Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 10 Jul 1946

Vol. 102 No. 4

Industrial Relations Bill, 1946—Committee (Resumed).

Debate resumed on amendment No. 2.

Mr. Davin

I am very glad the Minister has agreed to bring the agricultural labourers within the scope of this Bill and I agree that it is bound to lead to more harmonious relations between the farmers and the agricultural labourers. I think everybody will recognise that even during the emergency period the relations existing between the farmers and the agricultural labourers were exceptionally good. I am very glad to recognise the fact that in my constituency, at any rate, large numbers of farmers showed evidence of that by giving the agricultural labourers wages far in excess of the figure laid down by the Agricultural Wages Board. It is a good sign on the part of the farmers, whether they are opponents or supporters of the Government, that they should generally recognise that their position during the emergency period had been improved and that they have been receiving during the emergency period and, particularly in recent times, a much higher share of the national income than they received under pre-emergency conditions.

I gladly recognise the action of the Minister in this matter and hope that he will review his attitude in connection with the position of employees of local authorities. If the Minister for Local Government had good grounds up to the present for the policy of relating the wages paid to the employees of local authorities, road workers, for instance, to the wages paid to agricultural labourers, if that was a sound policy on the part of the Minister for Local Government—I am not saying that it was—then the Minister has as good a reason for bringing within the scope of this measure any disputes which may arise in future between the county councils or the county managers and their employees in the same way as he has now seen fit to bring in agricultural labourers.

Deputy Corry last night made the very sound point that road workers generally only work for about nine months in the year and that that does not apply to the general body of agricultural labourers. To that extent, there is a better case for paying higher wages to the employees of local authorities than the wages paid to agricultural labourers. I assume that the reason why the Minister and the Government in general refuse to bring civil servants within the scope of this Bill is because they think they would be handing their control over national expenditure to a body which, under the Constitution, has no right to exercise such powers. They do not want to allow even a nominee of their own on the labour court to increase national expenditure. I believe that is the idea at the back of the minds of the Minister and his colleagues. If that is so, why cannot they apply the same policy to the local authorities? If the members of local authorities are the only people who have the right to strike a reasonable rate to make provision for the raising of the necessary money for the carrying on of efficient local administration and to pay their employees decent wages, then I think the power should be left to the local authorities to fix the wages and that the Minister for Local Government, in the dictatorial way in which he has exercised his powers in this respect, should not have continued to refuse to local authorities the exercise of this power. If there is a dispute between road workers and a local authority and a county manager on the question of wages, the right should be given to the workers to go to a court of the kind provided for in this Bill.

I hope the Minister will see his way to agree that that is sound policy and to restore to members of local authorities, or to county managers, if you like, who are answerable to members of local authorities, the power to fix such wages. If there is any dispute arising out of the fixing of such wages, there should be an appeal to the court set up under this Bill and not to the Minister for Local Government, who has exercised these dictatorial powers in the past.

Mr. H.M. Dockrell

I listened to the Minister's arguments against this amendment and, to my mind, they seemed singularly unconvincing. This is an Industrial Relations Bill and I take it its object is to promote industrial peace. If that object will not be achieved by this Bill, the sooner it is scrapped the better. If the Minister has any fears which he has not disclosed to the House in connection with various Government or local authorities, I think we ought to be told them. Last night the Minister stated that the State could not go bankrupt. I suppose we can all more or less agree with that. But I take it that his object in making that statement was that he had in his mind some fear that a body of workers could push State wages to a point to which they should not be allowed to go. I take it that that is what this Bill is brought in to prevent. What section of the community has he seen going bankrupt as a result of an increase of wages? I take it what happens in industry is that a demand is made by the workers and there are negotiations either after a strike or without a strike. If the rate of wages is too high for the industry, the industry does not go bankrupt. The less efficient employers are thrown out of business as a result of that procedure. Over a long series of years it seems as if the procedure for settling wages negotiations has changed imperceptibly. In the old days the Government and local authorities gave very little employment. They usually paid considerably higher wages than in industry. If a man got a Government job, he left industry for the rest of his life. But now the Minister has become the biggest employer in the country.

He is taking up the attitude that a type of reactionary employer might have taken up a couple of generations ago. He seems to say: "Well, my employees"—meaning the State employees—"are perfectly satisfied with their employment; they have not complained to me about their lot; I do not see why any outside person should interfere with their rates of wages."

I suggest that industry, agriculture, the State and local authorities are tending more and more to be just ordinary employers. I do not think that the Minister will suggest, if an occasion for a dispute arises between the Government and their employees, that the Government employees will not cast their eyes around and look at what employees in comparable employment are paid. I take it that the humble post office employee might look at people employed elsewhere—possibly street cleaners employed by the corporation, or the conductors and drivers employed by Córas Iompair Éireann, or possibly building labourers. Even Government employees might look around and consider what clerks in good industrial employment are getting. That type of thing has its reactions. When wages come to be negotiated in industry, the officials who are negotiating on behalf of the workers will say that the people who are looking for an increase compare themselves with So-and-so in the Government service.

I cannot see why an industrial court should not be able to review all the workers in Government employment, in the employment of local authorities, in industry and in agriculture. Of course, nobody will compare anything that has not a comparable value. I assume that a civil servant will not compare himself with an agricultural labourer. If I had anything to do with one of these industrial courts, I would not listen to the reverse of that case being put forward. I suggest that unless the Minister has got some extraordinary fear, which has not yet been disclosed to the House, he might as well consider that the Government, industry, agriculture, etc., are all in the one boat. I can conceive that some percentage might be claimed as higher wages for Government employees.

In some cases it might be even lower, but that is a matter of detail. The more this court deals with the whole of the wages problems throughout the country the better and the more skilful will that court become. Once the right of the Government employees to strike has been admitted, or at any rate has not been challenged, it leaves it that there is something to settle.

So far as I am concerned, in making these remarks I have no thought about the teachers' strike; it has nothing to do, in my mind, with this Bill or the solution of these matters, and it has nothing to do with whether an arrangement for settling grievances with Government employees is on the tapis. What I contend is that the wages problems of the country are all related. I do not suggest they are all the same. I think the Minister's suggestion, that the Government can get into a water-tight compartment, is absurd. There is nothing to prevent Government employees comparing themselves with people in industry, or people in industry comparing themselves with Government employees. Therefore, I put my name down to quite a number of amendments deleting these exceptions. I am supporting the amendments and I think that this will be a better, stronger, bigger Bill by reason of the deletion of these exceptions. Let us have an Industrial Relations Bill that will settle industrial relations and a labour court that can settle labour disputes, or else let us get on to some other system.

Mr. Everett

In supporting this amendment I should like to join with other Deputies in congratulating the Minister on his acceptance of the amendment to include agricultural workers. We trust he will accept other amendments to include skilled workers and also unskilled workers employed by public authorities. Formerly, public authorities were always regarded as model employers and one was always able to put up as an argument to some unreasonable employers, when it was a question of getting better wages for the men they engaged, the rates of wages given by public authorities.

If the industrial courts are to be a success and to gain the confidence of every section of the community, I suggest that the right should be given to the unskilled worker employed by public bodies to go before that court because I would have hesitation in going before that court, having had experience of the tribunal when we were seeking to secure a wage for builders' labourers, carpenters, masons and tradesmen, skilled men employed by a public board on direct labour, and being faced with the argument on behalf of the employers, "why should we be asked to pay 2d an hour more than the county council pay their men employed on building schemes on direct labour?" The contention was that the local authority had no control, that it depended upon the Minister for Local Government. The decision of the tribunal having been announced, it would take at least 12 months before the county manager would send a requisition to the Minister for Local Government, and there would be a gap of 12 months between the time the private employer had granted the wage and the time the county council would sanction it. There was a demand then to public bodies in connection with the Bonus Order and the county council was always 12 months later than any other employer in paying the wages.

I am concerned with large housing schemes at the present time that are being carried out by direct labour by a public board. The wages sanctioned by the Minister for Industry and Commerce over six months ago for workers employed by contractors in the area have not yet been paid by the county council of the particular area which is awaiting sanction from the Minister for Local Government. It is most unfair to other employers engaged on similar work that they should be competing against employers who are paying, and protected by the law in paying, 2d an hour less than the recognised wage prevailing in the particular area. Therefore, I appeal to the Minister to allow road workers and skilled men to be brought in under this scheme of labour courts so as to give confidence to other tradesmen and workers to go before the court, in the belief that they will not be met with the argument, "You are asking an individual and private contractor to pay a higher wage than is being paid by the public body in the particular area". I would ask the Minister to remove the grievance we have had for the last five or six years under the existing law. Formerly, as I have said, public bodies were model employers.

I have put down an amendment to include vocational school caretakers. The Minister may not know that vocational committees got permission to pay their caretakers, not the same wage as prevailed in the agricultural area but the wages paid for similar work under the county council. To my knowledge, there is only one case where a county council has a man employed in a similar capacity to the caretakers of vocational schools, and when it was discovered that the caretaker in that particular case was receiving about £2 a week more than what the committee was asking the Minister for Education to sanction, he refused sanction. The caretaker in a vocational school is employed from 8 o'clock in the morning until 11 o'clock at night and is paid much less than the local urban rate prevailing in the particular area. It is an injustice and hardship that men with large families should be paid a wage less than the rate prevailing in the area. Vocational school caretakers are not allowed to get even the agricultural rate in the urban area because it would be much more than what some of the caretakers receive at the present time. I would suggest to the Minister that if he gives the right to unskilled and semi-skilled workers to go before the labour courts, he should also give the right to vocational school caretakers. In that way he will get confidence in the court.

It is recognised that the whole thing will depend upon the court. If you make the court a success, the Bill will be a success. Without the co-operation of all parties it cannot be the success which I hope it will be. It is for that reason I am suggesting these amendments. We do not want friction or disturbance at the present time if we can avoid it. Therefore, I strongly appeal to the Minister to extend this privilege to employees of public bodies such as road workers and the tradesmen I have mentioned. We have talked about civil servants and we have talked about officials of public bodies being allowed to have the same rights and privileges as civil servants in the Bill contemplated by the Minister. I am more concerned with skilled and unskilled workers employed by public bodies and municipal bodies at the present time. That is why I put down the amendment.

Apart from the officials of the public bodies, the Minister should allow unskilled workers, road workers and the staff I have mentioned, who are engaged on direct labour, to come under this Bill and I suggest that if he does that it will make for progress and the smooth working of the Bill.

Mr. Cogan

Unfortunately, I was not present last night and did not hear the Minister's arguments against the amendments which seek to extend the scope of this Bill. If we are going to set up a labour court to prevent and to settle disputes, that labour court should have wide and comprehensive powers and should cover every branch of activity in which disputes are likely to occur which may seriously reflect upon the organisation of the State or of commerce. There does not seem to be any reason why employees of local authorities, of the State, or agricultural workers should be excluded from the Bill. On the Second Stage, I expressed the view that the Bill should apply to agricultural workers. I did that not only in the interest of the agricultural workers, but in the interest of the farmer, As matters stand at present, there is a wages tribunal which fixes a minimum wage. In addition, we have organised action on the part of the workers to secure higher wages. I suppose we may take it that we will have organisations set up by agricultural employers to negotiate and, if necessary, to oppose the workers' organisations. Therefore, there is a danger that at any time the whole agricultural industry may be held up and brought to a standstill by wages disputes and it is very desirable that a tribunal of this kind should have the power to go into the pros and cons of the whole question of agricultural wages and/or of any other matter which is in dispute between the worker and employer. The only danger which I see in that connection is that the tribunal which it is proposed to set up may not have the necessary knowledge of agricultural conditions or of the worker and employer. The Bill provides for technical assessors. That may perhaps get over that difficulty to a certain extent but I have always a fear that if you set up a body of this kind it may be mainly urban in outlook and in training, or industrial. That, of course, is a danger which will have to be guarded against at other stages of the Bill.

Another matter which will also arise, and which I think was discussed last night, is the basis of a settlement which such a court would provide. If, for example, the basis in regard to agricultural wages is to be a fair wage for the agricultural worker, irrespective of the employer's means or conditions, or of the condition of the industry, I can see very great difficulties arising. I think these difficulties were discussed last night, and some Deputies suggested that to bring agriculture under this Bill would necessitate the bringing of agricultural prices before some tribunal, because obviously you cannot fix wages without ensuring that prices are adequate to meet these wages.

In my absence last night, Deputy Corry held himself forth as the one and only representative of agriculture. He seemed to indicate that there was no necessity for a Farmers' Party, or for an Opposition Party of any kind, so long as Deputy Corry was on the Government Benches to look after the farmers' interests. It is necessary to reply to that and to point out——

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Many of the things said last night were very much out of order. I hope the Deputy does not intend to follow the bad example set.

Mr. Cogan

I think I ought to be allowed to point out to Deputy Corry that when a matter very similar to what he suggested was brought forward in a motion submitted by this Party, a motion suggesting the setting up of a tribunal to fix fair prices for farm produce, there were some few members absent when the division came, and Deputy Corry was one of the members who took very good care to be absent from that division. When another proposal to assist employment in agriculture by relief of rates was put forward in a motion submitted by this Party, Deputy Corry definitely voted against it. He cannot expect to stay on both sides of the fence and he is not going to be allowed, so far as we farmers are concerned, to hover like a bright angel, or any other kind of angel, over our heads. He must come down firmly to earth on one side of the fence or the other, and we propose to force him to do so. We have put down a motion to-day calling for the setting up of a tribunal to investigate costings in agriculture and to fix prices, and we shall be very interested to see how Deputy Corry will vote on that motion.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

I think the Deputy has dealt at sufficient length with Deputy Corry. He must now come to the amendment.

Mr. Cogan

I have replied to Deputy Corry and we shall wait and see how he will vote on this motion. The Minister has opposed the idea of any kind of tribunal to mediate as between the State and its employees on the ground that the State is the mediator between the taxpayer and these employees. That contention cannot be upheld. The Government is definitely the employer of those who are employed by it, and it must take the same responsibilities as any other employer. Deputy Dockrell must have hurt the Minister's feelings rather badly when he compared the Government with the reactionary employer of 200 years ago. He could not have put the position more clearly, because the pleas put forward by the Government for evading any kind of mediation or inquiry into the conditions of employment or wages of its employees are merely the type of pleas that would have been put forward by the reactionary employer of a few hundred years ago.

The Minister has said, and it has been said by other Ministers, that the Government must keep complete control over its finances and cannot delegate its functions to any body such as that suggested here. I do not think that plea will hold water. There are many branches of State expenditure in respect to which the Government cannot forecast for a year ahead. They certainly could not forecast, and particularly at present, what commitments they might have to enter into during the coming year, and the same position would arise if a tribunal of this kind were set up. The Minister, estimating for his Department, will have to make a fair estimate of what would likely be the decision of such a tribunal. I think the Minister would have to accept that such a tribunal would be absolutely fair and just. He could easily then estimate approximately what additional or lesser liability it might impose on the State.

As the Minister is taking a very far-reaching and progressive step in setting up a court of this kind, he ought to agree to open it to all the bodies suggested and particularly to such lower-paid workers as those mentioned, employees of local authorities, and I think the same would apply to a great many of the direct employees of the State. In the Post Office and various other Government Departments, there are a large number of officials who—I was about to say "enjoy"—endure very low standards of remuneration, and it is only right and proper that a fair and just tribunal should investigate their claims and grievances. The Minister ought to accept these amendments and widen the scope of the Bill. It will be a better Bill, if he does so.

Mr. D. Morrissey

It is regrettable that the Minister has not agreed to accept the amendment. So far as I am concerned, this Section 4 is the blot on this Bill, and I venture to say now that, so long as Section 4 remains in it, this Bill will not succeed. Section 4 cuts clearly and completely across the whole intention and spirit of the Bill, and, I think, it was noticeable by members of the House who know the Minister for Industry and Commerce fairly well and who know him in debate that, in trying to marshal some arguments against the amendment, he was not up to his usual form. I should be inclined to think that the Minister himself feels that Section 4 cuts completely and absolutely across the spirit and intention of the Bill.

