our experience in relation to a number of other enactments.
The same applies to the Trade Union Act.
It could arise there, too.
Yes. It has arisen inside three weeks.
There are four principal amendments proposed in this Bill. The first relates to the definition of member of the staff of a shop. That amendment is necessary because it has been indicated that the definition in the Principal Act could be construed as bringing within the scope of the measure certain clerical or transport employees, other than the bona fide members of the staffs of shops, who may do for the proprietor of the shop, and within the precincts of the shop, any work coming within the definition, no matter for how short a time. In the case of a garage it might happen occasionally that one of the clerks would serve a customer with petrol. It could happen that the driver of a delivery van might be engaged for a short period in the shop during the luncheon hour. Although it was clearly not intended that the Act should apply to clerical workers, or transport workers, nevertheless the fact that an individual clerical or transport worker might do shop work for that period of the day would bring him within the scope of the Act. It is now proposed to clear that up by this Bill. The amendment which is being made defines “members of the staff” of shops more precisely, by making it quite clear that they must be wholly or mainly employed in the shop or in the precincts on work coming within the definition, if they are to be within the scope of the measure. I do not think there will be any serious contention about that amendment. It is obviously impracticable to impose the same limitations in respect of hours of work and periods of rest upon van drivers and similar classes of workers, as can be imposed upon shop assistants in the ordinary sense, and it was not intended that a purely temporary change of occupation, such as might occur in the examples I gave, should bring clerical workers within the scope of the measure, or make them subject to the same legal restrictions in respect of hours of work as members of the staff of shops proper.
The second amendment is also designed to restore what was the original intention in enacting the Principal Act, by excluding from the scope of the definition of "member of the staff" such employees as bread-van drivers, milk roundsmen or itinerant ice-cream vendors, whose work is carried out at a distance from the shop. It was not intended that they should be included within the scope of the original Act, because by the very nature of their work they could not comply with the requirements of the Act. When the legislation was being enacted it was believed that it did not cover such classes of workers as bread-van drivers, milk roundsmen and ice-cream vendors. As a result of proceedings instituted in the Circuit Court it has been held that a number of these employees engaged in direct retail sale, in addition to deliveries, come under the definition of "member of the staff", and are consequently brought within the scope of the Act. There was an appeal from that decision by the Master Bakers' Association but, by consent, the appeal was postponed. It is, I think, recognised by all parties that the work of bread-van drivers cannot be organised on the basis of a 48-hour week and a weekly half holiday. The nature of their work is fundamentally different from that done by a member of the staff of a shop in the ordinary sense, and their hours of work cannot be regulated on the same basis as members of the staff of shops. It is now proposed specifically to exclude bread-van drivers, milk roundsmen and ice-cream vendors from the provisions of the Principal Act, and they will be deemed always to have been excluded. I think it was not intended that these people should be brought within the provisions of the Principal Act, since the conditions of their work did not fit into the codes laid down for industrial workers and shop assistants, and that they should not be allowed to bring their employers to court and burden these employers with very heavy liability in respect of overtime payments. An estimate has been made that if that amendment were not effected the liability in respect of bread-van drivers would amount to no less than £30,000 per annum, and the payment of arrears of overtime on that scale since May, 1938, would be a very serious burden on the bakery trade.
Is there any limitation of the hours vanmen work?
No. Legislation in relation to transport workers on the lines of legislation enacted for industrial workers and shop workers has not been effected yet. The Bill provides that in regard to individual employees who have taken their cases to court the rights which they have won or may be on the point of winning are not lost, if that be the correct interpretation of the decision announced in this morning's newspapers. Whatever rights they have are preserved to them by sub-section (2) of Section 3 of the Bill. What the full effect of the decision announced this morning is I am not quite clear. I agree that it seems to suggest that they have lost.
They have not rights that they were never intended to have.
That was obvious. I think there is some slight doubt left.
It was a short head decision.
Bread-van drivers, milk roundsmen and ice-cream vendors under the Shops (Conditions of Employment) Act would still be guaranteed the benefit of annual holidays and public holidays with pay by the Holidays (Employees) Act, 1939. The third amendment contained in Section 4 proposes that the Principal Act shall no longer apply to hotels. The Bill varies the definition and clauses in the Principal Act which affect hotels.
Does that include restaurants?
Hotels and restaurants. When the Act was before the Dáil Deputies will remember that I had considerable doubts about the wisdom of applying it to hotels. I expressed these doubts then. I stated that if they had not been in the Bill originally I would not have brought them in, because it seemed to me then, and I am convinced now, that it was wrong to attempt to define and regulate the conditions of employment of hotel workers in a Shops Act. It is quite obvious that circumstances operating in relation to hotels do not operate in the case of shops. Particularly, there is a lack of uniformity in the practice of running hotels which makes general legislation affecting the conditions of employment of staffs almost impracticable.
The Dáil discussed at considerable length, on the Committee Stage of the Principal Act, the various sections relating to hotels and there was, I think, considerable doubt in the minds of many members as to the wisdom of attempting to deal with hotels in that Act, and many practical difficulties were experienced in devising what appeared to be satisfactory provisions for hotel workers. In practice, these provisions have proved inapplicable and almost inoperative. The principal difficulties are the limitation in the over-all hours of work, the five-and-a-half day week for each employee which follows on the granting of a weekly half-holiday and compensatory relief for Sunday work. It has been found impossible by the great majority of hotel proprietors to comply with the Act and at the same time run their hotels on an economic basis.
There are many different classes of hotels in this country—the metropolitan hotel which does business fairly uniformly all the year round, the hotel in the seaside or holiday resort which opens for three or four months in the summer and closes for the rest of the year and, in between, hotels with a purely seasonal trade and hotels with other conditions affecting their trade which make it impossible for them to maintain uniform conditions for their staffs all the year round. It is that wide variety in the different types of business carried on by hotel proprietors that, I think, justifies my remark that it is impracticable to attempt to control conditions of employment in hotels by general legislation which applies to all hotels irrespective of the circumstances. We are proposing, therefore, to amend the original Act by making it inapplicable to hotels.
I have said that I thought it was a mistake originally to attempt to deal with hotels in the Shops Act. I am still strongly of that opinion, but I realise that this particular provision of the Bill before the House may be mistaken as a retrograde step, an attempt to undo something we have done already. That is not so. I do not think we have succeeded, in fact, in regulating the conditions of employment in hotels throughout the country on the lines contemplated in that Act.
The Minister never tried.
It is not true to say that we did not try. The obligation was not altogether on us to try. By that legislation we gave rights to the workers which the workers could enforce, and the fact that the workers themselves did not attempt to enforce those rights in many cases is, I think, proof that they recognised that the provisions of the measure were not altogether suited to their conditions.
It should not be so difficult to regulate the hours in restaurants.
Precisely the same difficulties occur.
No.
There are restaurants in Dublin which do a normal type of business at recognised hours for every day of the week all the year round. There are no recognised hours for restaurants at the seaside that do practically no business except on Sundays and bank holidays and there are restaurants that do not even open except during the summer months. Precisely the same difficulties arise in relation to the restaurant business as in the case of the hotel business. I would say that these difficulties arise in all businesses catering for the public in that particular way, that is, in the provision of cooked meals.
The amendment which has been put down upon the Order Paper on the Second Reading of the Bill urging that it should be postponed, until a commission has ascertained what difficulties were experienced in the application to the hotels of the Act, and presents a report thereon to the Dáil, would not get us anywhere. I do not know that a commission of the kind could give any more information than is available, not merely to me as Minister for Industry and Commerce or to the officers of my Department, but to members of the House. I believe most members of the House know that difficulties arose in applying this measure to hotels and that in fact, over a great part of the country it is inoperative so far as hotels are concerned.
I am prepared to admit that conditions in Dublin are different from conditions in the rest of the country. It is possible to apply the provisions of the Act to hotels in Dublin. In fact, the trade unions catering for hotel workers had succeeded in obtaining almost similar conditions by trade union action and agreement with the hotel proprietors, and I know that these unions are now somewhat apprehensive of the results of the change which this Bill will effect. They claim — and perhaps justly claim — that since the original Act became law they have been relying more and more upon its provisions and not attempting to insert in the agreements which they made with employers conditions they considered to be embodied in the law in any event and consequently not necessary for them to obtain for their members through their own efforts. They felt that the members had these privileges in any event, and, consequently, that they need not pay particular attention to these matters in any of their agreements.
