On this Estimate I desire to raise the question of the administration of the Civil Service cost-of-living bonus stabilisation regulations for which the Minister for Finance, as the ultimate employer of civil servants, is responsible. It is probably necessary briefly to give the House an idea of the genesis of the complaints which have arisen because of the Minister's action in stabilising the cost-of-living bonus. To those who are not intimately acquainted with the subject it might appear at first glance that what is known as the Civil Service cost-of-living bonus is a special gift from a benevolent Government. I want at the outset to lay that ghost by asserting that it is no such thing. The cost-of-living bonus agreement came into operation in 1920. The purpose of that agreement was to enable the pre-1914 rates of wages and salaries to be adjusted in so far as the Civil Service was concerned by an upward or downward movement reflective of variations in the cost-of-living index figure. That bonus agreement of 1920 was not just a Government edict. It was the product of a long period of negotiation and ultimate agreement and became known both to the Government of the day and to the staff organisations as the cost-of-living bonus agreement. Under that agreement, the British Government of the day bound itself to respect its terms and the staff organisations, on the other hand, bound themselves likewise.
As I have said, the bonus agreement provided for an adjustment of the wages of the staff in the Civil Service and in all branches of the Civil Service, in accordance with fluctuations in the cost-of-living index figure. The main grievance of the staff in regard to it was that, whatever its advantages in respect of those with fairly good basic salaries, it had a very obvious and easily recognisable defect inasmuch as it was made applicable to the lower grades of the Civil Services who had low basic rates of wages.
From 1920 to 1940 that agreement was loyally honoured by the staff. They respected their word; they respected and honoured the agreement, notwithstanding the fact that during that period they suffered constant reductions in wages as a result of its operation, these reductions being inflicted by the Government because of their contention that the cost-of-living index figure had fallen to a degree that would justify wage reductions under the terms of the agreement.
Many and bitter were the sufferings of the staff by reason of the constant wage reductions imposed upon them. In order to get a picture of the extent of the losses which they sustained because of the fact that they honoured the bonus agreement, it is only necessary, perhaps, to quote one instance to this House. An officer who, under the bonus agreement, in March, 1921, had a consolidated wage, that is, a basic wage to which the cost of living figure applied, of £4 12s. 9d., had that wage reduced to £2 12s. 6d., in July, 1933— a loss of £2 0s. 3d. per week in a period of 12 years, under the normal operation of the cost-of-living bonus agreement.
I say to the Minister, and I think I can challenge contradiction, that no other grade of worker, in private industry or in the municipal service, suffered such severe reductions in wages during that period. In all the years, from 1920 to 1940, the British Government, this Government and the previous Government acted the classical role of Shylock; they claimed and got their pound of flesh under the cost-of-living bonus agreement, in the form of wage reductions, even when they must have been convinced that the imposition of wage reductions, particularly on lower-paid personnel, meant a debasement of their standard of living and an improverishment of many persons working in the State service.
In 1931, when the extent and intensity of these reductions were inflicting very great hardship on the lowly-paid staff in the Post Office, an effort was made to secure an easement of the burdens and on that occasion the Fianna Fáil Party, then in opposition, was approached. The merits of the case were explained to the Party and no less a person than Deputy MacEntee, first Minister for Finance in the Fianna Fáil Government, was so convinced of the justice of the claim of the lower-paid grades that he elected to champion their cause in this House and to plead here for an easement of the burdens which he then recognised were inherent in the rigid application of the cost-of-living bonus agreement. It might be well at this stage to quote, for the edification of the present Minister, some of the views of his predecessor in connection with the rigid application of the cost-of-living bonus agreement to the basic wages of lowly-paid civil servants. Speaking in this House in June, 1931, the former Minister for Finance, then Deputy MacEntee, said:
"To me, looking at the rates of pay which some of the smaller civil servants have, it is a constant wonder how they are able to maintain the appearance they do. I can only assume that they do it by spending upon clothes what might be much better spent on food."
Later in the same speech, the Deputy continued:—
"I am not surprised that such discontent should exist, particularly among the lower grades, because they see an entirely unfair standard has been adopted to determine what is going to be their remuneration from quarter to quarter."