The Minister has, to a large extent, given away whatever case he sought to make when he informed the House that the Government intend to introduce a measure of conciliation and arbitration for the Civil Service and he has agreed to consider bringing agricultural labourers within the restricted scope of the Bill—confining them to Part VI. If it is desirable that the House should be asked to pass a Bill to promote harmonious relations between employers and employees, why do we make exceptions?

It is, at least, as desirable that we should have harmonious relations between the State and its employees, and between local authorities and their employees, as between private employers and their employees. It is rather remarkable that one of the largest sections going to be excluded from this Bill happens to be the poorest paid, and the least organised section of our working community, those employed by local authorities. We know that even to-day the vast bulk of people employed by local authorities are working under conditions and at rates of remuneration that are a disgrace. Is the Minister afraid that if machinery is provided as set out in the title of the Bill, "for promoting harmonious relations between workers and their employers and for this purpose to establish machinery for regulating rates of remuneration and conditions of employment and for the prevention and settlement of trade disputes..." that he will give to those workers the justice which they are now unable to get? Are we to have for ordinary employees the full measure of protection which this machinery will give them, but no protection whatever for the employees of local authorities?

Mark this, in the main the people to whom the benefits of the Bill are being extended are people who, because of their organisations, are best able to look after their own interests. Does the Minister not consider that private employers will argue, from the scandal which will be forced upon employees of the State or local authorities, for the keeping down of standards which should be given to their own employees? I venture to suggest that the court itself may be influenced in its approach, and in its decisions, by the rates being paid by the State and the rates which local authorities will be allowed to pay. This Bill can only succeed if there is the fullest possible confidence in it. It can only succeed if the workers and employees believe that it is a genuine and a sincere attempt to provide machinery to avoid, as far as possible, strikes and disputes, and to give even-handed justice.

How can anybody argue that we are sincere in our desire to bring about harmonious relations, to avoid disputes, and to remove the grievances of thousands of workers, if they are deliberately excluded from its machinery and, not only that, but that we are not prepared, except as we are told in the case of civil servants, to provide any alternative machinery, so that they may get protection? As far as employees of the State and local authorities are concerned, there is no power given to intervene between themselves and the will of the Minister. What employees of a local authority, whether bog workers, road workers or a county manager, can receive is determined by the Minister. The same is true of the Civil Service. We cannot have one law, I suggest, for the ordinary private employer, and no law, in effect, for either the State or local authorities.

Some Deputy said last night that it was tantamount to this, that the State and the Minister are above and beyond the law; that the Minister's ukase as to the wages of those employed by the State, or by local authorities cannot be challenged by anybody anywhere. I urge the Minister, if he wishes to see this Bill working successfully—and I believe that that is his wish—to remove Section 4 and to accept the amendment. If he does not agree to do so, I have no hesitation whatever in prophesying that he, or some other Minister, will have to come before the House before we are much older, either to amend or completely remove Section 4 from the Bill.

Mr. McCarthy

In discussing the amendment, and in pleading for certain classes of workers, as well as making provision for the avoidance of disputes, we should be able to relate our arguments to the fact as to whether the particular people of whom we are speaking are actually engaged in industry. As I understand the Bill it is limited in its scope. As regards civil servants, the Minister stated that approaches have been made to certain representative bodies to adopt some conciliation machinery, which might subsequently lead to legislation which could be discussed in this House. As far as that class of workers are concerned, we can look forward with hope to the success of their efforts.

When we get to the teaching profession, I think we can hardly argue that teaching is an industry. It is a profession. While it is very desirable to have some machinery by which those engaged in that profession might have their grievances considered and justice done, this is not the place to deal with the question.

When we come to employees of local authorities we are on different ground, particularly in reference to workers engaged on the roads. If it is contended that road making is not an industry, at least it provides facilities for the movement of the products of industry. Furthermore, revenue is now derived from the roads as a result of motor taxation. Consequently, a very good case can be made for bringing road workers under the scope of this Bill. I believe that it would be a very desirable thing to do. I am very concerned about the position of local authorities, because I know that much of what has been said about them here is perfectly correct. In recent times, certain regulations prevent these workers from direct approach to their representatives and, in consequence, their grievances cannot be considered in the same way as formerly. Some machinery will have to be devised for that purpose, or access will have to be given these employees to approach their representatives in order to have their grievances remedied.

I welcome very heartily the decision of the Minister to bring the agricultural workers within the scope of the Bill and I would appeal as strongly as I can to the Minister to bring in the road workers also. I think they are contributing very considerably towards the solution of industrial problems because they provide the avenues of transport for the products of agriculture and the products of industry.

Mr. Norton

The value of this House as a deliberative assembly will take on a new meaning if we are to have situations arising in which every Party in the House supports a point of view and that point of view is resisted only by the Minister in charge of the Bill for the Government Party. Four distinct Parties in the House have already supported this amendment. Not a single opponent to the Bill has been produced from the Ministerial side, except the Minister himself. It is quite clear from the Minister's two efforts last night to put forward reasons for his opposition to this amendment that he himself is not very enthusiastic in opposing it when he is confronted with a situation in which all Parties in the House desire to have this Bill extended and a wider classification of workers brought within its ambit. When he himself can produce no better argument than those which he produced last night I think he ought to reconsider his whole position. He should go back to the Government and say, "Look here, everybody who spoke on this amendment last night is in favour of it; even the one member of my own Party, who broke the silence of the House half in favour of it, would be wholly in favour of it if he understood the rest of it; and I myself am in the difficult position that I cannot muster an argument against the amendment; therefore, I do not think I ought to be called upon in the Dáil to oppose an amendment against which I cannot find any argument." That is what I think the Minister ought to do. I think he should take his courage in his hands and tell the Government that everybody in the Dáil is in favour of widening the scope of this Bill and tell them, confidentially, that his own mind is travelling in the same direction. He should ask the Government for a general authority to extend the scope of the Bill so as to include the large classification of workers which will be excluded from its operations if the Bill is passed in its present form. If the Minister wants to classify himself politically in future I think he ought to take cognisance of what Deputy Dockrell said this evening, viewing the Bill from his background as an extensive employer and with an allegiance which one can understand.

Deputy Dockrell said that, having read Section 4, he thought it was about two centuries out of date and he said that it was the kind of section that some reactionary employers of that period would probably have dared to put into a Bill. He said he was amazed that in 1946 a Minister—who, I imagine, classifies himself as a radical —should come into this House and offer to the House this piece of legislation which Deputy Dockrell, with his own industrial attachments, says has the appearance of and belongs to a period some 200 years ago, and expresses amazement that the Minister should try to stand over it in 1946.

I think Deputy Dockrell's contribution to this Bill was a solid and a cogent contribution. Looking at the Bill in the prudent and cautious manner, which one would expect from Deputy Dockrell, he tells the Minister that if he accepts this amendment to Section 4 he will make the Bill a bigger Bill, a better Bill, and one which will operate more efficiently. When the Minister gets advice of that kind from Deputy Dockrell I think that is an added reason for his going back to his Government and saying: "This is what Deputy Dockrell, with his background and natural attachments to industry, says about this section; he says the section is 200 years out of date, and it is not an easy matter for me to produce arguments against an amendment supported by Deputy Dockrell on the grounds which Deputy Dockrell put forward here this evening."

The Minister's final effort last night to resist the amendment was no stronger than any of his previous efforts, but he was probably a little bit more skilful. Last night he said: "Please do not put me in the position of being opposed to arbitration in respect of State servants or local authority employees. I am not opposed to it, but I cannot include them within this Bill. I shall tell you what is happening. Somewhere another Minister is drafting a Bill in relation to conciliation and arbitration machinery which he intends to offer to the Civil Service; if it is a success there it may, perhaps, be extended to the local authority employees." That argument is merely an argument that by and by there will be "pie" for State servants and employees of local authorities, for secondary teachers and primary teachers, for employees of county committees of agriculture and school attendance committees.

They must wait and see what this new Bill, which is now being drafted, contains. Unless that Bill indicates a very radical change I tell the Minister now that nobody will work the Bill, because the last draft of it that I saw was one which no self-respecting body would operate. Perhaps the Minister will undergo a change of opinion between now and the time the final draft is produced. We have no evidence that that will happen and the Minister is really promising a Bill which, I assert in advance, will be a thoroughly unsatisfactory Bill and one which will not be accepted. The Minister asks us not to press this amendment. He asks us to wait for this other Bill, knowing perfectly well that the Bill is not such as would make it acceptable in the form in which it now is. If the House is foolish enough not to press this amendment and to wait for this Bill it will discover that a very unacceptable Bill is being offered to it. If this amendment is not pressed now this Bill will go through and an unacceptable substitute will be offered at a later stage. It is because of the fact that the machinery of this court is a better machinery than has ever been offered before to State servants, and is an improvement on the "nothing" which has been offered to the other grades, that it is desirable that the House should at this stage press its point of view on the Minister so that the grades, which are now excluded, would get the benefit of this industrial court legislation. Under the exclusion clause in Section 4 I estimate that up to 300,000 workers will be affected thereby and will have no access whatever to the industrial court machinery provided under this Bill. In starting an Industrial Relations Bill the Minister has come to the House with the knowledge that 300,000 people will be excluded under Section 4. I imagine that, if the Bill has the virtues claimed for it by the Minister and the beneficial results which he has indicated, his whole desire should be to make it as widespread as possible and he should be in a position to say that the Bill is innately fair and will inflict no injustice on anybody; and that the machinery is such as will imbue industry with a more harmonising influence than has previously existed. Instead of that, the Minister takes the line that he is going to exclude 300,000 workers from the scope of the Bill. He cannot give a single valid reason as to why he is doing that.

I suspect the only reason is that the Minister says that, in so far as the teachers are concerned, another Minister looks after them; in so far as the civil servants are concerned, another Minister looks after them; and, so far as the employees of local authorities are concerned, the Minister for Local Government and Public Health looks after them. The Government is so water-tight in its Departments that the Minister cannot invade the other Ministers' realms of activity. "Therefore," he says, "I confine myself to the domain on which I am an acknowledged authority—industrial and commercial employment and services and I leave all these other services out because it is easier to do it than to have a row with these particular Miniters as to why persons under their authority should be brought within the scope of the Bill." That is not a valid argument for excluding them, and I suggest to the Minister that even, at this stage, he ought to take the advice I gave him earlier and go back to the Government and say he has not the heart to oppose this amendment, that all the Deputies who spoke on it are in favour of the amendment, and get the necessary authority from the Government to amend the Bill, so that it can be, as Deputy Dockrell suggested, a bigger and better Bill by accepting the amendment and so that the Minister and the Government may indicate that they are so confident of the efficiency and effectiveness of this machinery that they are willing to apply it to any grade of worker who voluntarily elects to operate the provisions of the Bill.

There is just one matter to which I should like to make special reference and that is the position of employees of local authorities. When the Conditions of Employment Act was passing through this House, we brought these employees within its scope for the purpose of that Act and the Holidays Act. What is the point of having graded them as industrial workers for the purposes of that Act and saying now that they cannot be regarded as industrial workers for the purposes of this Bill? If the wages paid by local authorities are to be taken into consideration in fixing rates of wages in small towns, surely the road workers concerned ought to have an opportunity, through the medium of this court, of going to some authority which will fix rates of wages. That authority should be somebody other than the present county managers.

If the scales of wages are to play a part in fixing other scales of wages, surely they should have a chance of proving that their scales of wages should be higher than they are. You are giving them no remedy against the county manager who holds despotic power so far as wages are concerned. The employees have no effective appeal to the electorate or to those who constitute the local authority.

They have no effective appeal to Deputies or to this Legislature. They have to rely solely on what the manager thinks that employment is worth. If the manager chooses to turn down applications for increases in wages, then the employees of local authorities have no remedy whatever. When you have given that remedy to other people, why do you not give it to employees of local authorities and to all the other people who are being excluded by Section 4?

Mr. Lemass

This has been largely a sham battle. Deputies have been answering arguments that nobody has made. The issue that arises here is not whether there should be some machinery of conciliation for civil servants. So far as that is concerned, the Government are committed. The Minister for Finance has announced his intention to prepare proposals and I have informed the House that these proposals are being prepared for discussion with the organisations concerned. The issue is whether the particular labour court to be established by this Bill is a suitable tribunal for the Civil Service. Is it seriously suggested by any Deputy that the salaries of civil servants or local government officials are to be determined by a tribunal on which neither the Government nor local authorities are represented? That is the suggestion they are making.

I think it is obvious to anyone who gives this a moment's serious consideration that, if the principles of this Bill are to be applied to employment in the Government service or the service of local authorities, it must be through a different organisation and, if there is to be a different organisation there must be separate legislation for its establishment. I have informed the House that, so far as civil servants are concerned, that legislation will appear.

It is to be assumed that, if the principle is accepted in relation to the Civil Service and is found to be workable, it will in due course be applied also to local authorities, although obviously its application to local authorities will require some different procedure than in the case of Government staffs.

So far, therefore, as these two points are concerned, the issue is not whether there should be machinery of this kind established for public officials, but whether the particular machinery contemplated by the Bill is suitable in their case. I think it is very obvious that it is not suitable. Therefore, I am not in a position to accept the amendment to bring these public officials within the scope of the Bill. I have intimated that I am prepared to move an amendment bringing agricultural workers within its scope.

Mr. O'Leary

There is one section of workers whom nobody has mentioned and for whom no Bill has been introduced fixing hours and conditions, namely, domestic servants.

Mr. Lemass

They are not excluded from this Bill.

Mr. O'Leary

The unfortunate thing is that they are not catered for by trade unions.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

That does not arise. Domestic servants are not mentioned in this amendment.

Mr. O'Leary

I should like to see them brought in.

Mr. Lemass

They are not excluded. The definition of "worker" has been drawn in the widest possible way.

Mr. Norton

The Minister made the point that this is not possible because the Government and local authorities would not be represented on the court. Does not this Bill apply to the employees of the sugar company? Does it not apply to the employees of Aer Lingus?

Mr. Lemass

We have employers' representatives on the court and we have workers' representatives on the court who will no doubt speak for the employers or workers interested, but it could not be argued that the Government's view would be represented by either the employers' representatives or the workers' representatives.

Mr. Norton

Let us test that point, which seems to be just as weak as the others. Let us suppose the employers nominated two city employers to represent them. Let us say there is a dispute at a quarry in Clare or a sand pit in Donegal. Either of the two employers' representatives may not know anything about a quarry in Clare or a sand pit in Donegal.

Mr. Lemass

Neither might the workers' representatives.

Mr. Norton

I do not want to help the Minister to tear up his own arguments. What happens when a case comes before the tribunal? There are two representatives of employers, whom you would naturally assume would take a stand somewhat different from the stand the workers' representatives would take in the matter. Consequently, the sand contractor from Donegal or the quarry owner from Clare pleads his case and relies on the general set-up of the board to get a verdict. The Electricity Supply Board employs a considerable number of workers who will be entitled to go before the court and to plead their case. The Electricity Supply Board, which is financed entirely by State capital, will not be represented on the court either by the employers' representatives, or the chairman, or the workers' representatives. But their employees will be entitled to go before the industrial court and the employers will be entitled to give rebutting evidence. To that extent, therefore, the Electricity Supply Board is in the same position as a local authority is in a matter of this kind, namely, the Electricity Supply Board will not have a nominee on the court, nor will the local authority. But you are allowing Electricity Supply Board employees to go to the court and leaving it possible for their employers to be brought before the court to defend their side of the dispute. Why will you not allow a local authority to do the same thing? An individual local authority will employ a lesser number of people than the Electricity Supply Board.