Representations were made to my predecessor by unions catering for hotel workers in the matter, and he undertook to consider the practicability of inserting in the Bill in Committee the provision maintaining its application to hotel workers in the Borough of Dublin. I am prepared to submit to the Dáil an amendment on those lines. I think it is possible to regulate conditions of employment in hotels on the lines contemplated by the original Act in a place like Dublin, where there is considerable uniformity in the business done by all the hotels within the area and where no very great anomalies will arise. We can discuss that in Committee when I produce the amendment.
To clear up one point which was mentioned, I should make it clear that the amending Bill does not exclude from the scope of the Principal Act restaurants as such. It is only restaurants which are attached to hotels which are excluded.
The fourth amendment relates to the tea interval in chemists' shops. It is a minor change. The Act provides that where the hours of work include the hours from 4 p.m. to 7.30 p.m. an interval of not less than half an hour should be allowed for tea between those hours. In the great majority of chemists' shops there is a qualified proprietor and one, or perhaps two, qualified assistants. Under the Pharmacy Act it is required that there should always be a qualified assistant present in the shop. It is, therefore, obviously impossible for the working proprietor or one of the assistants to get a half-holiday if we maintained the original provision of the Shops (Conditions of Employment) Act, because the proprietor would have to come back for the half-hour while the qualified assistant was having tea, or else he would be breaking the Shops (Conditions of Employment) Act or alternatively breaking the Pharmacy Act. We propose, therefore, to provide that in the case of chemists' shops in which two qualified assistants are employed the tea interval requirement may be dispensed with on the day on which one of the qualified assistants is allowed a half-holiday. I think that is a reasonable amendment of the original Act to meet the difficulty to which I have referred.
I should point out, generally, that employees who were formerly within the scope of the Shops (Conditions of Employment) Act and on that account were excluded from the provisions of the Holidays (Employees) Act of 1939, but who, consequent on the passage of this measure, will no longer be covered by the Shops (Conditions of Employment) Act, will automatically come within the scope of the Holidays (Employees) Act and will remain entitled to annual and public holidays with pay.
These are the four amendments of the Principal Act which experience shows are necessary. There are only two which may cause any discussion here. One relates to the exclusion of bread-van drivers, itinerant ice-cream vendors and milk roundsmen, and the other relates to hotels. I think the reasonableness of the other two amendments will not be contested. There was no doubt as to what was necessary to enable the Act to be operative. In the case of the bread-van drivers and itinerant shop assistants, we did not intend that the Principal Act should apply to them. We are, therefore, merely bringing the law into conformity with what was the original idea when the 1938 Act was being framed.
In the case of the hotels, while there can be no question of our intention to cover the hotels in the Act of 1938, it is beyond contention that outside Dublin we did not succeed in doing it, and it is felt that it is better to mend our hand at this stage rather than keep on the Statute Book legal provisions of that kind which cannot be made operative.
If that is a good reason, there are a few more which you will need to amend.
I move:—
To delete all words after the word "That" and substitute the following words:—
Dáil Eáireann declines to give this Bill a Second Reading pending the setting up of a commission to ascertain what (if any) difficulties were experienced in the application to hotels of the Shops (Conditions of Employment) Act, 1938, and the presentation to Dáil Eireann of the report of such commission.
Listening to the Minister, it seemed to me that he made no case for the exclusion of hotels from the scope of the Shops (Conditions of Employment) Act. Not once in the course of his statement has he attempted to show that the Act was unworkable from the point of view of the staff. He did not adduce any evidence that the public complained that the Principal Act imposed on hotels any burden of a character which reflected itself in irksome conditions so far as patrons were concerned. The only body pressing for an amendment of the Act is the hotel proprietors and they have apparently succeeded, through their organisation, in convincing the Minister to allow them to do what they like with their employees once the Act is amended.
The main benefits of the parent Act were that it provided the workers with a controlled working week; it ensured a maximum working week of 56 hours. It provided them also with a weekly half-holiday and, in the areas in which the Act was allowed to operate, it definitely, had the effect of increasing employment in the hotel industry. We are now having an amending Bill offered to us and one of the effects of it will be that it will repeal the 56 hour week and will permit employers to work their employees for an unlimited number of hours. In addition, the right to a weekly half-holiday will be taken away from the hotel workers because the Act of 1938 repeals the Shops Act of 1912 and it seems therefore that no half holiday provision is retained so far as the hotel workers are concerned.
If employers are to be allowed to exploit workers for any number of hours per week and to deny them a weekly half-holiday and maintain the other types of exploitation which were controlled in some measure by the parent Act you will inevitably have a loss of the employment which the parent Act created in its application to the hotel industry. The Minister will not attempt to deny that when this Bill is passed it will be possible for hotel proprietors to exploit workers to the extent of compelling them to work seven days a week, a piece of exploitation which was not permitted by the parent Act. He will hardly deny that it will be possible for the hotel proprietors to go back to the condition of affairs with which the parent Act dealt, the condition of affairs to remedy which it was introduced and recommended to the House.
As everybody with any experience of the hotel business knows, hotel work is extremely trying and very often is an exhausting type of work. Hotel workers are expected to be alert from the time they come on duty until they go off. They have to try to please citizens who are not always in the best of humour. They have to work in heats and fumes and, so far as hotel kitchens are concerned, they have to work in a very unpleasant atmosphere. Even where the workers' hours are confined to 48 per week, the long spread-over of the hours is such as to make the occupation extremely tiring and exhausting. You must remember that a very large number of young girls are employed at hotel work. It is a very common thing on most nights in the week to find that hotel waitresses are required to work until ten, eleven and 12 o'clock, having commenced their day's work early in the morning. Since the outbreak of the present war these hotel workers have not secured any increase in wages. On the top of having, therefore, to adjust their pre-war wages to war-time conditions of living, they are now being compelled to tolerate a worsening of their conditions as envisaged by this amending Bill.
The Bill which we are now being asked to pass, will, as I said, enable hotel employers to exercise a free hand in respect of their workers. Control, from the point of view of hours, half-holidays and other conditions, simply goes by the board, and employers of an unscrupulous kind are being invited by this Bill to assail the conditions of employment of the workers where these conditions have been established. At a time when Ministers are telling us of the desirability of establishing industrial peace and concord during this emergency period the Minister opens up the possibility that so far as the hotel industry is concerned it offers a very favourable ground, not for industrial peace but for industrial friction.
The parent Act, of course, got no fair chance whatever. The Department made no effort whatever to administer that Act in so far as the hotels were concerned outside Dublin, and even in Dublin its administration was largely enforced by the union and through the vigilance of the union catering for hotel workers. The Minister asked this House to pass that Act and to extend this protection to hotel workers, but once the Act was passed the Department did nothing whatever to administer its provisions. It allowed the law to be set at naught and permitted every unscrupulous employer to disregard the law and to do what he liked in open defiance of our legislation and in open defiance of the Minister's inspectorial staff. Provincial hotel workers, being unorganised, were helpless and utterly inarticulate. They had to stand helplessly by and see the Department give apparent approbation to a denial to them of their rights under the parent Act.
Why were they helpless?
They were helpless, firstly, because they were unorganised. They were faced on the one hand by well organised employers, and then they saw the Department of Industry and Commerce, which ought to administer the Act, being, if anything, on the side of the employers, doing nothing to administer the Act, but aiding and abetting the employers to set the law at defiance. Provincial hotel employers, as everybody knows, have not ceased to moan since the Act was passed that it was an unfair burden on them. Anything that would tend to improve the working conditions of their employees, or to reduce their hours below 72 per week was something that the employers could not tolerate. Apparently, at long last, they were able to get a sympathetic ear from the Minister, and the result is the introduction of this Bill, only at the request of the hotel employers and not at the request of the staffs or of the public. If this amending Bill is passed, all the protection which the hotel staffs have had, even though in some respects it was only nominal, is now gone. The old conditions are re-enthroned and hotel proprietors will be able to do just what they like, as they are doing what they like, with hotel employees in those areas where there is no trade union organisation to set up standards of wages and conditions.