That was the viewpoint of the first Minister for Finance in the Fianna Fáil Government. But, of course, like many of the other utterances of that great man, it was quickly forgotten when the mantle of responsibility was adventitiously thrust upon him in 1932. But, even if we do not put the same value now on the views which Deputy MacEntee then expressed, we can go to higher fonts of authority in order to ascertain the extent to which at that time even the present Government believed it was desirable that, so far as the lower grades of the Civil Service were concerned, they should be treated fairly and honourably.
In 1932 the Taoiseach issued what became known as the Fianna Fáil election manifesto of that year. This is what the Taoiseach then said:—
"We do not propose to seek economies by restricting the social services or by cutting the salaries of the middle and lower grades of the Civil Service. The salaries are in most cases barely sufficient to meet the cost of the maintenance of a home and the support and education of children."
When the Taoiseach issued that manifesto in 1932, the cost-of-living index figure was operating normally. Whatever were the defects in the agreement, at least, the staff were getting what they undertook to agree to in 1920 and, if the salaries of the middle and the lower grades of the Civil Service were barely sufficient to meet the cost of the maintenance of a home and the support and education of children, when the agreement was operating normally in 1932, surely the position is very much worse to-day when the bonus machinery is not operating normally and when the Government, having exacted all the benefits to which it claimed to be entitled under the agreement, has now declined to recognise that there are obligations on the Government to respect the agreement even when it does not happen to be as advantageous to them as it had been.
In order to show that that was not merely an incidental statement by the Taoiseach, we had a subsequent Fianna Fáil election manifesto in 1933. These were the days when Fianna Fáil believed that civil servants' votes were important. This was the 1933 declaration:—
"Our promise not to cut the middle and lower salaries of the Civil Service still remains good. This does not, of course, refer to the change in the cost-of-living bonus which is automatic in its operation."
So that in 1933, having promised in 1932, not to cut the salaries of the middle and lower grades, the Taoiseach re-affirmed his 1932 declaration and added that, so far as the cost-of-living bonus agreement was concerned, it was automatic in its operation and, impliedly, he had no intention whatever of interfering with the agreement.
In 1933, about the time that the Fianna Fáil manifesto of that year was issued, there was considerable agitation in the Civil Service to endeavour to secure an easement of the cuts in the cost-of-living bonus which were then threatened because of a continued fall in the cost-of-living index figure, a fall which was not reflected in the price of commodities and a fall which, whatever may have been its theoretical effect, at least in its practical operation did not make it possible for the lowly-paid civil servants to adjust themselves to the altered index figure. At that time the Taoiseach was appealed to and was asked to intervene with the then Minister for Finance in order to ensure that, whatever the operations of the bonus agreement were, they should not be relied upon to such an extent as to impose hardship and actual suffering on the lowly paid grades in the Post Office, grades that were particularly badly remunerated and in respect of whom the burden of the cuts in wages was heaviest. The Taoiseach at that time told us that the cost-of-living bonus agreement was a sacrosanct document, that it could not be interfered with, that it was something the Government inherited and something the Government intended to apply, and that, if there were any defects calling for a remedy, the remedy for the defects lay in adjusting the basic wages and salaries and not in a revision of the cost-of-living bonus agreement or in the abolition of that agreement. So convinced was the Taoiseach on that occasion that he went down to Ennis in January, 1933, and, according to the Irish Press of 9th January, 1933, the Taoiseach delivered himself of these views.
"There was at present a commission sitting to inquire into the conditions of the Civil Service, and its report was expected very soon. The Government have nothing to do with the cost-of-living bonus. It had been in operation before they came in. We promise that when the report is issued we will reconsider the bargain between the British Government and the civil servants. I never spoke of that at the last election. I was speaking of a reduction of big salaries, and I promised at the last election that when we begin to deal with salaries in the Civil Service we are not going to cut the lower salaries. We are going to keep our word when we get the commission's reports. In my opinion it would be a bad thing for Labour to agree to getting rid of that sliding scale. I am as certain as I am standing here that world prices are going to go up, and the cost of living will go up; and when prices do go up, it is a great boon to the civil servants to know that salaries will go up to meet the cost of living."