Mr. Lemass

Is it being seriously contended that there is to be arbitration for the Civil Service and for local authorities by a tribunal upon which they are not represented?

Mr. McGilligan

Why not?

Mr. Lemass

If that is the suggestion, we may as well come to a decision upon it. I do not want my position to be misunderstood. I would be strongly opposed to it.

Mr. Norton

It is not very long since we had an economic war over a sum of about £100,000,000. The Minister was worried last night as to what would happen if this industrial court gave an award which, he said, might put the Government out of business.

Mr. Lemass

The Government cannot go out of business, but a private employer can. He can say on the basis of an award: "I cannot carry on my business and I will not."

Mr. Norton

Can the Electricity Supply Board go out of business?

Mr. Lemass

They can be stopped selling electricity.

Mr. McGilligan

Of course they cannot.

Mr. Lemass

If there is a dispute involving a stoppage of work, they can cease selling electricity.

Mr. Norton

Can the sugar company go out of business?

Mr. Lemass

They can, of course.

Mr. Norton

Is it contemplated that this board is being set up to put them all out of business?

Mr. Lemass

No, certainly not.

Mr. Norton

Is the Title of the Bill wrong? This Bill is described as a Bill to promote harmonious relations between workers and their employers. In the fourth section we reach the stage when the Minister, instead of talking about harmony between workers and their employers, talks about people going out of business. He says the Government will not go out of business. It will have to groan under whatever burdens may be imposed upon it. The persons who control the National Health Insurance Society—will they go out of business? Is it seriously contemplated that, if an award comes from this tribunal which the National Health Insurance Society does not like, it will say: "There will be no more national health insurance benefit or national health legislation in this country"? Is it contemplated that the Electricity Supply Board can say there will be no more electric light because they will go out of business? Are we to visualise the position where the sugar company will tell us there will be no more sugar and where the alcohol factories will say: "No more industrial alcohol," or Aer Rianta will say: "No more planes"?

Mr. Lemass

This court does not give a binding award.

Mr. Norton

Is that the last argument—that it does not give a binding award? On whom?

Mr. Lemass

On anybody.

Mr. Norton

Why, therefore, will you not permit the same kind of award to be made in the case of employees of local authorities?

Mr. Lemass

I do not think it is suitable for them.

Mr. Norton

The Bill will affect certain classes of employees, but there are others definitely excluded, including the employees of a local authority. You may say that, but there is no argument in defence of it. You are merely asserting it, but there is no argument.

Mr. Lemass

I do not believe anybody in this House would regard it as a suitable tribunal for those employees.

Mr. McGilligan

Can you not make it suitable?

Mr. Lemass

No. It is set up for one purpose, and if you start making alterations you destroy its utility.

Mr. Cosgrave

Road workers are in a different category to clerical workers.

Mr. Lemass

They do a different class of work.

Mr. Norton

Because the Government is represented on this court, it therefore cannot agree, we are told, to submit these matters to it because it may involve the Government writing a cheque following the adjudication of the court. I want to bring the Minister's mind back some years. This very same Government offered to submit to an international board the question whether we were liable for £100,000,000 in land annuities. You would have no representation on that board. You said: "Get them from three foreign countries, in case by any chance an Irishman would be thrown in from some country within the British Commonwealth of Nations." You were content to allow three foreigners to act on that board to deal with £100,000,000, but here you are not prepared to set up a tribunal to deal with the employees of local authorities in case some county council worker from Kildare or Carlow might be paid an increase of 5/- in his wages.

Where is the logic in the Minister's attitude? He has not made even the pretence of a brave show in connection with this amendment. He ought to take back the section and get it widened. Not one Deputy on the Government Benches supported the Minister's point of view. Those who have listened to the arguments feel that the Minister has not been able to produce a sound one.

Mr. Coogan

I feel that the Minister's advisers, or whoever was responsible for drafting this Bill, are suffering from a very old complex—that no State or semi-State employee can have a contract with the State.

Mr. Lemass

Who said so?

Mr. Coogan

That is the implication by reason of the exclusion of various people from the provisions of this Bill. You are excluding them from being able to make a contract, oral or written. I suggest that we have reached a time in our State development when we should rid ourselves of that old Imperial complex. In Australia you have a system under which the State is a corporate body, the same as any other corporate body. The employees enter into a contract with that corporate body and they have certain rights and the State has certain rights. You have a system of arbitration where the State, as the employer, and the State employee, can go before a court of arbitration and settle their dispute. I feel that certain classes of workers, particularly teachers, State employees, employees of local authorities and of vocational committees are being excluded by reason of the old tradition that no State or semi-State employee can have a contract with the State. In the old days we had to resort to a petition of right, which might or might not be granted through the fiat of the Attorney-General, or some personage of that type. Gradually we have had the development where we agreed to the principle of arbitration.

We feel some arbitration tribunal should be set up by the Government to settle disputes between the State and the Civil Service. I ask the Minister to go the whole hog and rid himself of the idea of the State over all. The State is only the legal or juridical form which the community sets up to serve community interests. The State is not the master but the servant of the community. The State is merely the custodian of the community's interests. If we approach our problems from that angle and appreciate those problems as they have done in Australia, there should be no reason for arguing this measure any longer.

I hold strongly that any State employee has an individual and human right to a contract, whatever it may be, with the State. For centuries we have suffered from the old idea that the King could do no wrong and the State could not enter into a contract with the individual. We have that idea running through the Bill and that is the reason we have these people excluded from Section 4. It would make for greater harmony and for the success of this labour tribunal if the State would set an example and would submit to arbitration before a labour court.

It is all very well to say that the Government proposes to set up arbitration tribunals purely for the Civil Service and, if they work, they will be extended to local authorities. Why exclude the road worker or a manual worker under a local authority from the operation of this measure, as distinct from a manual worker under the Electricity Supply Board, the Turf Board or any other statutory or semi-State body? I cannot see the logic in that argument. I see the force of the argument that all people in a working capacity should have to earn their daily bread by manual or intellectual labour, whereby these people would all have the same rights. They have the right to work or to refuse to work, to form free associations, to join or not join a union. They have the right, if they join a union, to observe the conditions of that union and obey its dictates in whatever matter the union may be involved.

I hold that there should be no discrimination as between any class of employers, that if we accept the ordinary Constitutional principle, that the individual has the right to work or not to work, to join a union or not to join a union, and also to fight with the union if the union decides to fight, I cannot see the logic of the argument which refuses to extend that to a State or semi-State employee.

I would suggest that we should go the whole hog, that we should rid ourselves of this old complex and that the State should regard itself as any other corporate body, as any corporation of employers would regard themselves, and set the example of giving their servants fair and proper treatment, submitting, where necessary, to whatever tribunal may be set up under this Bill. It is all very well to say that the State cannot submit to the principles of this Bill because the labour court set up under this Bill has no representative of the Government on it.

Mr. Lemass

Or of the civil servants.

Mr. Coogan

Surely it is not beyond the resources of the State and of the Minister to devise another court, if necessary, under this Bill.

Mr. Lemass

That is what we are going to do.

Mr. Coogan

You are not doing that under this Bill.

Mr. Lemass

Not under this Bill, under another Bill, which is the more intelligent way to do it.

Mr. Coogan

You are not doing it under this Bill and I suggest you could include a new section which would give the Government the right, and the civil servants, if necessary, the right to be represented. They can all be represented before the court and, if it is necessary, they can be represented on the personnel of the court and surely the Government could, if necessary, weight the personnel of the court so as to ensure that Government interests are preserved. I would strongly urge the Minister to consider doing something on those lines. It has been done with success in Australia and the relations there between State employees and the Government are, so far as I know, harmonious. In any event, I maintain that we here are setting a very bad example, that the Government itself is not setting the example which it expects employers and workers to set for themselves. The Government, in the matter of the teachers' strike, is not setting a good example. Other disputes may develop and if we are to have an impasse such as we have in the teachers' strike, how can we expect the ordinary employer and the ordinary worker to subscribe to the principles of this Bill or to have any confidence in any court set up under this Bill? I strongly urge the Minister to set the good example to the employer and the worker whom it is intended to benefit by this Bill by the State itself putting its house in order and subscribing to the principles of the Bill.

Mr. M. O'Sullivan

The Minister says his main reason for the exclusion of local authorities is that the tribunal is not a suitable one and he bases his argument on the grounds that the local authorities will not be represented at that tribunal. Supposing the local authority were to be represented at the tribunal, would not the Minister agree that the main object for that representation would be one consideration only in so far as a local authority is concerned, and that would be to ensure that whatever decision might flow from the court would be a decision having regard to what the local rate-payers could bear so far as rates were concerned? If there is to be representation, therefore, of the local authority, if that is the sine qua non, I would suggest to the Minister that no better type of representative could be found than the employers' representative on that tribunal to represent the rate-payers, if we take the general view that employers have a conservative idea so far as rates are concerned. That is the general opinion, that they require to see that the rates are kept down. Therefore, I say the viewpoint of the local authority is met admirably if the overriding consideration is the question of the burden that might fall on the rates. To that extent, therefore, I suggest, the tribunal is suitable and that the Minister's objection does not lie.

It is suitable, in a second sense, because even the employees' representative on the tribunal would have an equal interest in the question of the rates to be struck, as is evidenced by growing opinion so far as public authorities are concerned at the present time. I suggest, therefore, the Minister's objection on the grounds that the tribunal is not suitable does not lie because of the type of representation that would be there which might normally be the type of representation that a local authority would place there for the protection of their particular interests.

Might I refer the Minister to sub-section (1) (a)? There is one point that it might be desirable to get cleared up. The phrase occurs "a person who is employed by or under the State". A good deal of reference has been made to statutory authorities or bodies. Reference has been made to the Electricity Supply Board, to the sugar company, and so on. Is it quite clear that these statutory bodies, of which there is a very large number, between 25 and 30, come within the machinery of this Bill?

Mr. Lemass

Yes.

Mr. M. O'Sullivan

Well, then, would the Minister say what precisely is meant by the term "under the State", as distinct from being employed "by the State"? There may be a danger at a later stage that these bodies would be definitely excluded if that particular term is not cleared up.

Mr. McGilligan

Last week, when this Bill was introduced, the Minister found himself the subject of more congratulations than ordinarily he has been, and that was due to the attitude which he announced on Second Reading he was going to take up on the Committee Stage. That attitude, as I understand, was this—that the Bill was not to be discussed as a Party measure. I understood even that official Whips were not to be put on in the main when we were discussing the substantial clauses of this Bill, and we were asked to assist the Minister to get a good scheme to deal with the points that are enshrined in the Long Title to the Bill.

The Long Title sets out the object of this Bill in this way—it is to promote harmonious relations between workers and employers and for that purpose to establish machinery to regulate disputes. That was a good aim and most people here thought it was a good view that the Minister had in bringing in this measure, with such a title and such objective. I thought, when we had this Bill introduced to us in that way, that the whole fabric of the Bill was subject to examination, and that we were not precluded from suggesting changes even in such matters as the set-up of the court itself or the terms of reference made to it or the particular bodies that may come before it or the very limited bodies in respect of which a case may be made to be excluded from it.

When I am dealing with this amendment I have to deal with certain other matters. I personally think that the set-up of the court as is schemed in this Bill is wrong. I do not believe you will get this court to work. It has been stated here already in the House, I do not think there can be any denial of it, that unless this court in its personnel and in its terms of reference meets with the approval of the employers and the employees, as two classes of the community, it has no chance of being any success. If it cannot attract both workers and employers to go to it, the court will lie there devoid of any function. It can very rarely be geared up to any activity save by a willing approach made to it by the employers and the employees. If that is the situation, the Minister will find that in the end, no matter how he may have arranged the members of the court and how he may have planned in his own mind to get certain people for it, he will have to get accommodation, not merely from the employees with regard to their representatives and the employers with regard to theirs, but from both with regard to the representatives of each other. I suggest that unless he does that and gets such accommodation, the court will not meet with any welcome. If the court does not make itself acceptable to both parties—not to one but to both—then the court is going simply to lie there useless, a bit of machinery that has been brought into being and really plays no useful part in economic life thereafter. I suggest that he would have to consider in connection with this amendment the set-up of the court. I am not sure—it is a matter which we shall have to discuss at a later stage—whether the idea of having representatives from two bodies is sound. It seems to me that you might easily get a better court by getting both parties to agree to a sort of representation——

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Would the Deputy relate the machinery of the Bill to this amendment?

Mr. McGilligan

I am in process of doing that, as I thought. The point has been made that the exclusion which it is sought to remove cannot be removed because certain people are not represented on the court. I suggest that one way of meeting that difficulty is to give the court a different type of representation. If the court were established by agreement between the employers and employees as big groups, and if men were favourably considered and went on to the court, the Minister might revert to the old practice of having assessors, as we have at the moment under the industrial court system. These assessors can, of course, be changed, according to the type of dispute being dealt with, and, in that way, you would get on both sides of the table people who, by their experience, would be in a position to enlighten the members of the court. They would not be representatives, but would be in a position to enlighten the court on special points arising out of special circumstances of employment when a dispute came before the court.

The second thing blocking the Minister's path to getting a good measure is that he has—as I understand has been stated here already—the old-time idea with regard to wages. Wages are one of the things that will come under consideration by the court, if it ever gets moving, and the Minister appears to be still thinking of wages from the old viewpoint, as something extracted from employers' profits. He appears to be thinking of them only in that way, in terms of the employing classes getting so much out of a particular production and being lessened in their profits by what they have to pay to their workers. That is not the modern idea about wages. I do not say that it is a point which can be completely lost sight of, but there are very few countries in which that is regarded as a matter of importance in the consideration of wages. There is, on the other hand, the special aspect of wages, that wages represent purchasing power, and that, if they are kept too low, the State is kept running at a low level and wages, if delayed in their rising, have in fact delayed the demand for other goods, other production and other employment.

The Minister, I feel, has wrong conceptions all the time about the set-up of the court and consequently about such an important matter as wages. I searched through the Bill to find out if there is any term of reference in a precise way to this court in connection with a trade dispute on wages. I find two things referred to. In Section 56, dealing with standard wages for areas, there is provision that when such wages are to be established, the things to be looked to are the cost-of-living index number, the prevailing level of wages for skilled work in the area, and finally—and I am afraid this is the point which the Minister wants the court mainly to look at—the statutory minimum wage for the time being in force for agricultural workers in that area. In the last couple of months, this House has got a revelation of the attitude of the present Government towards workers and their wages.

Mr. Lemass

I suggest this is entirely out of order on the amendment.

Mr. McGilligan

I will not spend very much more time on the general point, but I am leading up to the matter of civil servants and road workers. We have been told that the attitude of the Government with regard to wages is that all wages must be pegged down to the amount of money paid to road workers, or agricultural labourers, because the road worker's wages are to have a bearing on the agricultural labourer's wages. One of the matters which the court is asked to look at is the statutory minimum wage for the time being in force for agricultural workers. Later, under Section 65, when the court investigates, it makes a report, and one of the things it has to report on is the fairness of the terms proposed to the parties and the prospects of the said terms being acceptable to them. The "prospects of the terms being acceptable" means that we are back again in the old atmosphere of pressure groups—who will exert the biggest pressure and will the terms proposed on any occasion by the court be likely to receive acceptance from the people concerned or will further pressure be put on?

That is a wrong way to approach this. If the Minister puts his objections forward sincerely and honestly, we have to meet them in that way, and he has made the objection in regard to taking in, say, the Civil Service that the State is not represented on this court. I do not think the State should be represented. Neither do I think the Civil Service organisations should be represented. I do not think that members of Government ought to be represented on it. They may say that they should be, in their capacity as representatives of the taxpayer, but would the Minister take this case? Suppose it became clear and beyond dispute that the wages paid to certain grades in the Civil Service were such that they did not afford even an individual living wage, let alone a family living wage, would the Minister say that any consideration of the burden to be laid on the taxpayer would prevent a patent injustice of that type being rectified? Who should rectify that, or what would be a better tribunal than the type of tribunal that might be set up under the Bill, although I suggest that it is not set up at the moment?