It is well known — and anybody who cares to investigate the position will establish the truth of what I assert — that hotel staffs in provincial centres are paid notoriously low wages and are compelled to work intolerably long hours. Seventy-two hours a week is a common week for young waitresses in hotels, and in some instances not only do they not receive any wages but some hotel proprietors, who probably would not deny that they are bound to take some notice of Papal Encyclicals, even have the hardihood to ask their employees to pay for being allowed to work for nothing in a hotel. I think I reported to the Minister's own Department the case of a hotel in my constituency where a waiter is compelled to pay 7/6 a week for his job. He gets no wages whatever from the proprietor and he is expected to work from early morning until late at night, first to get back his own 7/6, and then to earn a sufficient wage to enable him to keep his wife and four children as well. In the face of conditions of that kind one would imagine that the Minister's whole bent would be towards the regulation of wages and conditions of employment in that industry, but instead of that we have him sitting back and acting as a mouthpiece or microphone for the employers who are responsible for conditions of that kind, and that is the type of employer who is responsible for the agitation to have the Act amended in the way the Minister proposes to amend it.
That hotel to which I have referred regards itself and advertises itself as a first-class provincial hotel, and it is in hotels of that type that the workers are compelled to work 72 hours a week and all day on Sunday and, by reason of having to pay for their job, in some cases, are compelled to extend their hours voluntarily beyond that in order to get some remuneration from the customers, because they will get no remuneration whatever from the proprietor for whom they work.
When conditions of that kind exist in the hotel industry it is not to be wondered at that the employers want to escape from any type of regulation or control of the conditions and wages of their employees in the industry. No reason has been given by the Minister to show that any difficulties of an insuperable kind were experienced, in so far as the application of the parent Act to the hotel workers was concerned. The Act, as I said, was never given a fair trial except, perhaps, in Dublin where the workers were organised in trade unions which ensured its recognition. Throughout the country the Act has been set at defiance and employers simply did what they liked. The Minister never tried to give the Act a trial or to make it work. Whatever difficulties of a minor kind were experienced in the application of the Act even to small provincial hotels, some effort should have been made to secure the operation of the main provisions of the Act, and any amendment that might be necessary should be only directed towards the removal of these pieces of friction which, perhaps, creep into even the best contemplated type of legislation.
I say that the House ought not to be asked to give a Second Reading to this Bill until such time as the House knows what precise difficulties were experienced in the operation of the main Act and until such time as it has had an opportunity of examining these difficulties and making regulations which would ensure that the main provisions, in respect of control and regulation, were continued for hotel workers even if at some later date it may be necessary to remove whatever friction has arisen by the application of the Act in insignificant directions. If the Minister believes that there should be control and regulation of hours and half holidays and Sunday work for hotel workers, and if he feels that that cannot conveniently be done under the parent Act, then the least he should do is to set out for the information of the Dáil, in a seperate Bill, what he proposes to do to ensure the continuance of control in that direction, rather than come to the House and ask the House to scrap the rights which the hotel workers have already secured and offer to put nothing in their place. The Minister has made no case whatever for the application of this amending Bill in so far as hotel workers are concerned, whatever case he may be able to make in respect of pharmacists, and he ought to agree to maintain the present provisions for hotel workers until such time as he is able to give to hotel workers some comprehensive charter which would take cognisance of their special vocational difficulties, while at the same time recognising that the industry is one which is eminently suitable for control and regulation in respect of hours, wages, and conditions. The Minister is not doing that in this instance. He is merely tearing up the charter which hotel workers have had, and putting nothing whatever in its place.
In seconding the motion I hope the House will not give a Second Reading to this Bill. It was rather disappointing to hear the Minister trying to justify this Bill by saying that the previous Act was an experimental one. He went on to say that in all this experimental legislation there were always defects appearing, but he has not yet told us what were the difficulties of working the previous Act. I went into a certain hotel this summer for a week-end with some friends. It was late when we arrived, and the girl who attended us at 11.30 was on duty at 7.30 the following morning. On the following night we were also late in coming into the hotel and the same girl was on duty. I said: "Is it possible that you have been on duty since Saturday evening?" She said: "Yes." I asked: "How many hours have you been on duty?" Her reply was: "I could hardly tell you how many hours I have been working." In the course of conversation she was afraid to express her opinions to me, but outside the restaurant she told me that she was paying 10/6 per week for the privilege of working in the hotel. She also told me that the head waitress, whom I had looked on as the lady in charge, was paying 15/- for the privilege. The man known as the "boots" was also paying 10/- for the privilege of working in the hotel, and was not getting one penny wages. Those are the workers whom the Minister is seeking to exclude from the Bill. Those are the hotel proprietors to whose assistance the Minister is coming. I have some experience of negotiating on behalf of hotel workers, and I have had continuous complaints from manageresses about the frequent illnesses of girls employed on restaurant and hotel work. I am satisfied that those illnesses are due to their long hours on the class of work on which they are engaged.
I think the Minister should be the last man to ask this House to give this amending Bill a Second Reading. I hope it will not do so. I remember seeing a statement in a paper from the director of one particular hotel in the country in which he mentioned that the working of this Act entailed over £1,000 expenditure in the previous year. Notwithstanding that, he paid a very substantial dividend to the shareholders, and I am at a loss to understand how the Minister can say that the Act was such a disadvantage to the hotel proprietors. I know that from the very day when the first Bill was introduced and going through this House there was a campaign by provincial hotel keepers and hotel keepers as a whole to try to defeat the Act, but the Minister seems to be influenced by them rather than by any other consideration. We have heard great talk about the Tourist Association, and public money is being spent on that association and its activities.
Is it contended that hotel workers, who have to work from early morning until late at night, are not entitled to some consideration? It has been mentioned here that there was no uniformity in the working of hotels and restaurants. What about seasonal hotels and seasonal restaurants? The employees who work in those seasonal hotels and restaurants are employed only for a particular season. Deputy Norton talked about their having to work 72 hours per week. I can tell the Minister about girls who work 84 hours a week in hotels. They will tell you that they have three or four hours off in the afternoon, and all they can do is to go to bed and rest during that time because they have been on duty from 7 o'clock in the morning. Notwithstanding that, we are asked to give this Bill a Second Reading to cut out hotel workers. I hope the members of this House will not agree to that, and I must say it is a retrograde step that we should have the Minister coming in here and asking the House to give such a Bill a Second Reading.
I had hoped to hear from the Minister a much better case for this Bill than he has made. With one thing that he said, I am in entire agreement. Towards the end of his speech he said, in effect, that we might as well scrap this in any case, because even though it was in the Act passed in 1938 it has never been administered. I interjected that if that was to be the test there are a great many Acts of Parliament and a far greater number of orders made by the Government which should be scrapped immediately, because the orders were made and the Acts were passed but no effort was ever made to enforce them. But I was more concerned with the Minister's attitude as to his responsibilities or, rather, the responsibilities of his Department, for the enforcing of an Act such as this when it becomes law. I gathered from the Minister's attitude that he felt there was no responsibility whatever on his Department to see that an Act such as this, when it became law, should be operated. I wonder, if the Department were to take the same attitude with regard to national health insurance or unemployment insurance, what would the position be in the country? I do not think that position is a tenable one for the Minister or for his Department. I am not sufficiently acquainted with hotel conditions to take a hard-and-fast line on the matter.
There may be a good deal in the case for the amending of the Act, but, if there is, we have not heard it from the Minister. What we did hear from the Minister was this: he has introduced this amending Bill. He is going to amend the amending Bill on the Committee Stage to exclude from the amending Bill the hotels in the City of Dublin. He is going to do that notwithstanding the fact that he said earlier in his statement that this particular section in the Act dealing with hotels was impracticable and could not be worked. He made no reservation in regard to Dublin or anywhere else when he made that statement. I want to suggest to the Minister and to the House that the only reason why the Minister is going to bring in an amendment on the Committee Stage of this Bill to exclude hotels and restaurants in Dublin City from its operations is because he is afraid of the consequences in Dublin, knowing that the hotel workers in the City of Dublin are 100 per cent. organised.