These were definite, positive, and unequivocal declarations by the Taoiseach that he regarded the cost-of-living bonus as something by which the Government was bound, as something which was an honourable agreement between both sides, as something that it was bad to get rid of, and, even more so, as a covenant with the civil servants, and, so far as he and his Government were concerned, they were not going to scrap that agreement because they recognised that it was a document to which two groups were parties.
From 1933 to 1940, realising that the Government regarded the cost-of-living bonus agreement as something sacrosanct and as something which could not be and would not be interfered with, the Post Office staff endeavoured to have a remedy applied by making claims for increases in the low basic wages so as to offset in some measures the reductions which were inflicted on them by the operation of the cost-of-living bonus agreement. It was not an easy job to convince the Post Office authorities even to examine the matter of a claim for an increase in wages.
But the present Minister for Defence, when he was Minister for Posts and Telegraphs in 1939, admitted to a deputation which waited upon him that he was impressed with aspects of the claim for increased wages and undertook to examine the matter sympathetically. The whole atmosphere surrounding the discussion with the Minister on that occasion and the Minister's very obvious words indicating his sympathy with the claim led the staff to believe that at least the Minister was going to recognise frankly that his staff were underpaid and that he was going to improve the notoriously low scales which were in operation in the Post Office. But, much to the surprise of the staff, the emergency was utilised as an excuse for not pursuing the matter further. Subsequently the staff, through its union, was told that, in view of the emergency, the Minister could not see his way to grant any increase at that time in the basic wages of the staff.
That position was bad enough, but in the following year, in June, 1940, the Minister for Finance announced that he had decided to stabilise the application of the cost-of-living bonus on the basis of an index figure of 85, the base being 0, and that he proposed to apply that stabilisation as from July, 1940. When that stabilisation was applied, the cost-of-living index figure was not 85; it was 105. So that, by applying stabilisation on the basis of an index figure of 85, the Minister was very definitely cheating the staff of a bonus award to which they were entitled on the basis of the normal application of the cost-of-living bonus agreement as from July, 1940. The immediate effect of the stabilisation of the bonus at the time was that an officer in receipt of, say, the low basic wage of 35/- was denied an increase of 7/- per week which he ought to have got under the normal operation of the bonus agreement. By the Government's unilateral repudiation of the agreement, that officer was denied the increase of 7/- per week to which at that time he had a moral and legal right under the operation of the agreement.
I do not think that the pages of our recent history contain an act by a Government so mean and dishonourable as the stabilisation of the cost-of-living bonus by this Government. The Government knew that it was bound by the agreement. No less a person than the Taoiseach himself declared his complete faith in the agreement, and his determination to honour it. Yet, in 1940, after this Government and its predecessors had exacted, under the agreement, every wage-cut which they claimed to be entitled to make, we discover in July, 1940, the Government stabilising the cost-of-living bonus at a time when it felt that the staffs concerned would get some slight advantage under the agreement because of the fact that the Government was unable to control the upward movement of prices. It seems to me that the repudiation of agreements of that kind—agreements freely and voluntarily entered into between the two parties concerned—shows very little conception of honour and fair play, and I think that it is a very serious reflection on our Administration here that a Government, having exacted all the benefits that it could for itself for a period of about 20 years, under an agreement, should then repudiate that agreement. That is a type of conduct which, I think, does not enhance the reputation of this State. At any rate, it certainly does not tend to inspire respect for agreements or respect for those who so light-heartedly tear up these agreements.
I think it was in November, 1939, that this Government announced, rather heroically, that it was going to set its face against anybody getting any advantage from the war situation; but when, by implication, it was indicated by the Government that if it was going to control wages on the one hand it would also control prices on the other hand it was generally thought that that declaration by the Government meant that if wages were to be pegged down to certain levels, prices would also be maintained at approximately such levels as would maintain the relative stability of wages as a purchasing medium. But what has happened since then? Since the cost-of-living bonus agreement was stabilised on the basis of an index figure of 85, the cost-of-living index figure has risen to 184—a rise of 99 points since the bonus was stabilised, in July, 1940: a clear indication of the helplessness or the unwillingness of the Government to control prices on the one hand, whilst being wickedly efficient in controlling wages on the other hand. If the Government could or would control prices, one might understand their contention that wages ought to be controlled. I do not say that one needs to agree with their contention in that respect, but one might at least understand the philosophy which it postulated. What can one think, however, of a Government which, stabilising wages on the one hand, refuses, on the other hand, to take the necessary steps to control prices so as to maintain the relative stability of the pre-war purchasing power of wages?