I do not suggest that there is any great significance in this matter of these people not being represented. I do not see why the court should be built up on that basis of representation. It is quite clear that it cannot be fully representative. Let the Minister go back to his Department and examine the records of the trade disputes over three years and let him think of the multitudinous groups involved Does he really believe he can get in this country two representatives of the workers who will have knowledge and experience sufficient to deal with every one of the industrial disputes which took place in a year? Does he think he can get the employers fully represented from the same angle?

I am speaking now of relating the general matter of the set-up of the court to the concrete matters with which the court would have had to deal if the Bill had been in force some years ago, and if workers and employers had agreed to use it for these disputes. The Minister knows it cannot be done. He must aim at getting people who generally will have a sort of employers' viewpoint and generally will have a workers' viewpoint. If he does get these people, why are they not able to consider the case of State servants, the Civil Service? Can they not get the general terms and conditions which ought to be given to people in occupations and can that court not consider the terms and conditions which ought to be given in different occupations in the country? What is so very peculiar about the Civil Service that a court properly constituted could not get these matters within its purview when it came to a consideration of the situation in the Civil Service, the discontent of civil servants and the emoluments they have?

The Minister may speciously make a case that, if you go on the basis of representation, the Government is not represented and neither are the local authorities, and that therefore the court cannot consider these points, but is it essential that the court should be built up in that representative way? I do not think so, but, even pretending to do that, does the Minister think he cannot get two workers and two employers who will have a sufficiently big view as to enable them to deal with ordinary trade disputes and also to take into their purview disputes as between the Civil Service and the State? I think it can be done.

I do feel impressed that there is a plan in this and that the plan is quite clear. So long as we have decided to peg wages down to the level of the agricultural labourer or road worker, then clearly, if the Minister lets adjudication on that matter go to an outside court, it destroys the floor on which he wants workers to stand. That floor may be raised too high for him, and therefore he is excluding these people because they are to be made a standard—it may be a minimum standard, but they are to be made a standard—and the Minister cannot afford to let go his grip on them. He says that the civil servants are a rather big body of people and that if they extracted more generous conditions than they have at the moment it would have an effect on the revenue. It would, of course, have an effect on expenditure and might cause more revenue to be sought.

But taking it from the point of view of economics within the country, the civil servants were told that they have lost £1,000,000 a year in recent years through the stabilisation of the bonus. To put it in another way, if the Minister had not, by legislation, interfered with their legal rights, and with the constitutional rights of some of them, the Civil Service would be costing the State £1,000,000 a year more. The Minister, I suppose, is happy that he has prevented that rise occurring and has stopped people from getting that amount of money. Why regard them in that special way? They have so far been regarded to their detriment. The position they held was one which allowed for their being prevented from getting the benefit of a boom and which cushioned them against the impact of a slump, but they have always got the worst of it. Any time there was a change which would have bettered them, they did not get the betterment, but they lost when conditions turned the other way.

It might make the position more difficult through the country generally if, in the course of an adjudication on their wages, there was a finding with regard to the cost of living, and with regard to, say, what was to be the individual wage or the family wage which it was just to pay to these people, but the Minister must remember that the Civil Service, although very much exaggerated in numbers recently, is a very small body in proportion to the number of people gainfully occupied in this country. That number is about 1,250,000, but in that number are people occupied on their own behalf, and there are about 500,000 or 600,000 working for wages or salaries. The Minister can compare the effect that might be caused on the general body by the raising of the wages of a group somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000 with the effect that might be caused by the court having to deal with industrial workers in the City of Dublin.

Yet the Minister is satisfied if cases are considered by the court and he does not bother about the others. I suggest that the argument as a whole and as far as there is any substance at all in it has only substance because it is related to the code he wants to build up. If he wants it built up in this way I suggest that he will not get a court that will work. I believe that we have another way and that we could get a court which would be able to deal with civil servants. I see no point of principle in distinguishing civil servants, road workers or local employees from the general body of industrial workers. Certainly I need not reiterate that if the object of this Bill is to have harmonious working relations and to stop strikes why should we condemn these people for the rest of their lives to the strike weapon that we are trying to get rid of as regards workers as a whole? That will be the result as the Bill stands. We are trying to ease the situation and not to cause conditions which will bring about strikes.

Mr. Lemass

On the question raised by Deputy O'Sullivan, I should like to say that the reference to persons employed by or under the State is intended to distinguish against the general class of civil servants and those employed by a Minister, such as certain classes in the Department of Posts and Telegraphs. The majority of the general classes are employed by the State and are, of course, liable to serve in any Department of State. There are other classes employed under the State who serve only in the Departments in which they are employed. It is necessary to have that distinction to cover both classes. I do not think we could get any further by discussing the matter. I intimated that I would endeavour to frame the Bill as far as possible by agreement between the parties who have to use it. That does not apply to its application to civil servants and to local government employees. The Government has taken a decision in so far as that principle is involved. Whatever proposals may be decided upon in relation to the public services will be submitted to the Dáil in a separate Bill.

Mr. Coburn

In reply to some speeches made in the course of the debate the Minister characterised it as a sort of sham-battle. Listening to his reply, one could say that the Bill is not alone a sham, but more or less a fraud, because it is not going to achieve the object set out, in view of the figures given by Deputy Norton, that 300,000 will not come under its provisions. Therefore I cannot see how the object of the Bill can be achieved. The Minister is expected to have a knowledge of all the activities appertaining to his Department. In effect, the Minister states that he cannot bring employees of local authorities within the provisions of this Bill for the reason that the employers cannot be represented at the tribunal. In other words, that county councils, corporations and urban councils cannot be represented there. Whether they are present or not, I maintain that they will be represented because the position as it exists—of which the Minister may not be aware—is that all employees of corporations and of the various boards and councils are members of certain trade unions. For unskilled labour there is the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union, and the Amalgamated General Workers and Transport Union. The representatives of these two unions will be there and, in the natural way, applications will be made to employers for increased pay.

The employers will be represented on that tribunal. As Deputy O'Sullivan remarked, they may be depended upon to put their case very forcibly before the tribunal. If any increase of wages, say in the building industry, is demanded, which will be a factor in increasing the cost of building, in view of the importance of providing housing for the working classes, and taking into consideration all the difficulties ancillary to and incidental to the procuring of materials, notably timber, the Minister may depend upon it that the employers will take good care to put a very strong case before the board before they agree to give any increase. While they are directly fighting their own case, they are indirectly fighting the case of various public boards. The Minister seems to forget that under Section 20 the court is empowered to summon witnesses. I take it there is no reason why the court, if it so desires, could not summon the county manager to attend.

In turn the manager could depute the borough surveyor or some other official, who has intimate knowledge, to indicate the effect that any considerable increase in wages would have on the rates if increases were granted.

The Minister made a very peculiar suggestion, one that, if carried to its logical conclusion, would mean a great deal of expense and a great deal of unnecessary legislation. Under various categories, in eight paragraphs of the section the Minister states that the machinery set up by the Bill would not be suitable for any of these particular classes and that he intends in the course of time to introduce legislation and set up a tribunal which will be suitable for each one of these classes. In other words, to be perfectly logical, the Minister really means he is going to introduce eight new Bills. He is going to introduce a new Bill to suit the person who is employed by or under the State; he is also going to introduce a new Bill to suit the teachers in the secondary schools; he is also going to introduce a new Bill to suit the teachers in the national schools; he is going to introduce new Bills for the persons employed by local authorities, the officers or servants of the vocational education committees, the officers or servants of the county committees of agriculture, the officers of the school attendance committees, and the agricultural workers. He will have to introduce each of those separately. The very same arguments can be advanced against each one of those in turn. We can say to the Minister on each one of those: "Why do you not set up the machinery here to bring in the teachers and all the others concerned"? Common-sense alone should tell the Minister that he might as well do it on this occasion as do it on eight different occasions, as he proposes to do judging by his reply to Deputy Norton.

There is no point in the Minister's argument that the machinery proposed under this Bill will not be suitable to cater for these other classes of workers. There is no argument that I can see for excluding the employees of the county councils or the roadworkers or the agricultural labourers from this Bill. There is an old adage that the man who will not admit defeat will never win a victory. The Minister and the Government cannot have all the intelligence on their side. The Opposition on this occasion may be in a minority, but even a fool can give good advice to a wise man. I am telling the Minister now, as one who has practical experience in this matter, that the Bill in its present form will not work. Supposing one section of the men employed by a builder gets an increase, the other sections, the bricklayers, the plasterers, the carpenters, the labourers, the roadmen—will immediately go on strike for a similar increase. Where, then, will the peace and harmony be? How will the objects of this Bill be achieved? I cannot see it. I think the Minister should withdraw the entire Bill now.

I said last night I had not a great deal of confidence in these Bills. To me it appears to be much simpler to settle a strike around a table. I can give the Minister an illustration of that. Last week there was going to be a strike of butchers in Dundalk. The master butchers and the men met together and settled the whole thing in five minutes. They could not, however, come to an absolute agreement because they had perforce to come first to Dublin and go through the whole machinery of putting their case before a tribunal, composed of a K.C., and an army of labour representatives and so on. Now the same situation can arise here. If the Minister would only display a little common-sense he would make this Bill as wide as possible. He would embrace all the workers within its scope. The Bill cannot hope to achieve any object when there are 300,000 excluded from it. If 300,000 are excluded I think you will find that there will not be more than 300,000 or, perhaps, 250,000 who will come within it. The whole object of the Bill is going to be defeated because of the exceptions.

Question put—That the words "other than" in line 42, Section 4, stand part.

The Committee divided: Tá, 52; Níl, 35.

Tá

• Aiken, Frank.
• Allen, Denis.
• Bartley, Gerald.
• Beegan, Patrick.
• Blaney, Neal.
• Boland, Gerald.
• Bourke, Dan.
• Brady, Seán.
• Breathnach, Cormac.
• Brennan, Martin.
• Brennan, Thomas.
• Breslin, Cormac.
• Briscoe, Robert.
• Burke, Patrick (Co. Dublin).
• Butler, Bernard.
• Carter, Thomas.
• Childers, Erskine H.
• Colley, Harry.
• Corry, Martin J.
• Crowley, Honor Mary.
• Derrig, Thomas.
• De Valera, Vivion.
• Flynn, Stephen.
• Fogarty, Andrew.
• Fogarty, Patrick J.
• Gorry, Patrick J.
• Harris, Thomas.
• Humphreys, Francis.
• Killilea, Mark.
• Kissane, Eamon.
• Lemass, Seán F.
• Little, Patrick J.
• Loughman, Frank.
• Lynch, James B.
• McCarthy, Seán.
• McEllistrim, Thomas.
• McGrath, Patrick.
• Moran, Michael.
• O Briain, Donnchadh.
• O'Connor, John S.
• O'Grady, Seán.
• O'Reilly, Matthew.
• O'Rourke, Daniel.
• Rice, Bridget M.
• Ryan, James.
• Ryan, Mary B.
• Sheridan, Michael.
• Smith, Patrick.
• Traynor, Oscar.
• Ua Donnchadha, Dómhnall.
• Walsh, Laurence.
• Walsh, Richard.

Níl

• Browne, Patrick.
• Cafferky, Dominick.
• Coburn, James.
• Cogan, Patrick.
• Coogan, Eamonn.
• Corish, Brendan.
• Cosgrave, Liam.
• Costello, John A.
• Davin, William.
• Dockrell, Henry M.
• Donnellan, Michael.
• Doyle, Peadar S.
• Everett, James.
• Fagan, Charles.
• Flanagan, Oliver J.
• Giles, Patrick.
• Halliden, Patrick J.
• Hughes, James.
• Keyes, Michael.
• Larkin, James (Junior).
• McFadden, Michael Og.
• McGilligan, Patrick.
• Morrissey, Daniel.
• Mulcahy, Richard.
• Murphy, Timothy J.
• Norton, William.
• O'Driscoll, Patrick F.
• O'Leary, John.
• O'Reilly, Patrick.
• O'Reilly, Thomas.
• O'Sullivan, Martin.
• Pattison, James P.
• Reynolds, Mary.
• Rogers, Patrick J.
• Sheldon, William A.W.

Tellers:— Tá: Deputies Kissane and Ó Briain; Níl: Deputies Keyes and Corish.

Question declared carried.

Mr. Costello

I move amendment No.3:—

In sub-section (1) to delete paragraph (a).

The subject matter of this amendment has been very largely discussed on the amendment on which we have voted. I do not intend, therefore, to deal at any length, or indeed practically at all, with the principle of the amendment. This amendment was put down at a time when I had no idea that the Government had committed themselves to the principle of arbitration for the Civil Service. If that is the position, and if I can be assured that the Government are sincere in their determination to give real arbitration to the Civil Service, I would not press this amendment.

There is one comment I should like to make on the Minister's argument on the last amendment which is relevant to this particular one. So far as I can gather from listening to the debate, his argument could be summed up by saying that the machinery provided by this Bill was not suitable to the type of arbitration which ought to be considered for civil servants or State employees. He added at a later stage the argument that the decision of the labour court under this Bill would not be binding. Taking the last argument first, it appears to me that that would be one of the outstanding arguments for this tribunal in the case of civil servants, because, hitherto, when discussions ranged over the subject of the necessity or the advisability of arbitration for the Civil Service, one of the main arguments against arbitration was that it would be binding on the Minister, would oust Ministerial responsibility, and would trench upon the privileges of this House, and, therefore, any machinery for the Civil Service should not be binding. If the decision of this court is not binding on either of the parties, that would appear to me to be an argument in favour of allowing an advisory opinion, or whatever opinion it is, to be given. I do not see the force of the Minister's argument in that respect in reference to civil servants.

With regard to the other matter, whether the court machinery set up under this Bill would be suitable for civil servants or not, that appears to me to beg the question. Civil servants, State employees and other employees who are excluded from the Bill were excluded, I gather, as a result of a Government decision. Accordingly, the Bill was drafted and the machinery devised for a state of affairs where civil servants and all the other excluded employees would be excluded. Consequently, it could not be anticipated that machinery would be provided to suit the excluded employees but, if these employees are included, by a little adaptation the existing machinery could easily be made to deal with the matter.

However, I gather from what Deputy Norton said that he has some information which I certainly have not got on the subject of these proposals for arbitration for the Civil Service. I know nothing about it. I did not even know that the Government had decided on the principle of arbitration.

Deputy Norton says, from what he knows of the proposals so far as they have been formulated to date, they would be unacceptable to the Civil Service. I do not know anything about that. I am satisfied if the principle has been accepted. That goes some length, at all events, to satisfy the amendment I have put down and it can only be hoped, when that principle is being put into practice, after consultation with the staff organisations, that a genuine effort will be made to meet the wishes of the civil servants and bring to fruition the efforts they have been making, in the years since this State has been set up, to provide some machinery by which their grievances can be ventilated and their efforts for better conditions heard at least with sympathy and consideration.

Mr. Norton

I move to report progress.

Progress reported, the Committee to sit again at 7.30 p.m.

Business suspended at 6.30 p.m. and resumed at 7.30 p.m.

General Mulcahy

There has been a considerable amount of talk about arbitration and conciliation and the Minister was rather emphatic, in some of his remarks on the situation, that what the Civil Service was looking for in the past was arbitration. Do I understand from him that the proposals the Minister for Finance is considering are proposals for arbitration to be enshrined in a Bill that will be presented to the House?

Mr. Lemass

I do not want to commit the Minister for Finance in any way, but his proposals, which are being prepared and which will be discussed with the staff organisations, will be the subject of legislative proposals and will be submitted for the consideration of the Dáil.