The amendment, I think, is a fair one. The amendment simply asks the House not to take a decision on this Bill until such time as an inquiry has been held and a report furnished to the House. The Minister may now be satisfied that he went too far, in the Act of 1938, in dealing with the conditions and hours of hotel employees, but I would suggest to him that he is now going to the other extreme, in simply wiping them out from under the protection of the Act altogether, and making no exceptions other than the particular one I mentioned, the City of Dublin. Certain members of the House may regard as exaggerations the statements which have been made by Deputy Norton and Deputy Hickey regarding the conditions in certain provincial hotels, and so far as I know in certain of the city hotels, where people not only receive no wages but have to pay for the privilege of working there. Those statements are quite true, and were not at all exaggerated. As a matter of fact, so far as a great number of hotels are concerned, they were understatements. Those Deputies talked about employees working 72 hours or 84 hours a week. Those of us who know anything at all about hotels are aware that in certain hotels — I do not at all want to be taken as branding anything like the majority of the hotels in this country—the employees are working from 7 o'clock in the morning until sometimes 2 or 3 or 4 o'clock on the following morning, and are on duty again at 7 a.m. That goes on over considerable periods, if not over the whole year.
Deputies who have travelled around this country, and have stayed in hotels in various places from time to time, know that that is quite true. What one really wonders at is that those people are physically able to stand up to those conditions and those amazingly long hours, when one remembers that during practically all that time, for 12, 14, 16 or sometimes 17 hours, they are continuously on their feet. I do not say that that is general throughout the hotels in this country. I do not believe it is, and I would be very sorry to think it is, but that is the sort of employment, if one can call it that, which puts a stain upon every hotel in the country. The Minister is not making any effort whatever to deal with conditions such as these.
I am satisfied that the proprietors and owners of the majority of the hotels in this country would not be averse to any legislation passed by this House to ensure fair working conditions for their employees. The original Act may undoubtedly have imposed a burden upon the proprietors of certain hotels but, where the Act was at all enforced, that burden was felt most heavily by those who had already been exploiting their workers. It was felt by those who were obliged to employ three persons where they formerly employed only two and by those who worked perhaps one employee for 16 or 17 hours and who had as a result of the Act to employ two persons to work over the same period. Whatever the merits of the hotel owners' case may be, the Minister certainly has not made that case to this House. I think the amendment is a very fair one. It asks that the House should not take a decision on the Bill pending an inquiry into the matter and a report to the House. I think the Minister in his opening statement has made a much better case for the amendment than he made for the Bill.
I join with other speakers in appealing to the Minister not to force the passage of this measure through the House. I think I can congratulate him on making such a poor case for the Bill to the House. It is, I think, a tribute to his humanitarian instincts and better feelings that he appeared to be a man who had not got his heart in his job to-night and that he recognises that in sponsoring this measure he is performing a very undesirable piece of work. He said, rather facetiously I think, that he hoped it would not be mistaken as a retrograde step. There can be no mistake in the world that it is a retrograde step. It means, if persisted in, that the Government or the framers of the measure have abandoned to their fate a very important section of the community who were working under slave conditions in these hotels, and that at a time when tourism is supposed to be one of our best industries and one calling for increased development. Surely we are not going to develop tourism by imposing slave conditions on the workers engaged in it?
This is a most reactionary proposal because it wipes out the benefits afforded by the 1938 Acts without proposing to put anything in their place. Both the Acts of 1938 repealed the 1912 Act so that we are actually reverting to the pre-1912 conditions by passing this measure. Can anybody seriously contemplate at this period, when the whole trend of legislation is to improve social conditions for workers, that the Dáil should give its approval to a measure which puts the workers back to the conditions which prevailed before 1912? If we could be assured that the good feelings and the humanitarian instincts of employers would always govern their relations with their workers in this industry, something could be said for it, but evidence has been adduced here to-night by several speakers, and I can support them, of the unconscionable conditions imposed on workers in this industry. That has been so even when the Act was in operation because of the definite and absolute failure of the Department to attempt to enforce it.
The Minister has stated that he thought the trade unions were not as active as they might be, and that they were inclined to rely on the Act. Really, it was only in Dublin that the Act was respected. Down the country, some of the hotels which are doing a very big trade, and some of which charge a very high tariff, compel their workers to work as much as 100 hours a week. I have particulars in my bag of the case of a maid working 100 hours a week in an hotel in which the charges to customers are fabulous. When she does get any relief she has only time to snatch a few hours' rest in bed. She is paid the princely salary of 10/6 a week. If an inquiry were set up into this matter, I think the Minister would be astonished to find the conditions under which the employees in some hotels are working, and he would not attempt to do anything that is calculated to worsen these conditions. I think it is rather a mean attitude that, because the workers in Dublin are organised, he will not alter the conditions there, because he knows that if the conditions were altered there would be industrial strife. The unfortunate workers outside Dublin are going to be left to their fate because they are unorganised. Surely it is the responsibility of the Government to see that workers, whether organised or unorganised, are given something like human conditions? The conditions of the 1938 Act were minutely discussed when the measure was passing through this House, and provisions were made in that Act to meet exceptional cases. There was nothing of a hard and fast character about it binding hotel keepers because the difficulty of operating the measure in their particular circumstances was then recognised. We are convinced on this side of the House that in introducing this Bill the Minister was influenced from the hotel-keepers' side, but we have not heard the Minister give the reasons in black and white why he has not been able to enforce the Act through the whole country. We say that he has not attempted to do it. I have myself reported a number of cases to the Department. I got redress in one case. but within a month after the inspector had gone back, the conditions had fallen back into the old rut, so that we can have no faith in some of the employers.
I want to make it clear that, in common with other speakers, I am not putting all our hotel-keepers on the same plane, because the bulk of them are inclined to show reasonable consideration to their workers; but there are many big hotel-keepers in the country who are doing a big business and who have no scruple whatever in inflicting intolerable conditions on their staffs. The incidence of sickness in this industry has been stressed, and the Minister can have further information on that point if he desires it. I say that this measure will definitely imperil the health and the happiness of a very considerable section of workers in this industry. The health of girls in hotel employment, who are destined to be the mothers of families in future, surely deserves consideration. The Minister should be very slow to introduce a Bill of this sort, at least without instituting some inquiry as to the conditions in the industry. I suggest that it is the bounden duty of the Minister, before he makes any attempt to wipe out the legislation passed in 1938, to set up an inquiry such as is suggested in the amendment. All aspects of the case have been fairly covered by previous speakers, and I do not want to delay the House unduly. The Minister has told the House of the case of a man who stated that the Act cost him an additional £1,000. Yet that particular man was able to pay his dividends, and very substantial ones.
Again, it should be remembered that this Bill is going to result in a considerable increase in unemployment, and I suggest that the Minister has no right to do anything which is going to swell the ranks of the unemployed. From whatever aspect we consider the matter, either from the point of view of the health of the workers engaged in the industry, or from the point of view of the unemployment that is likely to be created as a result of the passage of the Bill, or even on general humanitarian grounds, I think the Minister will have to recognise that there is no case for the Bill. I think, therefore, that he should accept the amendment, and hold an inquiry before proceeding with it. If he does, I am quite satisfied that he will be in a different frame of mind afterwards. I am quite convinced that after an impartial inquiry into all the circumstances, the Minister would never attempt to pass this piece of legislation.
Deputy Keyes mentioned the unemployment that is likely to be caused as a result of the passing of this measure. I think on this ground alone, apart from any other, the case put to the Minister ought to appeal to him. Here we have a section of hotel keepers who have had, you might say, two very good years when you compare their conditions with the conditions of other employers in the country. They have got plenty of custom at increased prices. I think that it is a very bad example for the Government to show to those other classes in the community to whom they have been appealing to keep their workers in employment. Members of the Government have on very many occasions appealed to all classes to realise the conditions in the country and, even at a sacrifice to themselves, to keep their workers in employment. Apart altogether from those appeals, in many industries and in very many commercial concerns the employers are doing everything they possibly can, and are going to great lengths to keep their workers employed. I know various firms who, on the merits of the case from the pure economics point of view, could and would dispense with a large number of employees at present, but for the fact that they realise there is nothing for the employees to get; that they have served them well in the past; and they are now, at a certain amount of sacrifice, keeping them employed although the work is not there for them. In fact, many private persons are keeping servants employed at present when the conditions to which they are reduced as a result of present circumstances might dictate that they ought to dispense with them. They are refraining from doing so, because they realise that if they let these servants go they would have no other place to go to, and that the employment problem would be a very bitter one for the people they let go. By introducing new conditions which would enable some hotels throughout the country, who have had two good years, to put an additional number of people into the position of being unemployed the Government are giving a very bad example, and I think the Minister would be very well advised, even on this ground alone, to hold his hand in regard to this measure and accept the suggestion made in the amendment.