Prices have risen very rapidly. The present wages index figure is 184 as compared with 73 in September, 1939, and the fact is that the purchasing power of wages paid to a worker, whether he is employed by the Post Office or engaged in private industry, has shrunk so low that such a worker is completely unable to maintain anything like his pre-war standard of living or the pre-war purchasing power of his wages. In the Post Office, in response to sustained demands by the Post Office staff, trifling increases— described as an emergency bonus—were granted as from June of last year. The maximum increase granted was as low as 3/6 per week. Some of the increases varied from 2d. to 6d. per week. Now, I do not purport to be able to plumb the mentality of people who can maintain, in 1942, that an increase of from 2d. to 6d. per week will compenstate a man for the shrinkage in the purchasing power of his wages as between 1939 and 1942; but if there are any such financial and economic wizards in the Government, or in any Government Department, who can discover that an increase of 2d. or 6d. per week, or even 3/6 a week, will adjust the shrunken purchasing power of wages in 1942, as compared with 1939, then I should say that that person is a national benefactor; that his discoveries should be published at once, and that he ought to be permitted to give to suffering humanity, in this one respect, the benefit of his advice as to how to adjust present low wages conditions to the rise in prices that has occurred.
I think that the most cynical and ironical comment that could be made in connection with the present situation would be with regard to the decision of the Minister for Finance not to permit any part-time single officer to participate in that increase. Some such officers in the Post Office, in many cases, would be paid less than £1 per week. Some of them might have £1 per week; some might have 25/- a week, and some of them might have 30/- per week. Although these people are single, they may have to maintain aged parents, or younger brothers and sisters, or invalid brothers or sisters. Yet the Minister for Finance decided on that occasion that because such people would not, or could not, marry on their low wage of £1 per week they would not get any increase at all. Evidently, from the point of view of the Minister, the best way to get such people to marry is to squeeze them by giving them no increase in salary, in the expectation, apparently, that they will be consumed immediately with a passion to enter into the state of matrimony so as to get the increase in their wages.
Now, I think that anybody can hardly imagine a person with a wage of £1 a week contemplating matrimony, but evidently the Department of Finance lives so far away from the normal feeling of men and women that it expects that people should be willing and eager to marry on £1 per week and that, because such people either would not or could not marry on that miserable pittance, then they should be deprived of the bonus increase.
Since last year—indeed, since July, 1940—the bonus increase has now been lifted to a maximum of 7/-. Only full-time married officers can get that increase, and it includes the bonus awarded last year. If a full-time officer is unmarried, he can only get a bonus increase of 5/-, and if he happens to be an unmarried part-time officer, he can only get an increase of 3/- per week. Can anybody imagine this petty increase providing anything like adequate compensation for the shrunken purchasing power of the low wages of the Post Office staff in present circumstances? Can anybody imagine that it is equity or even approaching fair play to offer these petty increases to a staff which, by definite agreement, was assured that its wage standards would be regulated according to a rise or fall in the cost-of-living index figure? I shall now give the petty amounts offered to the staff in compensation for what they have lost—and just look at what they have lost! An officer in the Post Office, with a basic wage of 20/- per week—and, Heaven knows, that wage is low enough—is losing to-day, under the Government stabilisation proposal, and even with the Government giving credit for the emergency bonus increase-10/- per week. If his basic wage amounts to 30/- per week, he is losing 18/6 per week; if it amounts to 40/- per week, he is losing 24/9 a week. If the basic wage amounts to 50/- per week, he is losing 28/8 per week; if it amounts to 60/-per week, he is losing 32/6 per week; and if his basic wage amounts to 70/- per week, he is losing no less than 36/8 per week.