General Mulcahy

The Minister does not want to commit himself to a statement that they involve the acceptance of the principle of arbitration.

Mr. Lemass

That term has many possible interpretations.

General Mulcahy

Quite so. At any rate, as the Minister is so clear that in the past the Civil Service did want arbitration, can we understand that the proposals are intended to be along lines that to some extent will meet the kind of principle that they were looking for in the past?

Mr. Lemass

I can say that it will meet them to the same extent as the inclusion of civil servants in this Bill would.

Mr. Costello

Assuming the worst and that it is not possible for the Civil Service associations to accept the proposals put forward by the Minister, does that mean that they will be permanently excluded from resort to the labour court?

Mr. Lemass

I would not like to forecast the consequences of non-acceptance of these proposals by the staff associations. I should think in certain circumstances the proposals will still be submitted to the Dáil, but one can easily foresee the possibility that the situation might be such as to make that of no particular value.

Mr. H.M. Dockrell

I want to know from the Minister if it would be possible, without greatly altering the constitution of this labour court, to leave it, without prejudices, as it were, such a court as could be expanded along certain lines afterwards to take in these matters? Usually you find that if legislation is successful the tendency is for it to absorb other problems that are parallel to it. Does the Minister think, without in any way accepting the principle, that he could leave the court so that it would be readily adjusted for such situations?

Mr. Lemass

This Bill could not apply to civil servants under any circumstances. It deals with industrial councils, with trade boards, registered agreements and standard rate orders, none of which has any application to the circumstances of civil servants.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

General Mulcahy

I move amendment No. 4:—

In sub-section (1) to delete paragraph (b).

The effect of this amendment would be to bring secondary school teachers within the scope of this Bill. The Minister, speaking generally of teachers, indicated the various types of organisation this Bill contemplated for the purpose of conciliation or fixing conditions of employment and he seemed to suggest that it would be impossible to conceive that secondary school teachers would be dealt with under any section of it. I think the Minister is quite unsound in that particular view. Let him take the first type of agreement contemplated here—that is, registered employment agreements.

The registered employment agreement is introduced where an organised section of workers and organised sections of employers or those who substantially represent workers and employers, undertake to make an agreement in relation to conditions of employment and remuneration. They approach the court for the purpose of seeing that the agreement is registered. After certain examination as to whether the agreement is a suitable one, it can be registered and the workers and employers concerned come under the scope of this Bill.

The secondary teachers are a very definite body of workers, organised to a large extent. The majority of the employers in the secondary schools are a definite group also, having their own organisations and their own co-operative links to deal with the management and the work of employing in secondary schools. You have there two ideal bodies to make an agreement. The Minister may say that there is a considerable amount of State money involved and that it is inconceivable the Government could allow a group of employers and workers drawing a substantial amount of State money to make an agreement about conditions of employment without any supervision by the State.

It is true the State contributes a considerable amount to the salaries of secondary school teachers, but not by any means the whole amount. If you look at the estimate for secondary school education, you will find the State provides the incremented salary grant, including bonus. That amounts to £300,000 this year. The only salary payment made is one of £30,750 under the Intermediate Education Act of 1914, but a very considerable amount of the salaries paid to secondary school teachers is paid by the managers of the schools and comes from fees and other monies derived from sources completely outside the State.

If the principle is conceded for arbitration or conciliation in respect of State servants, where the whole of the money comes out of State funds and is paid directly by the State, then, as far as conceding the principle of arbitration and conciliation in the case of secondary school teachers is concerned, the Minister, I am sure, will admit that the case stands even more strongly that conciliation and arbitration arrangements could be made there without the direct intervention of the State. The labour court, when considering an employment agreement for registration, has the responsibility for examining it from certain points of view. It should not be outside our drafting capacity to introduce an amendment in Part III that would specifically refer to cases of secondary school teachers or primary teachers where moneys come from the State, although they are not paid directly by the State but by the employing managers.

Before the labour court would register an agreement entered into between the employers and the employees, in the case of such classes, there should be consultation with the Minister for Education. He would be quite competent to represent the Minister for Finance, as he would represent the Government. If there was any disagreement between the employers and the employees and the Minister for Education that could not be reconciled to the formulation of agreed employment conditions to the satisfaction of the Minister for Education, then I think it should be possible, if the labour court is intended to be the thing that we all hope it will be, for that court to intervene through some of its personnel and bring about agreement in a manner that would safeguard the interests of the State. So that I feel there is a very strong case for including secondary school teachers within the scope of the Bill.

The general discussion that took place last night and to-day was very revealing. It revealed a certain amount of weakness in the structure of the Bill and I think it revealed a certain amount of ricketiness. On the other hand, it revealed a tremendous unanimity of opinion in all parts of the House that they really wanted to see an institution such as a labour court set up here that would radiate an atmosphere and an influence that would bring employers and workers together with a feeling that there was a warm helpful atmosphere there that in a sympathetic way was going to look clearly at things and help them to come to agreement. To have a labour court looking after the limited groups under the effect of Section 4 of this Bill will be both to minimise the influence and the stature of the labour court and to prevent it being the kind of persuasive, forceful, moulding influence that it should be. Therefore, both from the point of view of providing a suitable machinery for regulating matters for secondary school teachers on the one hand and for improving the status, the position and the beneficent influence of the labour court on the other, I suggest the Minister should accept this amendment. He has, as I say, completely waived any idea that the secondary school teachers can be left without this machinery when he waives it, whether on his own behalf or on behalf of the Minister for Finance, in respect of State servants. Then I would ask him, if he was waived that, and is therefore looking around to see what kind of machinery could be developed, could he see any more useful or any more satisfactory machinery than that secondary school teachers and managers would sit down over their proposals for the purpose of having them registered as a registered employment agreement and in the process of that agreement being registered, the labour court would call in the Minister for Education, as representing the Government to say, from the point of view of the Government's responsibilities, the Minister agreed with the proposals that were in the agreement.

Mr. Lemass

Before an agreement can be registered it has to be negotiated between a trade union of workers and an employer or a trade union of employers. The first step necessary, therefore, for the managers of secondary schools would be to register themselves as a trade union and take out a negotiating licence. That may be a matter of some difficulty because the majority of the managers are in religious Orders. In fact, I think the majority of secondary school teachers are in religious Orders. It is quite obvious the machinery set up to deal with ordinary industrial matter would be most unsuitable for dealing with the problems of remuneration and conditions of employment of secondary school teachers. While it is true that the State does not contribute the whole of the salaries of secondary teachers, it is, I think, correct to say that the incremental scales of the teachers are arranged by the Minister for Education and the State contribution to their salaries is conditional on these incremental scales being paid. The position, therefore, is that scales are negotiated between the secondary teachers and the Minister for Education. New scales were in fact negotiated in the very recent past. I think that whatever arrangement may be made in relation to secondary teachers in future, to bring them under this Bill would be most unsuitable and I think it might even be difficult to bring them under any machinery of this type because of the special circumstances applying in their case.

Mr. Larkin

With all due respect, is the Minister correct in saying that an agreement can only be registered between a trade union of workers and a trade union of employers?

Mr. Lemass

Between a trade union of workers and a trade union of employers, or an employer?

Mr. Larkin

Yes.

Mr. Lemass

Yes.

Mr. Larkin

Then the Minister's point falls.

General Mulcahy

That is one of the limitations of this Bill that, when we come to the particular section, we will want to discuss and perhaps to get rid of.

Mr. Lemass

You cannot get rid of that provision having regard to other legislation.

Mr. McGilligan

What other legislation?

Mr. Lemass

The Trade Union Act.

Mr. McGilligan

Is that the remnant of it?

Mr. Lemass

The effective part of it.

General Mulcahy

If the Minister is serious in considering that the type of machinery in Part III for registering an employment agreement between a group of workers and a group of employers is a good way of bringing about harmony in industrial circles or employment circles, then the question surely must arise for the Minister why it is necessary to impose the obligation of being a trade union depositing at least £1,000 in the courts on the groups that would want to work in this rather convenient way to bring about harmony between workers and employers.

Mr. Lemass

There are alternative methods which we will discuss when we come to them.

Mr. McGilligan

Where is the section which says resort to the court can only be had by trade unions?

Mr. Lemass

There is no such section. I was talking of registered agreements.

Mr. McGilligan

And what about registered agreements?

General Mulcahy

You will get it in the beginning of Section 24. I argue on the first section here and on the rather simple and commonsense idea of an employment agreement that secondary school teachers and their employers should perhaps equally be worked in as a joint industrial council. I do not know why that word "industrial council" should remain there. I think that council could very easily be called a registered joint conciliation council.

Mr. Lemass

I am not going to set up any educational authorities under this Bill, if that is what the Deputy has in mind—that we might have an educational council.

General Mulcahy

Oh no.

Mr. McGilligan

We do not need that.

General Mulcahy

I want a conciliation council.

Mr. Lemass

For secondary teachers?

General Mulcahy

Yes. After all, they are as likely to get at loggerheads with their employers as anybody else and if the State is looking for harmony as between employers and employees, surely it does not turn a blind eye in a number of various directions, but reviews the whole scheme of relations between employers and employees.

Mr. Lemass

In so far as their remuneration is concerned, their scales are determined by the Minister for Education.

Mr. McGilligan

No, surely not?

General Mulcahy

The Minister for Education does not provide their salaries.

Mr. Lemass

He provides the bulk of their salaries.

Mr. McGilligan

Does he?

General Mulcahy

He provides the incremental part.

Mr. McGilligan

What proportion is provided out of State funds?

Mr. Lemass

I could not say what the proportion is, but it is a substantial proportion and new scales have, in fact, been negotiated for secondary teachers.

General Mulcahy

Even if it were, he provides the whole of the salaries for the Civil Service and the principle of conciliation and arbitration has been admitted there.

Mr. Lemass

Obviously, the position of secondary teachers, because of the method of payment, is more akin to the Civil Service position than to that of industrial workers, but having regard to the fact that most of these schools are under religious Orders, and that most of the teachers are themselves in Holy Orders, it is quite clear that their case must get very special consideration. They cannot just be placed into a regular pattern with other classes of workers.

General Mulcahy

We have been given some kind of idea as to the principle which is to be positively applied in the case of civil servants. Can we have any idea as to whether anything is being planned for application in a positive way to secondary teachers, because the fact is that, while a large number of secondary school teachers may be in Holy Orders, quite a substantial number are lay people and organised in a trade union, even though they may not have a £1,000 to pay in, in order to become a negotiating body?

Mr. Lemass

I could not answer that question, and, in any event, it is not of immediate urgency, because new scales of salary have been negotiated.

General Mulcahy

Are in negotiation at present?

Mr. Lemass

I think the negotiations are over. The Minister for Education made a statement on the matter last week.

Amendment put and declared lost.

General Mulcahy

I move amendment No. 5:—

In sub-section (1) to delete paragraph (c).

The amendment asks that primary school teachers come within the scheme of this Bill. Here we are dealing with a much more widely flung and larger body. If the Minister contends that secondary school teachers are a special body, by reason of the fact that such a large percentage of them are in Holy Orders, the primary school teachers are in a very different class. Here, again, we hark back to the principle which is apparently accepted by the Government in relation to civil servants, and we ask, with regard to primary teachers, whether, in the same way, a joint conciliation group or council of some kind could not be set up under the Bill representing the teachers and the managers who are a very definite and a very clearly defined body, so that, with consultation and discussion between them, and with the Department of Education, an employment agreement could be come to which could be registered with the court and fall into the scheme of the Bill.

Mr. Lemass

The primary school teachers are paid entirely by the State, but not employed by the State. They are employed by the managers, but the whole of their remuneration comes from State funds. It would, therefore, be inappropriate to have negotiations between them and their managers as to the rate of payment. The managers have no obligation to find any part of the money paid to them. So far as their remuneration is concerned, it is a matter between them and the State, and their position, therefore, is completely akin to that of the Civil Service, and whatever arrangements are made in relation to civil servants would be far more applicable to their case than the provisions of this Bill.

Mr. McGilligan

Are they going to be?

General Mulcahy

I repudiate entirely the suggestion that the primary teacher is in any way a civil servant.

Mr. Lemass

He is not employed by the State, but is paid by the State.

General Mulcahy

In our primary school system, we accept the principle that education shall be in the hands of the Church and that we have a State-aided system of primary education. It is true that we also accept the principle that primary education will be free education and the State undertakes the responsibility of finding all the money necessary for the payment of the teachers, and the greater part of the money necessary for the upkeep of the schools, in order to provide free education; but the Church does not ask the managers to accept any position other than that they are in charge of education and that the managers are the managers of the schools and the employers of the teachers. In the very application which the teacher makes for his regular payments, there is a request from the manager, as manager, that the payments be transmitted directly to the teacher, but the payment is a payment through the manager to the teacher.

We are anxious to see in what way the general picture and the general plan of arbitration and conciliation is being finished. We have this scheme from the industrial and general workers' point of view down to the agricultural worker, and, up at the top, we have the Civil Service entirely and directly paid by the State, and there we have the principle of arbitration and conciliation accepted. We have a scheme here from the agricultural worker up to the person who is a member of the trade union, and a scheme promised for State servants. Here we have a class which, from very bitter experience, we find can get into a dispute and into a strike, with very severe reactions not only on the whole educational atmosphere in the city here but affecting the whole educational body. Can we not in any way look into the future in discussing this Bill to see what type of arbitration or conciliation can be arranged, as part of the general scheme we are working out here, in relation to the primary teachers?

Mr. Lemass

I am not producing a general scheme of arbitration. I am producing a Bill for the establishment of an industrial court and certain consequential provisions applying to workers not employed by the State. The Deputy must not interpret anything I said as representing this Bill as part of any general scheme. It is not. It is intended for the purpose set out on the face of it, and for no other purpose.

Mr. McGilligan

And that was put here to-day as dealing with probably a quarter of a million of the gainfully occupied people of the country.

Mr. Lemass

I do not see that it matters whether it is a quarter of a million or half a million.

Mr. McGilligan

Let us understand what it does. This Bill with a limited objective in the sense that it only aims at covering the conditions of a limited number of people is not a general Industrial Relations Bill, although the title does speak of harmonious relations between employers and workers. It is limited when we come to the operative section. It is only to be availed for the harmonising of conditions of about 250,000 employees out of 1,250,000 gainfully occupied in the country.

That is what it comes to. But the Minister is asked to say, when he brings in a Bill with a title which seems to indicate that it is a general scheme to operate generally as between workers and employers, on what grounds of principle does he discriminate in making certain exclusions. The first ground we heard was that the court, as such, is not suitable for the adjudication of disputes between certain groups or, as Deputy Costello phrased it, it amounts to: "I have made this court on the basis that certain people will be excluded. Having done so, it is quite easy for me to say that a court so built up is not suitable to deal with the folk who I intend should be excluded." That is not meeting the case. The case is why there should be exclusion, and it has not been denied that the court could be so built up as to be suitable for, say, adjudicating on the matter of the Civil Service. At this point we are dealing with national teachers. On what grounds of principle are these teachers excluded? The Minister says the national teachers are in a peculiar position. They are. They are not State employees, but they are people whose remuneration has to be provided for by the State because there is a constitutional guarantee of free primary education, but to say that you are bound to give free primary education and going on in a Bill to insist on conditions which provide cheap primary education or sweated primary education, that is not imposed by the Constitution. Why not have a solution? The Minister seems to forget that the Bill deals not only with remuneration but with conditions of service. While it may be true to say that the State provides remuneration from public funds, there is the other question of conditions of service and general conditions of work. As I understand the situation, that is the problem between the primary teachers and the Government. Part of the dispute is in relation to moneys but a considerable amount more is not related to moneys.

There are matters that have been agitated in this House, about overcrowded schools, the question of the curricula, the question of rating and the type of marking given, which prevents teachers from achieving what is theoretically open to them, unless on examination and inspection conducted possibly vigorously once a year and then slackly.