I agree with those who have said that the Minister himself has made a better case, or at least as good a case, for the amendment as anybody from this side of the House. I cannot remember any occasion on which a Bill was introduced in such an atmosphere. The Minister has admitted that, so far as the hotel situation is concerned, the law is not being carried into effect; that very little effort has been made by the hotel proprietors to accede to the rights of the workers which they obtained under the Act of 1938. In view of this, and in view of the fact that the Minister was convinced at the time the Bill was going through the House that the hotel workers were entitled to whatever benefits the Bill would bestow on workers of this kind throughout the country, I think the Minister, ought to accede to the request made through the medium of this amendment to have an inquiry held into this whole situation.
The Minister has told the House that so far as Dublin is concerned the Act is being put into operation; that in consequence of the fact that agreements have been arrived at between the unions which cater for the hotel workers in the city he is going to insert an amendment which will make those prevail. I think that that is very unfair to the other hotel workers throughout the country. It is certainly a good advertisement for the trade unions catering for the hotel workers in the City of Dublin. If the Minister is satisfied with the arrangements that prevail in Dublin, I cannot understand why he does not do something to secure that the same arranagements should prevail in other parts of the country.
It has been pointed out here that the conditions under which the hotel workers all over the country work are abominable. I think that is known to everybody. Every Deputy knows that in some of the provincial hotels the conditions which prevail for hotel workers are definitely very bad. Deputy Morrissey and others have mentioned that hotel workers work over 100 hours per week. That is quite true. We all know that in certain hotels the workers start work at 7 o'clock in the morning and sometimes they are working until 2 or 3 o'clock the next morning. That applies especially to barmaids who, I presume, will also be affected by this legislation when passed.
Deputy Mulcahy referred to the fact that certain arrangements have been made in some of the decent hotels in the country to put this Act into operation and, of necessity, they have had to take on more employees in order to fall in with the provisions of the Act. Now, if this amending Bill is passed, it means that those people will be thrown again into the ranks of the unemployed, and what the Minister is trying to avoid in other employments will come about in consequence of bringing this Bill before the House. Deputy Mulcahy has also stated that there are various employers throughout the country who could dispense with certain of their employees, but because of the fact that appeals have been made by responsible Ministers and responsible public men to keep on employees owing to the emergency, they have done so. But if this Bill becomes law it will be responsible for putting out of employment a great many people.
This Bill also deals with bread-van drivers. Here again I suggest that an injustice will be done to this particular type of workers. "Van drivers," in my opinion, is not a proper description of these people. In 90 per cent. of cases it will be found that they are not alone bread-van drivers but salesmen as well. They are sent through the country with various articles to sell. I suggest that they are in the same position as a person behind the counter in any retail shop in any part of the country. I suggest to the Minister that in this case also there should be an inquiry into the number of hours they work and the particular kind of work they do. There is nothing unreasonable in asking that an inquiry should be made into this whole position before the Minister insists on putting this Bill through the Dáil. If he insists, of course he has a majority behind him and the injustice to these people will be carried. I suggest that every member of the Fianna Fáil Party knows quite well the intolerable conditions under which hotel workers all over the country work and that they should, with us, ask the Minister to consent to an inquiry before he proceeds with any further stage of the Bill.
There are one or two points to which I should like to direct the Minister's attention. From what the Minister has said in his opening remarks I gather that the recent judgment of the courts has not been very accurately studied by himself or the Department up to date. I think that now that the time has come for some amendment of the law, the more he analyses that judgment the more likely he is to discover that certain flaws have been discovered by that judgment in what I think were the intentions of the Government in connection with the full conditions of employment. As far as I understand, the difficulties that have arisen have occurred mainly on account of this: that the Bill as originally designed was to cover shops as we understand them, fixed structures, and that clause 3 was put in applying conditions that were drafted entirely in the light of fixed structures to travelling shops. I understood that the aim there was to catch what is regarded in some parts of the country as an evil, the travelling shop. By that I understood, when the measure was previously discussed, the type of vehicle that goes around peddling goods to people in the vicinity of urban localities and to people in the countryside. There appear to be two distinct types of travelling shop. There is one where the trader arrives with his whole equipment, carried by some sort of horse-drawn vehicle, and sets up in the market square a booth. As I understand the recent judgment of the courts, it would be quite easy to apply such terms as "precincts of a premises" to such booths. As far as I understand the recent court judgment — I do not arrogate to myself complete understanding of it — it will be impossible to apply the phraseology of the Act which turns upon the use of this term "precincts" to the type of gentleman who goes around the country with a lot of goods in a van, which he then takes in his hands and brings to the doors of houses and tries to induce customers to buy them. That type of gentleman, as I understand the recent judgment, is entirely outside the Act. Whether he was intended to be in it or not, I do not know. I thought it was understood that there was no intention to catch the bread-van server, and that position has now been regularised. It appears that ice-cream vendors were nowhere inside the Act. It is now considered that they are not. I do not know if the Minister intended to catch the travelling shop of the second type — the man who goes around peddling goods from a vehicle, which he takes from his vehicle to the customer's door. From the recent judgment I think that gentleman will not be caught.
The other thing that emerged from the court judgment was this: There are certain overtime hours permitted. It is made an offence for the proprietor of a shop to work people beyond the permitted overtime, but it emerges from the recent court judgment that if a man succeeds in getting an employee to work twice the number of hours of permitted overtime that employee cannot recover anything more than payment for the number of hours of permitted overtime. Whether that is intended or not, I cannot say. Whether that was the intention of the Government or not, that is the position that now exists. This amending Bill does not amend that. The Minister may reply that it is an offence for the employer, that he can be brought into court and fined. The fine in the main is a small fine. I think it comes within the region of a few pounds, rising to £10 or £20. There are cases current in the courts, of employees whose yearly permitted overtime is 2,600 hours, who have been worked 4,000 hours and they are now faced under the recent court judgment with this situation, that if they do go to court they can only recover payment in respect of the permitted overtime. The overtime in excess of the permitted hours will be regarded as if they had not worked at all. It is not a question of time and a half or time and a quarter. They will not get any time. That is a repercussion from the recent judgment that probably has not been adverted to.
As far as bread-van servers are concerned, the attempt recently made to bring them inside the Act has failed. In accordance with the views of the people who promoted this measure, it only failed by a very narrow margin. It turns entirely upon the construction given by the courts to the phrase used in connection with the term "member of a staff"—"a person who does work mainly inside the precincts of the shop." There is amazing difficulty there. The people who drafted these words and used simple language would be perturbed at the despair and confusion they cause when the court is brought up against the phrase used. It has a particular and concrete content or meaning in regard to a fixed structure and no content or meaning when applied to a travelling vehicle. The phrase is still going to be used, and the whole Act turns upon that— people who do work in or within the precincts of a shop. The Minister may find that there are any number of people he wants to get in who will be ruled out.