One has only to reflect for a few moments on these figures, and to remember that these are not annual or monthly losses, but weekly losses, to realise the unjust and unfair manner in which the lowly-paid staff of the Post Office have been treated under the Government stabilisation proposals. I put it to the Minister that he can easily confirm the truth of my assertion that there are in the Post Office large numbers of lowly-paid officers whose basic wage or whose combined wage is utterly insufficient to enable them to bear the heavy burdens which are imposed by the substantial cuts in salaries and wages made operative under the stabilisation proposals. I tell the Minister, I tell the public, that there are in the Post Office Department to-day many hundreds of young married officers who are absolutely in debt and who, in that state of financial impoverishment, are yet required to handle millions of pounds of the community's property each month and each year. They work at all hours of the day and night in order to serve the community, and I think it will not be gainsaid that they serve the community faithfully, efficiently and courteously. They perform onerous and responsible duties, and I think it will be admitted on all hands, having regard to their difficult task and to the regulations which enshroud them, that they discharge these duties in a manner which from time to time calls for, and begets, the admiration of the public they serve.
Unfortunately, the history of Post Office wages is a history of low wages and wretched incremental conditions. It may astonish the Minister to know that, low and all as are the basic maxima rates in the Post Office, it takes officers from 14 to 22 years to reach these low maxima. It would be difficult to discover in any other employment in this State a scheme of wage rates, based upon putting such impediments in an officer's way of reaching the maxima as have been devised in the calculation of Post Office wage scales. One would imagine that at this stage in our history it would not take an officer, for instance, 17 years to reach a basic wage of approximately 48/- to 50/-. That is the position in the Post Office, and because of that position, young officers are suffering from severe privations, owing to their low wages at all times and the low basic maxima which they attain only after service varying from 14 to 22 years. I know from my own experience that young married Post Office officials, with heavy rents to pay, with heavy domestic responsibilities, are carrying the community's property, running into thousands of pounds, while they are beset with the almost impossible task of making ends meet.
While they are carrying thousands of pounds belonging to the community, they are wondering how they are going to pay the rent next week, to pay the grocer, to pay the milkman or to buy clothes and shoes for those dependent upon them. I put it to the Minister that these facts, which can easily be confirmed if he wants evidence, disclose a situation, so far as wages in the Post Office are concerned, which calls for an immediate remedy. I know of no financial situation here which would justify the imposition of these hardships on the lowly paid staff of the Post Office. I put it to the Minister that he cannot justify them either on financial or economic grounds and that he dare not try to justify them on social grounds.
I speak here on this matter of the stabilisation of the cost-of-living bonus and the hardships which it has imposed for the lowly paid staff of the Post Office and of the Civil Service generally, in other words, for those entering the State service who are in roughly the same category as workers in private employment. I want to appeal to the Minister to give these people a fair deal and a square deal. They are entitled to nothing less. We put in our Constitution Article 45 which declares:—
"The State shall, in particular, direct its policy towards securing that the citizens (all of whom, men and women equally, have the right to an adequate means of livelihood) may through their occupations find the means of making reasonable provision for their domestic needs."
If that is not just all "cod", and if it was not put in there just to deceive and ensnare people, the least the Government ought to do is to honour that Article and to observe it in respect of its own employees. To tell us that the State's policy shall be directed towards securing that citizens may through their occupations find a means of making reasonable provision for their domestic needs, while paying officers in the Post Office rates of wages that deny them an opportunity of meeting legitimate demands for groceries, clothing and other household necessities, unless they pawn their property, is a sheer mockery. The Minister for Finance, in the last resort, is the employer of civil servants. He has a moral responsibility for their well-being and for the payment of wages. I put it to the Minister that he must realise in his conscience that he is bound in duty to honour and discharge that responsibility by paying fair rates of wages and by recognising the necessity for decent conditions for those whom he employs.
I want to conclude by asking the Minister to examine personally and sympathetically the unfair way in which lowly Post Office employees are being treated under the operation of the stabilisation of bonus regulations. If he does examine the case fairly and sympathetically, I feel he must be convinced that, so far as these grades are concerned, there is an undeniable case, an unanswerable case, for improving their wages because the present wages are not sufficient to enable them to discharge their citizen and domestic responsibilities and are certainly not sufficient remuneration for the onerous, faithful and efficient services which they render to this community.