An Ceann Comhairle

The merits do not arise here.

Mr. McGilligan

I understand they do. We have had competent cases argued regarding the present dispute between the teachers and the Government. There is nothing in the present dispute going to be changed by the court. The teachers offered to have that agitation adjudicated upon. I do not know of any person who matters in Irish life who has become vocal in this matter except on the side of the teachers. It seems to me to be the most amazing case made by public opinion for any group and notwithstanding that when it comes to finding a general solution, when the Minister was asked if this Bill could be made suitable, he said there is a difference between industrial workers and primary teachers, that industrial workers are paid to manufacture goods or to provide something in the way of service, whereas the State not only pays but provides money for, and has constitutionally guaranteed free education. Surely it should be open to Ministers to say that they are not to be in the position that they must always be afraid of public opinion, and that in any case against national teachers they will not allow an outside body to arbitrate in the dispute.

Mr. Davin

The Minister when strongly opposing the amendment which was brought in for the purpose of bringing civil servants under the scheme provided in the Bill gave as his principal reason for doing so that by transferring to any court of this kind the power to deal with civil servants would be to surrender the power of the Government and particularly of the Minister for Finance to act as the guardian of taxation.

Mr. Lemass

I did not.

Mr. Davin

That was the case made.

Mr. Lemass

Not by me.

Mr. Davin

The Minister went further. I was glad to hear him say that a scheme of arbitration was under consideration for the settlement in the future of any dispute that might arise between the civil servants and their employers—the Minister for Finance.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy seems to be repeating that argument.

Mr. Davin

The Minister stated that that scheme of arbitration will have the approval of the House. That was a fairly convincing reply in regard to civil servants and was giving the House at some future date the right to criticise the scheme of arbitration decided on by the Minister for Finance. He has now come along to oppose the right of the people to have any dispute that may arise between themselves and their employers brought within the machinery of this Bill without giving any indication that any scheme is under consideration or will be framed to prevent such a regrettable strike as is now going on between teachers and their employer. I have no intention of endeavouring to discuss the merits of that dispute. If the Minister gave an indication that the Government are considering and will eventually devise and submit to the House some scheme for the settlement of the dispute between civil servants and their employers I think we are entitled to get from him, if he opposes the amendment that is now under discussion, an indication that some steps are being taken by the Government to prevent a recurrence of the present regrettable dispute.

An Ceann Comhairle

It merely happens accidentally that there is at present a teachers' strike, which has really nothing to do with this matter.

Mr. D. Morrissey

Perhaps if this Bill was brought in 12 months ago and we had not Section 4 the strike would not be on at all. I want to draw attention to the very interesting position we have reached in connection with this section and the bodies excluded under it. The Minister stated originally that civil servants, teachers, employees of local authorities and agricultural labourers were to be excluded from the Bill.

He has agreed to bring in under the Bill agricultural labourers. He told us that machinery which will be at least as favourable to civil servants as this Bill would be is to be introduced for them. He further states that if the machinery to be introduced for civil servants is found acceptable, some similar machinery will probably be introduced to deal with the employees of local authorities so that we have reached the point now that the only outcasts are to be the teachers, primary and secondary. There is no place for them in this Bill or in any machinery under contemplation.

Mr. Lemass

I have not said so.

Mr. D. Morrissey

Will the Minister say now that there is even in contemplation machinery either arbitration or conciliation by the Government in regard to teachers?

Mr. Lemass

The position is that national teachers will certainly be considered in relation to the Civil Service scheme. What the decision will be I cannot say.

Mr. Norton

Is the Government committed to arbitration for teachers as well as for others?

Mr. Lemass

What I said is that the matter of the teachers under the Civil Service scheme will be considered. I cannot forecast the decision.

Mr. Norton

The Minister said that the Government were committed to arbitration for civil servants. Is it similarly committed to that for teachers?

Mr. D. Morrissey

We have gone a certain distance. Am I to take it that the only people out of all the groups classified in Section 4 for whom it is deemed impossible to find machinery are the secondary teachers?

Mr. Lemass

No.

Mr. D. Morrissey

The Minister specifically mentioned primary teachers.

Mr. Lemass

I have indicated what every person who knows anything at all about the subject is already aware of, namely, that there are special features in the case of the secondary teachers that make it difficult to apply to them the same procedure as may be adopted in relation to other classes of persons remunerated from public funds.

Mr. D. Morrissey

That is not the question I put to the Minister.

Mr. Lemass

It is what I am telling the Deputy.

Mr. D. Morrissey

I know. May I take it from that that it is quite beyond the wit of the Government to promote any machinery to meet the position of the secondary teachers?

Mr. Lemass

I have not said so.

Mr. D. Morrissey

The Minister has not said so, but he has not said that it is. The Minister made another statement which caused me some concern. The Minister's sole argument against both secondary and national teachers is that they are paid in whole, or in part, out of State funds. Is that principle going to be applied down along the line? Are we to take it that if a grant is given to a local authority to make a road, or to repair a boreen, the Government will, for that reason, exclude from this, or any other similar type of machinery, persons who are so employed when portion of their wages is paid by way of a State grant?

Mr. Lemass

The difficulty in regard to the teachers is not because they are paid out of State funds; it is because of the special circumstances relating to their employment.

Mr. D. Morrissey

We are moving.

Mr. Lemass

All civil servants are paid out of State funds.

Mr. D. Morrissey

We are not talking about civil servants. In relation to national teachers and secondary teachers, the Minister said that in the case of secondary teachers a considerable amount of their salary, whether by way of increment or otherwise, came out of State funds and for that reason this was not considered suitable machinery. Is that principle going to be carried down right along the line? Is the Government going to say that where any proportion of the salary or wages of an employee, whether employed by a local authority or, as could conceivably be the case, employed by a private employer, that because portion of his wages or salary is coming out of public funds he is to be denied whatever protection a measure such as this would give him?

Mr. Lemass

Is not that question answered in the section itself? If the Deputy reads the section he will get the answer there.

Mr. D. Morrissey

Which section?

Mr. Lemass

Section 4—the one we are discussing. It is quite clear the section applies to every class of worker except those particular classes which are excluded.

Mr. D. Morrissey

The people who are most likely to be hit by that line of thought are the thousands of people who are excluded, namely the employees — and, particularly, the manual workers—of the local authorities who are in receipt of wages from 38s. a week upwards. According to the Minister, because some portion of their salaries or wages is coming out of public funds, they are to be excluded. I would be glad if the Minister would indicate that it is not because any portion of their wages is coming out of public funds that they are excluded; if it is not for that reason then I would like to know why they are excluded. I cannot see any reason for it. The Minister now says that it is not because the teachers' salaries are paid out of State funds that they are being excluded from this measure. If that is not the case, what is the reason? What is the insuperable difficulty?

The difficulty which the Minister pointed out in relation to the secondary teachers does not obtain in relation to the primary teachers. The primary teachers are nearly all lay people. They are highly organised and they would have no difficulty whatever in arriving at an organised agreement which would be observed by them. If the Minister cannot see his way to provide machinery whereby that agreement can be registered and enforced——

Mr. Lemass

Is the Deputy talking about an agreement between the teachers and their employers?

Mr. D. Morrissey

Yes.

Mr. Lemass

As the employers have nothing to do with their remuneration such an agreement would obviously be inapplicable.

Mr. D. Morrissey

Nothing to do with their remuneration?

Mr. Lemass

Is not that an obvious fact? The employers do not pay them.

Mr. McGilligan

Have the employers anything to do with the conditions of service?

Mr. Lemass

The employers have nothing to do with the rates of payment.

Mr. D. Morrissey

May I remind the Minister of the purpose of this Bill?

Mr. Lemass

In Section 4 you get the answer to your question as to the classes of workers to which it will apply.

Mr. D. Morrissey

The more I read Section 4 the more difficult I find it to understand the purpose of introducing this Bill because it cuts across the whole intention of the Bill; that is proven by the fact that it is the only section in the Bill which, as the Minister has stated, is not free inasmuch as he says it is a matter for the Government and not for the House, and that it is a Government decision and the Government have already come to their decision on it. It savours somewhat of the Minister for Education's attitude towards the teachers. This Bill is supposed to promote harmonious relations and machinery for the implementation of rates of remuneration, conditions of employment, and to prevent or settle disputes.

An Ceann Comhairle

What about amendment No. 5?

Mr. D. Morrissey

I am coming to amendment No. 5. I suggest the fact that there is a strike on in the case of the teachers merely strengthens my point. We are suggesting that the teachers are striking for something more than wages. That is well known. We are suggesting that the dispute which led to the present strike is the very type of dispute that should be brought within the terms of this Bill and with which such a court, as is envisaged here, should deal. If this Bill, without the exclusions, had been the law in the past we probably would not have the teachers walking around for the last three or four months.

Mr. Lemass

And they might have got a much smaller offer.

Mr. D. Morrissey

But in any case they would get justice. They are entitled to nothing more than that. If the Minister has not more faith than that in the court which is going to be set up under this Bill I think we are only wasting our time here. Unless you have the confidence of both the employers and workers behind this Bill it will never work.

Mr. Norton

I would like to ascertain from the Minister what he meant precisely by his statement that arbitration for teachers would be considered in relation to the scheme of arbitration for the Civil Service. Does the Minister know that it is possible to implement that statement or any implied promise therein by simply mentioning the case of the teachers when Civil Service arbitration is under way; and the promise is not broken if nothing is done for the teachers? In endeavouring to resist amendment No. 2 the Minister said that the Government was committed to the principle of arbitration for the Civil Service and he intimated that a scheme of arbitration would be produced later. I hope that it will be recognisable as a scheme of arbitration when it is produced. Can the Minister tell us now if the Government is committed to the acceptance of the principle of arbitration for the teachers? Obviously, the teachers cannot be regarded as an untouchable class so far as arbitration is concerned. Some scheme will have to be devised. The Minister for Finance is not here now, but we can ask the Minister for Industry and Commerce if the Government is committed to the acceptance of the principle of arbitration in the same way as it is committed to its acceptance in the case of the Civil Service?

Mr. Lemass

What I said was that proposals relating to the Civil Service are being considered. When they are considered they will be discussed by the staff organisations. The proposals submitted to the Dáil will depend on the outcome of the consideration now proceeding and on the outcome of the discussion of them by the staff organisations. I cannot at this stage intimate in any definite form what these proposals may be. If the proposals, when they come here, do not cover the national teachers there will be an obligation on the Minister introducing them to give very convincing reasons for their exclusion.

Mr. McGilligan

Unlike those given to-night.

Mr. Lemass

I have never given any other reasons.

Mr. McGilligan

Then all we need do is copy the reasons given to-night.

Mr. Norton

We are not including teachers within the scheme and we are not accepting the Minister's reasons for their exclusion. Does the Minister in promoting this harmonious legislation, not consider that the Government is morally bound to provide the teachers with some tribunal to which disputes between them and their employer, or paymaster, may be referred? Is the Government committed to the acceptance of the principle that, if there is a dispute in the teaching profession some body, other than the paymaster, will adjudicate upon the merits of it?

Mr. Lemass

Between the national teachers and the taxpayers the Government is an excellent arbitration tribunal.

Mr. Norton

That means the teachers are not going to get any arbitration.

Mr. McGilligan

And the convincing reasons for that will be given by the Minister for Education.

Mr. Lemass

Very convincing reasons have already been given.

Mr. Norton

Are we to understand that, so far as teachers are concerned, the Minister says: "You can have industrial courts for the generality of workers; you will get one later for civil servants which may be applied to local authorities, but, when you come to 10,000 or 12,000 people responsible for the education of the youth of the country, between the teacher on the one hand, and the taxpayer on the other, the arbitrator will be the Government"?

Mr. Lemass

I did not say that. I said the Government makes an excellent arbitrator in such a dispute. I did not say it is the only possible arbitration court.

Mr. Norton

Does the Minister think it is so excellent that it will be a permanent court? Cannot the Minister say definitely——

Mr. Lemass

I cannot. That is the point I am trying to make clear, because, as I already explained, these matters are being considered and I am not going to forecast the outcome of that consideration.

Mr. Norton

Can any indication be given—it affects the fate of this amendment—that the question of arbitration will be discussed with the teachers with a view to evolving a suitable scheme? Can we get an answer to that?

Mr. Lemass

I cannot give an answer.

Mr. McGilligan

I wonder where we are after all this?

An Ceann Comhairle

On amendment No. 5.

Mr. McGilligan

Getting back to several others which are all important in the consideration of amendment No. 5. It has been stressed here that a promise has been given, or that a statement has been made, that the Government accept the principle of arbitration in connection with civil servants. Both Deputy Morrissey and Deputy Norton have tried to extract from the Minister a further promise that that machinery, when it comes along, if found adjustable to the teachers, will be adjusted to them and, if not found suitable for them, that something new will be thought out and applied to them. They have failed to get that from the Minister. We are in the position that the Minister says that he cannot tell us.

Remember how bad is the foundation upon which we are trying to build. In the first page of the interim report of the commission set up in 1932 in connection with civil servants they point out that they were asked to consider first and submit an interim report on that part of the terms of reference referring to the application of the principle of arbitration, already accepted by the Government. In 1932 the Government set up a commission to bring in a scheme for civil servants, on the basis of arbitration which had been accepted as a principle by the Government. We know how far that has gone since and that people are now vainly trying to get a promise that, just as arbitration was accepted for civil servants before 1932, they will now accept something of the same sort in 1946 for the teachers. The furthest we have got is that the Minister says he cannot tell us. I think that means that civil servants will not be brought under this Bill or any other Bill and that the Government are not even pretending that the teachers will be brought under any such Bill, and there is no reason given why they are excluded.

Question—"That the words proposed to be deleted stand part"—put and declared carried.

Mr. Pattison

I move amendment No. 6:—

In sub-section (1), page 5, lines 2 and 3, to delete paragraph (d).

I do not think very much requires to be said in view of all that has been said on amendment No. 2, except to emphasise that the Minister ought to reconsider the position with a view to bringing in the employees of local authorities. The Minister must be aware that a great many people who work for local authorities are exactly in the same position as if they worked for private employers, inasmuch as large numbers of them are engaged in building work under direct labour schemes. There are motor mechanics, drivers, plumbers, blacksmiths and a variety of industrial workers employed by the various local authorities. If my memory is correct, in the days of the First Dáil there was a court which arbitrated for workers of all kinds.

I had some association with arbitration held under the First Dáil and, in particular, with one in connection with the employees of local authorities. If it was possible, with all the difficulties of those days, to have a court to deal with industrial workers and municipal workers, why cannot we now, when we have no foreign interference with the conduct of our administrative affairs, have a court which will deal with appeals from all classes of workers?

Mr. Lemass

The Deputy should understand that, so far as the greater part of this Bill is concerned, it does not apply to local authorities' officers. They were not subject to the Emergency Powers (No. 260) Order and, consequently, Part VII of the Bill, dealing with standard rate orders, does not apply in their case. The registration of a wages agreement is hardly applicable to their circumstances; nor is the part of the Bill dealing with joint industrial councils. Clearly, also the part dealing with trade boards does not apply to local authorities' employees and the only part which might possibly be regarded as having any relevancy to their conditions is the part dealing with trade disputes. It would not, however, be adequate to secure any change in the circumstances of local authorities' employees in that regard merely to include them under the Bill. The Local Government Act places the control of the remuneration of officers of local authorities in the hands of the Minister for Local Government. There could, therefore, be no change in the circumstances of these officers unless the Local Government legislation were amended simultaneously. I expressed the view that the type of machinery that may be established to deal with State employees may be found applicable, with some modifications, to employees of local authorities; but that is a matter for decision in the future when nature of that machinery is known, and, possibly, when some experience has been secured of its operation.