Again, anything I say in regard to this matter is to be taken with great reservation because where there are five separate judgments given it is not always easy to get what is the common view. It is certainly not easy to express briefly what is the full meaning of the judgment. It certainly would look like this, that the test that is applied is, (1) does the trader go to the customer or do the customers come to the trader; and (2) if the customers do come to the trader has the transaction been carried out within the precincts? Even if the customers do come to the trader, how far away from the van is the transaction carried out? Is it beside the van; five yards away from the van or ten yards, or how far? The phrase "within the precincts" is still the pivot of this measure and that is the phrase that has caused a great deal of trouble recently. The Minister now seeks to clear up the situation with regard to the bread-van server. There is a vehicle and from it there is carried on the retail trade of selling bread. Then there have to be two conditions — one is that the vehicle is the property of a baker and, secondly, that there is either wholly or mainly carried on the trade of selling bread by retail. I am informed that the type of business has grown up with bakers that the man buys the van; the man becomes possessor of the van; but still only trades for the one person. He sells one man's bread all the time. When he is not selling bread he sometimes uses that van for other purposes of his own. As far as selling bread is concerned he sells only the bread belonging to one person and does not buy that bread so as to become the proprietor of the shop. I do not think by the definition of the Act he becomes the proprietor of the shop. That particular individual is not removed from this Act by this amendment. There is also the case where a man is hired by a baker, whether he owns a van himself or whether he takes the baker's van to deliver bread to people who buy wholesale or to people who buy retail. There is a mixed trade there, and he may be classed as not merely carrying on the retail business of selling bread. That van is not cut out from the Bill. I wonder is it intended to exclude him. Apparently he is not going to be excluded. I do not think that particular case will arise very often, but associations I have had with people engaged in that trade lately have led me to believe that there is quite a number of cases in which the individual employee buys a van of his own, trades entirely for one baker and that then the baker is not the owner of the van.
I wonder what is the repercussion of that? Supposing the bread-seller who owns a van of his own, and is not, therefore, excluded from this Act by the definition — he may be excluded by other circumstances — takes a helper. The baker whose bread he is selling never hears of the helper, but this man who owns the van works that boy beyond the conditions of the juvenile employment laid down, and even beyond the conditions of overtime permitted. The peculiarity of the situation is that the offence is committed by the baker who has never heard of the boy, unless the Minister is now getting the situation so rectified that the man who owns his own van is going to become the proprietor of the shop. It is not clear that that is so. It is possibly intended to be the meaning. It is not worked out by the definition clause. There is quite a possibility, as I say, of that very odd situation that has never been in the contemplation of anybody that a man owning a van and hiring a boy as a helper and overworking that boy in the sense of non-permitted overtime in the Act might throw back the offence on to the baker who, by definition, is deemed to be the proprietor of the shop, and by whom the offence is deemed to be committed. It throws back the offence entirely on to the baker although he never heard of the existence of the individual to whom the offence occurs. I suggest these are matters that still can be looked into, and I suggest, if the Minister is inclined to have it the law that in case a man does work people beyond hours that are regarded as permitted overtime he should pay for them, then he ought to include another phrase allowing, in the most precise terms, the employee to recover at the overtime rates for all hours worked and not merely for such hours as are regarded as permitted by the Act. The position apparently turns on this, that because the work beyond the permitted overtime was illegal, the whole contract was by way of being illegal and no compensation could be enforced for it. That is a result which I do not think was desired, but it is a result which is there.
With regard to the main part, the part about which the controversy has arisen, that is, the application of the exclusion sections to the hotels, I propose to vote for the Labour amendment until I hear something further from the Minister. As I understand Parliamentary procedure, as we have worked it here, it is that where a Minister brings forward a Bill, the onus is on him to suggest to the House the reasons why the measure should be accepted. The Minister recently got the first Bill passed, having given reasons why it should be accepted by the House. It was applied to hotels. The Minister now comes forward with this Bill and I think the difficulties which have arisen, or which he adverted to, if he did not completely explain them, are sufficient to justify his excluding bread-van drivers and other itinerant people like roundsmen from the Bill. I have not heard from him yet, however, why it is proposed to exclude the hotels from this measure. I did hear general phrases about the difficulty of application and so on. I do not know whether it is necessary to have a whole inquiry set up to investigate the working of this in relation to hotels, but I do think the House is entitled to a reasonable explanation as to why exclusion is proposed for acceptance here. In the absence of that explanation, I propose to vote for the amendment on the basis that I want, not to have an inquiry, but some statement as to why it has not been found practicable to give these benefits to hotel employees.
To deal first with the points raised concerning bread-van drivers, I want to make it clear that, in my opinion, the specific exclusion of bread-van drivers from the scope of the 1938 Act is in no sense an injustice to them. It was not intended that the Act should apply to them and it was made clear at the time that it was not so intended. I think it is perfectly preposterous to claim that there is no difference between the conditions of work of a bread-van driver and a shop assistant of the ordinary kind. We can provide by law that the shop assistant will not work more than eight hours in the day or 48 hours in the week. We can give the shop assistant a legal right, if he has completed the maximum permitted number of hours of work, to leave the shop and go home, without risking the anger of his employer or dismissal on that account, but we cannot entitle the bread-van driver to do that. If we say that the bread-van driver must work only eight hours in the day, what does he do when the clock strikes the hour? Does he leave his horse and van on the side of the road and go home?
That one fact will show that the conditions of employment are fundamentally different in each case, and, consequently, it is not possible to have regulations which apply in one case applying equally in the other case. That was recognised when we were legislating in respect of the conditions of employment of industrial workers as well as shop workers, that those who are engaged in transport operations of any kind, even as messenger boys, were in a different position from that of workers who carried out their work in one place and that they could not be made subject to the same regulations. It was not intended that the Act should apply to bread-van drivers. It is not clear that it does apply to them. I am not going to discuss now the effect upon this Bill, or upon the original Act, of the judgment of the Supreme Court which was announced in the papers this morning. I have seen only the newspaper reports of that judgment yet, and what the effect of it is going to be, I cannot say. It is not quite clear from what I have seen that it removes the necessity for any amending legislation in respect of bread-van drivers. On the contrary, I think it is still necessary that we should proceed with this amendment of the original Act.
One thing I should say, however, because this is a question of policy and not of legal interpretation, is that it is not intended that an employee should be entitled to overtime rates for working illegal overtime. Under this Conditions of Employment Act and the Industrial Conditions of Employment Act, workers could be employed for a certain number of hours per day or week, and in excess of these hours, subject to the payment of overtime rates. Employment beyond the permitted hours of overtime was illegal.
No. It was not so declared.
An employer who employs a worker beyond the permitted hours commits an offence and, clearly, if you create a situation in which a worker is entitled to get, and has a legal right to claim, an overtime rate of pay in respect of hours worked beyond the legal maximum, there is every reason to fear that in certain cases there will be collusion between employer and worker to evade that requirement of the Act, which is intended to be as much a restriction upon the worker as upon the employer. Consequently, the legislation does not provide for the recovery of wages in respect of overtime worked beyond the permitted maximum number of hours.
Does the Minister suggest that an employer will give a worker overtime rates if he can help it? There are times when it is not possible to avoid overtime.
I am suggesting that there are workers who will work overtime beyond the permitted hours, if the opportunity is given them, and that, in the matter of restricting overtime, it is frequently as necessary to put restrictions on the workers as upon the employers.
Yes, but the worker should be paid for the overtime.
Not if he works beyond the maximum prescribed by law.
If a man is on a job which requires two hours more work than the legal hours, it would be very unfair if he were not to be paid for it.
The legislation provides for normal hours of work and for permitted overtime — a certain number of hours per week, per month, or per year, which may be worked by way of overtime at overtime rates and without any permit or prior sanction from the Department of Industry and Commerce; but over and above these maximum hours of overtime, it is an offence for an employer to employ a worker, and it is not possible for a worker to recover overtime payment in respect of these excess hours.
The points raised by Deputy McGilligan can more usefully be discussed in Committee. I do not wish to discuss them now, because I should like to give them some examination before expressing an opinion on them. The effect of the Supreme Court judgment, as I understand it, appears to be to exclude the itinerant shopkeeper of the type referred to by Deputy McGilligan. Whether it is desirable to leave him excluded, or whether it is practicable to include him, are matters that will require attention. I think it will prove to be impracticable to include that type of shop in the scope of the measure.
Now, in relation to hotels, I want to say this for the benefit of Deputy Norton: that he must not forget that it was the Government introduced this Shops (Conditions of Employment) Act in the first instance, and that in framing the Act we included in it provisions covering hotel workers. I think the fact that the Government, on its own initiative, promoted that legislation and designed legislation to cover hotel workers is proof that there is no lack of desire to afford to hotel workers what legal protection it is possible to give them. We desire it. We set out in 1938, to give to hotel workers legal rights in relation to the conditions of their employment. The fact that we must face is that we did not succeed. Deputies cannot have it both ways.
You did not try.
Deputy Norton, if he knows anything at all about this knows that that is not so. It is not possible for Deputies opposite logically to contend, first of all, that the Act is not in operation and that the Department is at fault because the Act is not in operation, and at the same time try to maintain that the repeal of the Act is going to make any change. One or other argument will not stand. Deputy Norton says that we did not try to enforce the Act. We did try. I want to point out to the House that the obligation to enforce the Act did not rest upon the Government alone. The Act gave to the workers the right to take proceedings under it. It gave to trade unions the right to take proceedings under it. Any trade union could take proceedings against an employer for an offence under the Act. The pressure for the amendment of the Act in its application to hotels or for the repeal of the Act in its application to hotels, came not so much from hotel proprietors as from the officers of the Department of Industry and Commerce who had responsibility for enforcing it. They found that not merely were they unable to enforce it, but that they could not, over a great part of the country, get the co-operation of the employees for the enforcement of it.
What reason did they give?
I am going to tell the House that. Most of the employees did not want a situation created so that the Act would be completely enforced. It is practicable to control the hours of work, on the lines contemplated by this Bill, in a large establishment. Where a hotel employs a large staff with more than one cook, with more than one waiter and with more than one trained operative in any part of the establishment, it is possible to enforce the Act, but where a hotel is either unable to get an additional trained cook or trained waiter — and that is the problem of a number of these purely seasonal hotels which open for two or three months or so and close down for the rest of the year or is not big enough to afford to employ more than one — it has been found impossible to operate the Act at all. Take the type of hotel situated in many parts of the west of Ireland which opens at particular seasons and only at particular seasons, if that type of hotel is going to attract any trade at all it must have a good cook. If it is going to operate this Act as it stands, it must have two good cooks because there will be a day and a half in every week in which the cook employed in the hotel will not be allowed to work under the Act, and during that day and a half no meals can be served in the hotel. The same thing applies to other classes of hotel workers. The hotels which cater for holiday-makers of one kind or another —fishermen, sportsmen and others in outlying districts — must provide not merely service but good service if they are going to attract the type of client that they were established to cater for, and they cannot do that under the Act, having regard to the difficulties they have experienced in getting competent workers to go to those hotels for the very limited season during which the hotels are open.
We discussed all this before. I felt, when introducing the 1938 Act, that it was possible to devise regulations that could be made applicable to hotels. I met with a lot of opposition in the Dáil. A number of the Deputies on the benches opposite very strongly opposed the inclusion of hotel workers within the scope of the measure. I said then, after a number of protracted debates on the Committee Stage of the 1938 Act, that if I were starting again I would not have attempted to deal with hotel workers in a Shops Act. The records of the Dáil are there. On more than one occasion I indicated my regret that we had attempted to tackle the job of regulating the conditions of employment of hotel workers in a Shops Act because facts were continuously arising to show that the conditions of employment of hotel workers were fundamentally different from the conditions of employment of ordinary shop workers, and because the regulations applying to one could not be easily applied to the other. Let me be quite clear about this. The position of hotel workers is either going to be different in the future or not if this Bill becomes an Act, and I think it is going to make no change. Up to 1938, there was no law governing the conditions of employment of hotel workers. Deputy Keyes said that we repealed the 1912 Act, and that by taking hotel workers out of the 1938 Act we are going to put them in a worse position than they were in before because the 1912 Act has since been repealed, but he is, I think, ignoring the fact that the 1912 Act did not apply to hotels. Therefore, the position up to 1938 was that there was no law governing the conditions of employment of hotel workers. We attempted in 1938 to make such a law. We know now that the law has been inoperative outside the City of Dublin. Deputies have urged that we did not try to operate it. I say that we tried and found that we could not operate it. The trade unions and the workers found that they could not operate it although they were entitled to institute proceedings under the law for offences against the Act. They could not do so because they found the Act did not apply.
For the reason that they knew that the State was not going to enforce it.
Whatever the reason, the fact is that the Act is not being operated outside the City of Dublin. Therefore the amendment proposed to the Act is not going to change the conditions now applying in hotels.
Had you any prosecutions under the Act since it was passed?
Did any of the trade unions prosecute?
What was the use when they found that the State was not enforcing the Act?
That is not correct. Then we had the difficulties which were mentioned by some of the Deputies opposite in 1938. I remember Deputy Monagan—at that time I think he was President of the Hotel Proprietors' Association — setting them out very forcibly bilingually. We felt that we should try it out, even though we recognised that many difficulties were likely to emerge. We found in practice that the difficulties were so great that the attempt we started in 1938 could not be continued, and what we are doing now is: we are putting the position back to that which would have existed in 1938 if we had proceeded in that year to legislate only for shop assistants and not for hotel workers.
Has not the Minister an obligation to hotel workers as well as to shop workers?
And to transport workers, and to other classes of workers that no legislation has been enacted for yet. We did not legislate to cover the conditions of employment of all transport workers.
No, because they are already covered.
That is not so. There are transport workers all over the country, such as lorry drivers and car drivers, messengers and others who have never heard of a trade union——
I hope you will legislate for them soon.
—— and they are as much entitled to claim the protection of legislation in their conditions of employment as any other class of worker. Only two classes have been covered so far, industrial workers under the Industrial Conditions of Employment Act and shop workers under the 1938 Act. I was in favour of applying the 1938 Act to hotel workers. If we see now that the attempt failed, it is not because we did not desire it, but because the instrument we had was ineffective. It was not in the interests of hotel workers that we should create an illusion of protection for them which did not exist. I am prepared to amend the Act so as to provide that it will continue to apply to hotels in the Borough of Dublin.
Only in Dublin?
What about Limerick and Waterford?
There are special circumstances in Dublin that do not apply in Limerick or Waterford. Surely that case could be made and could be argued. Where it can be shown that the conditions of the Act not merely apply but can be reasonably enforced I am prepared to continue it. We have heard a lot about the type of hotel workers who, some Deputy said, pay to be allowed to work.
In city hotels.
Let us be clear about any change to be made. The Act provided that the hours in hotels are 56 and up to 64 for overtime. If a person works more than 56 hours he must be paid overtime. What would be the overtime rate for hotel workers who pay to be allowed to work?
None.
The Act does not apply.
That was not the point made. Seeing that they are so wretchedly paid and so wretchedly treated, the point was: why pile it on by taking away this protection?
The protection of the Act is there if workers are employed for a longer period than the normal working hours. It is laid down that overtime rate of pay must be given. If a worker is required to work more than 56 hours, then he must be paid time and a half or whatever the Act prescribes for overtime. What is to protect workers who pay to be allowed to work?
It is time legislation was brought in to deal with that. Instead of that, it is now proposed to take away legislation that was there.
Clearly the removal will not make any difference to the type of worker the Deputy refers to.
I can tell the Minister that these workers in small hotels would not hold their jobs one hour if they were trade unionists. Workers are paying for the privilege of working in first-class hotels.
That is an exaggeration. Clearly nobody does that unless they get something out of it.
Is it fair that a girl should have to pay to be allowed to work from early morning until late at night in an hotel?
I expect nobody does that unless they gain eventually.
I think it is criminal, and that it should not be allowed.
So far as that kind of work is concerned, repeal of the Act will not make any difference because there is no overtime rate of pay.
The Act of 1938 applied to all hotels, but it could not operate.
Why not? The Deputy has not read the Act.
Social legislation should be for the protection of all classes.
So it is.
But that legislation was not put in force. There are hotels where workers have to pay in order to earn a livelihood.
When the Act of 1938 was brought in I said that if it was going to be effective it would be only if the workers would assert their own rights or if organisations of workers would act for them. We gave them power to do that. I said that we provided that workers could prosecute on their own initiative for offences that affected them under the Act, or that organisations of workers and trade unions could take measures to enforce it. We gave that power, and I say here now what I said then, that unless individuals or groups of organisations are prepared to take vigorous action to make effective the provisions of legislation of this kind they will not and cannot be made completely effective.
Is the Minister in favour of that policy?
The Minister must be allowed to conclude without interruption.