Mr. D. Morrissey

That is the weakest case I have ever heard in this House in opposing any amendment. The Minister's case falls under two heads: (1) that he cannot fit the employees of local authorities into the machinery of this Bill; (2) that the Minister for Local Government will not let go his grasp. I have come to the conclusion that this Bill is absolutely a mockery and a sham.

We were presented with the Bill in a speech by the Minister which we commended and which seemed to us to indicate a complete departure from the attitude of mind of the Government for the last seven or eight years. We were told by the Minister that the only test he would apply to suggestions from any side of the House in relation to the Bill would be a test as to whether or not the suggestions made would be workable. Now, thousands of employees of local authorities, who are admittedly the lowest paid workers in this State, are denied whatever benefits may flow from this Bill, because the Minister says that he cannot fit them into the machinery. But he can fit in any other sort of workers in the State into it. He can fit men who are doing exactly similar work for private employers into the machinery of this Bill and he gives them the full benefit of it. That is the first objection: that he cannot fit them into the machinery, that the machinery was not framed so that they could fit into it. The second objection is that, because of Local Government Acts, the Minister for Local Government has a complete grasp of these unfortunate employees of local authorities and he is going to keep his grip.

I suggest to the Minister that if he is as earnest and sincere in this matter as we thought, and would still like to think he is, he could surmount these difficulties. Does the Minister think that the private employers, particularly in the small towns and rural parts of this country, are going voluntarily to submit to the machinery of this Bill, and perhaps pay their employees substantially higher rates and give them better conditions than the employees of local authorities will be allowed to have by the Minister for Local Government? Does the Minister not know that that will tend to make this unworkable, that it will tend to deter private employers from agreeing to use this machinery?

Let us not fool ourselves. The only reason we have enough men working for local authorities, making roads or producing fuel, is because the Minister had to bring in a special emergency order to chain them down in this country and they are only working for local authorities because the law compels them. As it is, they work for a miserable wage and under miserable conditions. They would not be allowed to emigrate, the same as other workers. Every Deputy who comes from a rural area and who happens to be a member of a local authority knows that is so. I challenge any Deputy from a rural area to say how many dozens, perhaps hundreds, of workers have approached him to get a passport to leave the country and to get away from the 35/-, 36/- or 38/- a week that they are being paid.

This Bill is based on the goodwill and confidence of employers and employees. Practically every local authority in the State has expressed its willingness, in most cases unanimously, to improve the wages and conditions of its employees, but it would not be allowed to do so by the Minister for Local Government.

General Mulcahy

Unanimously and persistently.

Mr. D. Morrissey

Does the Minister say that the local authorities would refuse to take advantage of this machinery? I do not believe it and I do not believe it is beyond the wit of the Minister to fit those workers into this framework, if he desired to do so. The Minister said that the local government law would have to be amended. We are doing that every day in the week here. It would give some of us a great deal of pleasure to amend that law if it would enable some thousands of workers to be brought within the framework of this Bill and give them some justice, which they have not been getting and, apparently, which it is not intended they shall get in the future.

Mr. Davin

The Minister is hardly serious when he suggests that road workers and skilled employees of local authorities can possibly be brought within the framework of arbitration machinery which will be created for the purpose of dealing with civil servants. Surely it would be altogether wrong to deal with road workers and skilled workers employed by local authorities inside a scheme of arbitration considered suitable for dealing with civil servants' grievances, or disputes between the Civil Service and the Government. The Minister has wisely and properly brought agricultural labourers within the machinery that will be provided under this Bill. He knows that the Minister for Local Government has at all times defended his right to fix road workers' wages. He always asserted, when challenged on the matter, that the wages paid to road workers should be closely related to the wages paid to agricultural labourers.

The Minister has accepted the position so far as agricultural labourers are concerned. If there is a sound reason for bringing them in, surely there is an equally sound reason for bringing in road workers and skilled workers employed by local authorities. The answer to that cannot be that the road workers and skilled workers under local authorities will be dealt with in a scheme of arbitration which may take another 14 years to frame. Deputy McGilligan pointed out that 14 years ago the Government accepted the principle of arbitration for the Civil Service. Let us hope it will not take another 14 years to devise a scheme that will be acceptable to the Civil Service.

Are the road workers to be punished in the intervening period by having to accept, reluctantly as they have up to the present, the Minister for Local Government, the tin god in the Custom House, as the only person competent to decide what rates of wages are to be paid to them and to other local authority employees? The Minister for Local Government should never have been given that power. He is not the person who fixes the rates to be collected from the ratepayers. The representatives of the ratepayers have that power and they are the only people who should have the power to fix the rates of wages and working conditions for their employees.

Mr. Lemass

Were road workers paid more when the representatives of the ratepayers had the power to fix the rates of pay?

Mr. D. Morrissey

Is it not right to say that they had 35/- a week when the cost of living was 80 per cent. less than it is to-day? They have £2 a week to-day and it is only true to say that the purchasing power of wages then was double what it is now.

Mr. Davin

The road workers are casual workers; they get eight or nine months' work in the year. They have a lower rate of pay than agricultural labourers. That is the position in my constituency. It may not be the position in one or two other counties, such as County Dublin, where there is an exceptionally high rate, outside the rate fixed by the Agricultural Wages Board, paid to agricultural labourers. Generally speaking, the agricultural labourer is in continuous employment and, in addition to the wages paid by the farmer, he gets perquisites such as milk and the grass of a cow, if he has one, and other facilities which the road worker never gets. There is a far better case for the payment of a higher rate of wages to the road worker than there is in the case of the agricultural labourer. I am glad to acknowledge that a big section of the farmers in my constituency are paying their agricultural workers a wage as high as £3 a week at the present time. When members of this Party, supported by others, advocated the payment of a minimum wage of £3 a week we were, of course, called Communists and every other kind of funny name. But the farmers, who recognise that their position improved during the emergency period, particularly during the past few years, are voluntarily recognising the right of their employees to a higher rate of wages than is laid down by the chairman of the Wages Board appointed by the present Minister for Agriculture. I ask the Minister that, having agreed to amend this Bill in such a way as to bring agricultural labourers within the framework of the measure, to take the further sensible step of bringing in unskilled and skilled workers employed by local authorities. If he does that, he will be doing a sensible thing.

If he consulted the members of local authorities in every county, I think he would find that they would agree that it would be a fairer thing, in the interests of their employees, to have wages disputes between the workers of local authorities and the county manager referred to a board of this kind rather than, as has been the practice up to the present, for the Minister for Local Government, no matter who he may be, to be put in the dictatorial position of fixing the rates to be paid to road workers and other employees of that kind of local authorities.

If there is a genuine desire, and I accept that there is a genuine desire, on the part of the Minister for Industry and Commerce to bring about more harmonious relations between the workers of this State and their employers, then the State should give the example at any rate, the Government should give a lead and, if the Government reserve the right to refuse to give a good lead so far as State employees are concerned, let them not interfere with the rights of the members of local authorities to give what they consider are reasonable rates of wages and working conditions, at the expense of the ratepayers they represent, to their employees.

Mr. H.M. Dockrell

The Minister, in paragraphs (a), (b) and (c) of this section says that the person mentioned in these paragraphs are person to whom this Bill does not apply, that these people have not got a wage agreement, that they have not got a trade board and have not got various other things. We come to paragraph (d)—"a person who is employed in any office or employment." I notice that the Minister in referring to the employees of local authorities used the word "officer." He said that a special court—I suppose something analogous to this court—is going to be set up for persons employed under the State. There is a question about the teachers now. Certainly, persons who are employed by a local authority are going to come before that court in the course of time, when it is set up. I would ask the Minister is a carpenter employed by the Dublin Corporation a "person"? I would suggest he is.

In future carpenters employed by the Dublin Corporation could say to the corporation that they had a grievance against the corporation under the conditions of their employment as registered with the labour court set up under the Industrial Relations Bill, that the Dublin Corporation were not observing those conditions, and I can imagine the city manager or some other official saying to that body of men: "One story is very good until you hear another. You are persons employed by the Dublin Corporation and there is another court there for settling your disputes, that is, the court that settles the difficulties of the Government with their civil servants, and I do not give a fiddle-dee-dee for the agreement that is registered with the labour court under the Industrial Relations Bill. You are persons employed by a local authority and you have to go before that court. I wish you luck. You may get better conditions or you may get worse conditions, but there is no use your talking about your being carpenters and having had an agreement negotiated with various bodies who employ carpenters." I should like the Minister to clear up for us how far that word "person" in paragraph (d) will apply to local authorities. What is going to prevail? Is it the fact that they are tradesmen and that other agreements have been entered into, registered or not registered, or are there going to be two courts and that a man can choose whichever suits him or, having lost his case in one court, can he go to another? I would like the Minister to clear up that point because, whatever arguments may obtain for the persons mentioned in paragraphs (a), (b) and (c), they cannot be applied to paragraph (d). I mention Dublin Corporation but I might just as well have said the Cork Corporation or any other local authority. They have hosts of industrial workers who have no claim to being officers of local authorities such as the Minister has described. Are they to be nobody's children? Under what section do they come in or how do they come in? I ask the Minister to clear up that point for us on this section.

Mr. Keyes

I am quite sure it is the Minister's desire, and certainly it is the desire of the House and of the country, that this measure should be as effective as it was hoped it would be in providing more harmonious relations between workers and employers. I think the Minister's introduction of the measure has engendered a good deal of confidence in that direction because of the amiable method of approach, in contradistinction to previous methods of legislating for workers.

I am amazed at the Minister's reluctance to broaden out the machinery so as to include some very obvious cases that ought to be covered by it. Why it should be so narrowly circumscribed I cannot understand, because, if there is confidence in the ability of the machine to do its job, it ought to be spread over as wide an area as possible. The Minister should be governed by a desire to include rather than to exclude the particular cases before our minds, the employees of local authorities. I cannot see what explanation the Minister can give of that. He has not given any satisfactory reason why they should not be brought into it. We are catering here for people organised in trade unions, workers organised in industrial unions, who have had their own machinery for dealing with their disputes. Whether that was good or bad remains to be seen, but, before Emergency Powers regulations were introduced, these workers hammered out decent settlements with employers' federations. If they had rows from time to time, it could not be helped. They had the machinery, at any rate. This scheme is supposed to come to their assistance in relation to the odd occasion when that machinery breaks down and a deadlock arises by providing a court to which they can appeal. The type of workers referred to here are in every way similar to other industrial workers, whether rural road workers or the employees of corporations. Rural workers are badly organised. They are, perhaps, unorganised, and, because they are unorganised, they should have some tribunal to which they could refer their grievances.

As was stated by Deputy Morrissey, county councils elected by the ratepayers have nothing to do with this. The matter is handed over completely to the manager and there is a strong suspicion through the country— I put it no stronger than that—that the managers are bound to act on dictation from the Custom House. There certainly is no confidence amongst workers that they will get a square deal from a manager, because he has to submit everything to the Minister, and there can be no mediation by the elected representatives. As they have no union to fight their corner, I suggest that they are the people who are obviously entitled to some tribunal which would do justice as between them and the ratepayers. There is no reason why the ratepayers should not submit, as a private employer has to submit, to a tribunal instituted by the Minister, with the chairman a person of the Minister's choosing and with employers and workers both represented. What could be fairer than that and why should the ratepayers be exempt from allowing the claims of their workers to be submitted to such a court?

On the other hand, we have workers employed by local bodies in the cities. They have trade unions and they are organised, but they suffer from a disability from which other trade unions do not suffer, and this may be the snag behind all this. Some of these workers in cities are threatened with penal clauses originating under the old Victorian régime and told that if they withdraw their services—as I have seen happen in my own city—they are liable to so many months in jail. This old section from the Victorian régime is pulled out of the bag and its operation is as active as when her ladyship was here. It is being used against municipal workers, and, if they take strike action, they lose all pension rights. Would it not be a good thing to abolish that section, that antique legislation, and provide a modern court where the employees of local authorities could go with confidence and discuss every matter with the city manager as rural workers do with the county manager? Is there anything revolutionary about it? It is obviously a fair method, and if the Minister has confidence in his measure as I am sure he has, he ought to take in these workers under local authorities. The little difficulties which may be in the way—some of them anachronisms —ought to be swept away.

The Minister would be doing a damned good job for everybody if he swept the cobwebs out of the local government machinery, and I am sure that the Minister for Local Government, whoever he might be, would welcome any proposal which would take the matter out of his hands by allowing an institution set up to deal with labour disputes to take on the job. It is their job and they are competent to do it. They are experts at the work. If that is done, there will be more harmony and less friction throughout the country. I appeal to the Minister to agree that there is no obstacle so big that the price would not be worth it. The Minister would be doing the best job possible if he extended the machinery of the Bill to cover the employees of local authorities in town and country.

Mr. Larkin (Junior)

There are two consideration in relation to this question. There is the general issue of all persons engaged in an office or other employment and the other, the narrow issue, covered by the following amendment designed to include wage earners. I want to confine myself to the general question because I hope to see the Minister taking each hurdle separately. I have some knowledge of the manner in which the Minister prepared this Bill, of his ability to have his arguments in relation to every point he proposed to incorporate in the Bill at his finger-tips and immediately available and of the readiness of his part, displayed in the course of the debate when he met us with regard to agricultural labourers, to appreciate a case put up to him, even when it was contrary to what he originally had in mind, and for that reason, it has been painful to watch him during the past few hours. He has had no argument he attempted to bring forward was found only after a desperate effort. The final argument he has brought forward is to refer us to the Local Government Act, and it is one which I think he might, in all honesty, have put forward in the opening stages of the debate. He might have said quite frankly that, regardless of what arguments we put up here, the position was that the Minister for Local Government had certain powers and did not intend to relinquish them. We would then know where we were.

Even to say that to bring in persons employed by local authorities, it would be necessary to amend the Local Government Acts is not correct. Remember that in the Bill there are certain provisions, one of which is that an employer, which may be a local authority, and a trade union can negotiate and arrive at an agreement, and can then have that agreement registered. Before that agreement can be submitted, even before the agreement is arrived at, the spokesman for the local authority, the manager, will under the Local Government Act have to submit his proposed decisions to the Minister, who can then decide whether he wishes that agreement to be accepted, put into force and registered or not. It does not interfere with the Minister's powers at all. Secondly, in the case of a possible dispute, this labour court has certain powers whereby, through agreement with both parties, it can act as arbitrator. Again, that is subject to the consent of the party who again in this case is the Minister. There is no interference whatever with his powers, but I suggest that there is a case here for extending the machinery provided in this Bill to these employees because of the very fact that the Minister has this final and overriding power. There is no possible approach to the Minister on the part of large masses of workers, or those who have to negotiate on their behalf.

Let me give a concrete example. Recently there was a strike very near Dublin. I am aware that the official responsible for dealing with the men had, earlier in the year, made several approaches to the Department of Local Government with a view to getting sanction for a bonus. He was not merely not given the sanction, but it was almost conveyed to him that he should not even ask for sanction. Finally, he got sanction, and a very small bonus was given to these workers. It was so small that they eventually went on strike. I told them, and I say it here again, that there was no earthly possibility of this group of workers succeeding in getting their claim carefully attended to by virtue of that strike. They were trying to fight the national Government in relation to 200 or 300 workers. The person dealing with the matter there was also in the unfortunate position that there was no use in his trying to negotiate because he again was bound by overriding Orders.

If we had a court of this character, and a section of local government employees desired to negotiate a new agreement, the court would be available for them. The court would be acceptable, so far as workers are concerned, because there would be on it two members representing workers, and, so far as the ratepayers, the manager or the Minister were concerned, there is also a quite secure safeguard in the sense that there would be two representatives of employers. I have never in my association with the activities of public bodies or anywhere else known employers to be charged with recklessness with regard to the striking of rates. I am quite sure that any Minister or any manager could quite safely leave the interests of the ratepayers to the employers' representatives, but, even granted that they are not so rigid in their outlook with regard to wages and the striking of a rate as the Minister might desire, as and when the court makes its award the Minister is still protected because he can still say it is unacceptable.