I cannot make out how any Deputy could contend that this Bill, if passed, is going to affect employment in hotels. I want to be shown that. As far as I see it, it will not affect restaurants in any way.
Does the Minister mean that workers may have to work 15 hours a day?
The Deputy was not here when I was speaking. There are certain hotels which cannot make the Act operate because of their inability to obtain during the season when they are open the skilled workers required for their business. That situation is not going to be affected in so far as the total number of workers employed is concerned. In other hotels where there are larger staffs employed it is possible, and it has been possible, without any addition to the staffs to carry out the provisions of the Act. These are not going to be affected at all.
The Bill imposed upon some of them an expenditure of £1,200 for additional staff, but nevertheless they were able to recommend a substantial dividend for the shareholders.
I told the Deputy that I admit that the provisions of this measure could be applied to hotels like the Gresham where there is a staff of a certain size employed. It could be applied in all such hotels. Their position will not be affected in the least. That is not the type of hotel that is the difficulty. The difficulty arises with small hotels that are not large enough to maintain a large staff, or to provide for a rotation of staff, or in the case of an isolated hotel which only opens for a seasonal trade, and could not attract skilled workers during that season in sufficient numbers to enable them to operate the Bill. I think there is no point in the contention.
The intention which the Government had in 1938, when they enacted the Conditions of Employment Act of 1938, to afford protection to shop workers and to hotel workers, remains. We found, however, that the particular instrument that we forged then is ineffective in relation to the hotel industry — at least in relation to a large part of the hotel industry. Consequently, we are going to remedy that situation by amending that Act of 1938. If, after consideration, another method of applying legal regulations and control to conditions of employment in hotels can be devised, then new legislation specifically confined to the hotel industry can be enacted, just as we have promised — a promise which must be deferred until after the emergency — to complete a whole series of enactments for conditions of employment in relation to industrial workers until we have covered in a similar manner all classes of workers to which legislation of that kind could be made applicable.
Why not leave this over until then?
Because it is inoperative in the meantime. As we have to introduce a Bill here to amend the Shops Act of 1938, to deal with the position of bread-van drivers and others mentioned earlier, we are taking advantage of it to effect this change that is necessary also. It is not necessary to have any inquiry into the matter. The facts I have mentioned indicate that difficulties have arisen. There is, I think, nobody associated with the hotel industry of this country, either as a proprietor or as a trade union official, who does not know that this amendment is necessary, that the provisions of the 1938 Act in relation to hotels have not been applied and have not been operative.
Leave the trade union officials and the workers out of it. They do not see any need for a change.
I am stating what they all know.
Is the Minister aware that trade union representatives went to his predecessor to make a protest, and that the Minister was impressed with the case put up?
He said he was impressed with the case in relation to the City of Dublin.
Oh, now.
And he gave an undertaking which I am going to honour that, as far as the City of Dublin is concerned, the Bill would be amended so as to maintain in relation to hotels in that area the provisions of the original Act.
Did he make any reference to country hotels?
I am quite certain it cannot be done and that a method cannot be devised to make it apply to all hotels.
Does that inapplicability phrase apply to the whole of that section—juveniles, overtime, annual leave and wages? Are they all inapplicable to the country hotel?
They are all inapplicable, except the provision in regard to annual holidays.
That is all being wiped out?
No. We passed another Act in 1939, which gave the right of an annual holiday with pay and pay in lieu of public holidays to all workers who have not already been given these rights by the Acts of 1938 or 1937. Consequently, the exclusion of hotel workers from the 1938 Act involves their becoming automatically entitled to those rights in the 1939 Act.
But all the other safeguards go.
The limitation upon the hours of work per week, the obligation to give a day off in lieu of Sunday work — they all go.
The half-holiday goes?
Yes.
Juvenile labour goes?
Yes.
Does the wages machinery go?
That comes outside the scope of this Act.
If that is not a retrograde step, I do not know what is.
I am quite certain that, if we had been as wise in 1938 as we are now, we would have introduced the Shops (Conditions of Employment) Act, and made it applicable to shops only, and I am sure no one would have questioned the essential difference between a shop and a hotel which made it impossible to legislate for both at the same time. We should not have attempted to legislate for hotels in the Shops Act. In 1938, I foresaw that such would prove to be the case.
I know now that that was so and that that has made it necessary to amend the Shops Act.
You are making great progress.
The Minister was talking about messengers. Does he propose to exclude messengers from the 1938 Act?
They were not included.
There are people who run errands: they were included.
No.
Will the Minister look at the definition which refers to wholesale premises, "people carrying messages or running errands". They seem to be included.
It says: "but does not include work".
It is a peculiarly distorted sort of phrase:
"but does not include work in connection with a wholesale shop or a warehouse occupied by a wholesale dealer or merchant, other than—
(a) work within the premises, or
(b) work in the collection or delivery of goods, or in attendance upon customers, or in carrying messages or running errands;"
It is not proposed to take that out?
No, I am not altering the Act as it refers to shop assistants.
Is the Minister prepared to allow the amendment to stand in regard to hotel workers until such time as he has framed this alternative legislation?
It does not stand.
What does that mean?
It is not operative.
It could be administered and operated if the Department would only stir itself.
I know that the Deputy wants to make that point.
Question put: "That the words proposed to be deleted stand."
The Dáil divided: Tá, 64; Níl, 26.
Tá
- Aiken, Frank.
- Allen, Denis.
- Bartley, Gerald.
- Beegan, Patrick.
- Boland, Gerald.
- Bourke, Dan.
- Brady, Brian.
- Brady, Seán.
- Breathnach, Cormac.
- Breen, Daniel.
- Brennan, Martin.
- Derrig, Thomas.
- De Valera, Eamon.
- Flynn, John.
- Flynn, Stephen.
- Fogarty, Patrick J.
- Fuller, Stephen.
- Gorry, Patrick J.
- Hogan, Daniel.
- Humphreys, Francis.
- Keane, John J.
- Kelly, James P.
- Kelly, Thomas.
- Kennedy, Michael J.
- Kissane, Eamonn.
- Lemass, Seán F.
- Little, Patrick J.
- Loughman, Francis.
- McCann, John.
- McDevitt, Henry A.
- McEllistrim, Thomas.
- Maguire, Ben.
- Breslin, Cormac.
- Briscoe, Robert.
- Browne, Patrick.
- Buckley, Seán.
- Carty, Frank.
- Childers, Erskine H.
- Cleary, Micheál.
- Cooney, Eamonn.
- Corry, Martin J.
- Crowley, Fred Hugh.
- Crowley, Tadhg.
- Meaney, Cornelius.
- Mongan, Joseph W.
- Morrissey, Michael.
- Moylan, Seán.
- Mullen, Thomas.
- Nally, Martin.
- O Briain, Donnchadh.
- O Ceallaigh, Seán T.
- O'Grady, Seán.
- O'Loghlen, Peter J.
- O'Reilly, Matthew.
- O'Rourke, Daniel.
- O'Sullivan, Ted.
- Rice, Brigid M.
- Ryan, Martin.
- Ryan, Robert.
- Sheridan, Michael.
- Smith, Patrick.
- Traynor, Oscar.
- Victory, James.
- Ward, Conn.
Níl
- Bennett, George C.
- Brodrick, Seán.
- Byrne, Alfred (Junior).
- Coburn, James.
- Corish, Richard.
- Cosgrave, William T.
- Costello, John A.
- Davin, William.
- Fagan, Charles.
- Fitzgerald-Kenney, James.
- Hannigan, Joseph.
- Hickey, James.
- Keating, John.
- Keyes, Michael.
- MacEoin, Seán.
- McFadden, Michael Og.
- McGilligan, Patrick.
- Morrissey, Daniel.
- Mulcahy, Richard.
- Murphy, Timothy J.
- Norton, William.
- O'Higgins, Thomas F.
- O'Sullivan, John M.
- Pattison, James P.
- Reidy, James.
- Ryan, Jeremiah.
Tellers:— Tá: Deputies Smith and S. Brady; Níl: Deputies Keyes and Hickey.
Question declared carried.
Question —"That the Bill be now read a Second Time"—put and declared carried.
Committee Stage ordered for Wednesday, 12th November.