The advantage is that this body of employees or workers will have some independent and impartial body which, in public and with due regard for all the factors involved, will hear their case, consider the facts and render an impartial verdict. I am quite sure that if a court of that character ruled against the workers on a particular matter, the workers, in 99 cases out of 100, would be satisfied and would agree that, though they had a good case, they had not presented it in a good manner and would accept the decision for the time being.

I want to touch upon the peculiar position of manual workers and skilled workers. There is no difficulty whatever in bringing local employees under this machinery. Lately wages advisory tribunals have been sitting under the *aelig;gis of the Minister's Department, to consider applications for an increased bonus by employees of the National Health Insurance Society, over which the Department of Local Government exercises very wide powers of supervision. At that tribunal a representative of the Department of Local Government was sitting alongside the secretary and other members of the National Health Insurance Society, who argued the case for the Minister. If we had a labour court sitting to hear applications from the employees of Wexford Corporation or Limerick County Council, in which the Minister had an interest, why could he not be represented at that labour court seeing that he was represented at the other tribunal? From that point of view there is no reason whatever why this machinery should not be applied here. To argue that it cannot be applicable to this type of worker is not an argument at all. There is a wide section of employees to which sections of the Bill will not have any relation. The Bill contains numerous sections and workers know that some of them may be affected by them while others will not.

In regard to the registration of agreements, as far as the employees of local authorities are concerned, whether manual workers or clerical workers, if they do not get the conditions they seek they are now entitled to arbitration. They have not got that in this Bill. We have this position that a worker employed by a county council may be sweeping the roads to-day, and working alongside a mason tomorrow, but he is only entitled to get road workers' wages. Under the agreement these points of interpretation would not arise. There would not be that ill feeling amongst individual workers when in isolated employment because the power to settle the matter did not lie with the county engineer, but with someone sitting remotely in Dublin, upon whom no pressure could be brought to bear.

The point the Minister made in regard to the general reason why these employees should not be brought under the Bill has been dealt with. It would be much better, especially for those who it was suggested were interested, to try to hammer out an agreed method. It would be more straightforward than saying that it was outside the province of the Bill, notwithstanding the undertaking given on the Second Reading. It would be better to try to arrive at agreement than to have the Minister saying his hands were tied, or that another Minister would not give way. We would then know where we were. Previously we were told that this measure was not suitable for local authorities because they would not be represented. We answered that by pointing out that the Electricity Supply Board and Board na Móna would not be represented.

In regard to placing a burden on the rates it was said that responsibility was purely a matter for the representatives of the ratepayers. I wonder if the Minister realises the procedure that is now followed in regard to increasing the amount of the bonus. In cases that arose during the emergency in regard to increasing the bonus, the ratepayers' representatives had no say. What happened was that an Order or sanction came from the Minister to grant the increase. That automatically raised the rates. In the case of negotiations for increased wages they are carried out with the managers. There again the representatives of the ratepayers have no say until agreement is arrived at. The manager then comes along and says that he would require a certain amount of money for that purpose. Otherwise, it could not be given effect to. There is a moral responsibility on the representatives of the ratepayers to give effect to what the manager has previously agreed to. The representatives of the ratepayers are not parties to negotiation which involve certain increases on the rates. Again if the working hours are reduced that will also affect rates. If public authorities provide clothing for their employees that may put a penny or twopence on the rates. The ratepayers' representatives are told to take it or leave it.

In view of the necessity of trying to preserve friendly relations between the managerial staff and the workers the representatives of the ratepayers agree to provide the money as the agreement was a good one. It is only at the last moment that the local authorities which have to safeguard the money of the ratepayers come in and, as far as increased expenditure or an increase of rates is concerned, sanction of the Department of Local Government is required. The argument that the submission to a labour court of all cases brought up by local authorities would give rise to an imposition on the rates is not a valid argument. The decision is not a compulsory one and need not be binding. In effect the decision would be more binding from the moral point of view on such bodies as boards of health and the Electricity Supply Board. Remember when the Electricity Supply Board imposes a burden it imposes it on 200,000 odd consumers. The board of health, if it is to increase its rate of contribution, to cover additional wage charges will affect 600,000 people. Yet, we are going to exclude local authorities, many of whom will be speaking for more than a few thousand people. So far as the suitability of the court is concerned, the Minister has said that if a scheme of arbitration, which may be introduced into the Civil Service, is found suitable it may be extended to the employees of local authorities. I do not think I am transgressing when I say that the members of my union, together with the members of the unions representing the employees of local authorities and the union representing the higher grades of officers employed by these authorities, would prefer this court to the type of arbitration court which is likely to come out of the Government consideration of arbitration for the Civil Service.

One of the things which strikes me is that the Minister makes great play of the fact that the State and the local authorities under this present Bill would have no representation on the court. Is it to be suggested that we will accept an arbitration court which is composed possibly of representatives of local authorities? Is that going to be the type of representation rather than an impartial court of this description? If that is the type of arbitration court that is going to be offered to employees of local authorities, then I think we would prefer to continue as we are. The type of court proposed under this Bill is one which is eminently suitable and one which would be availed of by workers and employers, which would be fair both to the manager and to the local council and, at the same time, would not intrude in any way on the province of the Minister and could be worked with equity to all parties concerned. I would suggest to the Minister that, even at this late hour, he might give further consideration to this point in an endeavour to avoid the atmosphere of friction towards which we seem to tend at the moment and which may possibly mar the whole approach to the Bill on its Second Reading. Where it has been shown that there is a concrete case for the inclusion of particular types of workers, the Minister should take upon himself—as he has done in other questions arising under this Bill—the responsibility and the courage to say that such a case has been made, for instance, in the case of the agricultural labourers, and that he feels some consideration must be given to them.

Mr. Lemass

I just want to intervene to say that no decision has been made concerning the suitability of any particular type of arbitration or conciliation machinery relative to the circumstances of employees of local authorities. It may be that when decisions have been made in that matter it will be considered that for the manual workers employed by these authorities this particular type of court would be more suitable than any other court which may be set up. That is a decision which can conceivably be made. But the circumstances are these: an examination into the matter is now proceeding but has not yet reached the stage at which it is possible to arrive at a decision. That is why I am not at present prepared to agree to the inclusion of officers of local authorities under this Bill. If the examination of the position of these parties should lead to a decision that this court is as suitable as any that can be devised for manual workers of local authorities the position can easily be rectified by implementing further legislation.

Mr. Norton

Could not the Minister accept the amendment at this stage and put in the manual workers? Subsequently, if it is found desirable to take them out again, for the purpose of putting them in as an aggregate class into some other type of organisation, that can be done.

Mr. Lemass

I think that would be the wrong way to proceed.

Mr. Norton

I suggest that if they are put in the Minister will probably find it more advantageous to leave them in. I am afraid, when considering this Bill, the Minister had his eye on the industrial position and not on the position of the local authorities. Consequently, he has overlooked the anomalies which will arise if, for instance, the manual employees of local authorities are excluded. Take, for example, what is happening now in County Kildare. There the county council cannot get contractors to repair labourers' cottages and they have been obliged to carry out the work by direct labour. They have to employ on the repair of these cottages builders' labourers, plasterers, carpenters, painters, slaters. These are ordinary industrial workers. If a dispute arises in that area because of the rates paid to the building trade workers and if a strike is threatened, the ordinary industrial worker employed by the private employer will be asked to come out on strike with his colleagues and he will elect to do so. This tribunal can then intervene to settle the strike so far as the employees of the private contractor are concerned. If the strike is settled so far as they are concerned the strike will still continue in respect of the employees of the local authority because there is no power to intervene there and no power to fix rates of wages. Surely, every canon of common-sense would suggest that if the local authority is going to employ people who are in the same vocational classification they should all be clamped in together in the one industrial court where they can sort out their differences on a vocational basis rather than on the basis of their employment.

What the Minister is doing is classifying the workers on the basis of where they will go to get justice. Is it not simpler to say that it is the vocation which will determine where arbitration will be got? The Minister is making the employer the deciding factor as to where one will look for a remedy. If the Minister will look at the practical side of the matter, particularly in the case I put, he must see that it is better to send them to the tribunal on the basis of their vocations rather than on the basis of who employs them.

Let us take another example. In the County Kildare workers are employed to a considerable extent in sand pits. The county council employ workers in the sand pits. If there is a dispute with the sand pit workers it will affect not merely those employed by private employers but also those employed by the county council. Is not the simple remedy in that case to send all sand pit workers to the one tribunal and not to segregate them under two classifications, one of which will come to the industrial court and the other which will have no court and which cannot get a settlement with the same expedition?

Mr. Lemass

Is it not the normal practice for the county council to pay the recognised rate of wages to its workers?

Mr. Norton

Ten months afterwards, as Deputy Larkin illustrated to the House earlier in relation to the Curragh Camp workers. If the Minister had the same experience as I have had in negotiating with the authorities in the Custom House he would know that down there it takes anything up to ten years to get anything done unless you make yourself a perfect nuisance to that particular Department. Down there time dies; down there clocks cease to go, and down there calendars simply fade away in the interior of that building. You have no conception what it is like down there.

Now take the turf workers. We are setting up a new board described as Bord na Móna and we have given this board a couple of million pounds for the purpose of winning turf by machinery. These bogs will be developed in County Kildare and elsewhere, side by side with the bogs on which turf is being won by the county council employing its road men for that purpose. All the workers concerned will, I assume, be in the one organisation. Suppose a dispute arises as to conditions of employment there. In the one case this industrial court will intervene to try to settle, or avoid, the strike. In the other case, the county council employees will have no tribunal before which to go. The strike will only be settled in so far as it concerns Bord na Móna. Now, we put £2,000,000 of capital into Bord na Móna and we give the employees in that particular case the right to go in before this tribunal and have their disputes settled.

But, in respect of the same class of worker, the employee of a local authority, you say: "You cannot go near this industrial court. There is no State capital behind your employment. The State does not pay you a half-penny. You cannot go near that industrial court because of the fact that you are not an employee of Bord na Móna, a State capitalised concern. You are an employee of an institution in which the State has invested no money so far as your wages are concerned." Surely the Minister sees that there are anomalies of that kind.

I could give the Minister further examples. I can tell him, for instance, that you cannot get a private contractor to repair a pump in the County Kildare. The result is that the local authority have to get anyone who repairs pumps. These are ordinary industrial employees and, if they work for a private employer and have a dispute with him, this court can fix it. If they are employed by a local authority the following week and have a dispute with them, no court can fix it. Take the case Deputy Dockrell quoted to-day. I would commend Deputy Dockrell's speeches to the Minister. I do not think he is on visiting terms with Joseph Stalin or anybody like that. I think he is a very careful and prudent Deputy. I never knew a Deputy who displayed greater clarity than Deputy Dockrell has displayed on this Bill in pointing out the weaknesses of the Minister's arguments in regard to the exclusion of these workers. The Minister was rebuked by Deputy Dockrell and told that this Bill is 200 years behind the times from the point of view of that Deputy and from the standards of an employer and probably in the eyes of the Dublin Chamber of Commerce. He asked the Minister to get away from the reactionary standards of 200 years ago and to introduce a bigger and better Bill. The Minister was told that by Deputy Dockrell and not from any of the other benches in this House. I think that is the most stunning rebuke any Fianna Fáil Minister has got in this House for the last 14 years, when he was told that he was 200 years out of date in connection with industrial relations.

The Minister says: "You may bring them under this Bill or put them in another Bill and send them into another court." Take what will happen in the case quoted by Deputy Dockrell. You may have a dispute on a bog involving employees of the local authority on the one hand and employees of Bord na Móna on the other. The case of the latter may be referred to this court for adjudication. You get a settlement by this court so far as the employees of Bord na Móna are concerned. There is no court to hear the other case. Therefore you do not get a settlement in that case. Let us assume the Minister will meet that situation by giving the employees of a local authority a special kind of court to which they can go with their grievance. Then you have this situation. You have one group of turf workers going to the industrial court under this Bill for the purpose of making their case in respect of whatever grievance they have and they get a verdict from the court. You have another group of turf workers, working perhaps in the same area, going into an entirely different court and getting a verdict there. Surely common-sense demands that the matter ought to be decided on the basis of their classification as turf workers, so that you will get one class of decision in one class of court, instead of dividing these workers into two classifications, the local authority turf worker and the private turf worker or the semi-State turf worker, sending them into different courts and perhaps getting two different decisions, because the personnel of the courts will be different and one set of people may take a different view of the value of turf workers and the peculiarities of turf employment from another set of people.

I am positively amazed at the stubborn attitude which the Minister has adopted in connection with this section. When he introduced the Bill on Second Reading, I thought we would get from the Minister every accommodation to make the Bill work. The test he applied was "Put up any suggestion, if it works, and no starchiness will prevent me from accepting it. The fact that the Bill has been drafted in this way does not matter, give us a scheme which will work. Let us get a scheme which will run smoothly and efficiently, and I will take it." But, virtually, on the first operative section in the Bill he digs his heels into the ground and says, "I am not going to shift. The test of workability does not apply to any amendment of this kind."

Mr. Lemass

I made it clear on this matter of the scope of the Bill that the class of workers to whom it would apply did not come within the general undertaking. These are matters which have to be decided by me.

Mr. Norton

I did not hear the Minister say so. I understood the Minister wanted the collective wisdom of the Dáil pooled to see if a scheme would work. Every Deputy who has spoken appealed to the Minister to widen the scope of the Bill. A special appeal has been made to widen the scope of the Bill in respect of manual workers employed by a local authority similar to the type of workers whose cases will be adjudicated upon by this court. There is nothing easier than to say "If you are carpenters, you will go to the same court. If you are plasterers employed by a local authority or by a private employer or a semi-State employer, you will all go to the same court and take your grievance there," instead of classifying them on the basis of the class of employer.

If the Minister considers this Bill he will find that it will help the strong as against the weak. So far as carpenters, plumbers, slaterers, tilers, engineers and fitters are concerned, they do not care about this Bill. They would not worry about it even when it is enacted, they may not use the Bill. On the other hand, they may, from the point of view of a little trade union tidiness, say: "We made an agreement and we will register it." From the point of view of their ability to protect their own interests, there is no question that they are able to do it. They are well-organised and well-equipped with funds; they have resources and they are in a key position. There will be no question of anyone blacklegging on them during a strike. When there is a dispute, it is a case of no work being done and the dispute has to be settled. They are well able to look after themselves and may not use this Bill to any extent and do not care whether it is passed or not.

But, take the case of an underpaid employee of a local authority. He is in a different position. Should not the Minister try to help him? Instead, he is denying him the right to have his grievance adjudicated upon by a tribunal, while he is giving the right of adjudication by a tribunal to people who do not care if they never get it. They know well that a large portion of this Bill gives advantages to the employer at their expense. I could give the Minister instances where a vote was taken by some unions on this Bill and they opposed its passage. I listened yesterday and to-day to speeches opposing any State regulation or agreements made through the medium of the State. Many of these do not care whether the Bill is passed or not. An employee of a local authority should at least get some hope that somebody other than his paymaster will adjudicate upon his grievance, that consideration of it will be leavened by some human understanding of his needs and some detached understanding of his grievances. You will not give him that.

The Minister proposes to include agricultural workers within the scope of the Bill. I think that is a notable departure from the Minister's original position. If he is doing that, why exclude the manual worker of a local authority? In portion of County Kildare local authorities pay 42/- a week. The agricultural worker in these areas is getting 50/- and, in some cases 54/- or 55/-. Why, if you are including a person earning 54/- or 55/-, will you not include a person earning only 42/-?

How can you defend that? I do not see how the Minister can defend it. the Minister ought to bring the manual employees of the local authorities within the scope of this Bill.

Mr. Everett

I wish to support this amendment. Whatever case the Minister might have for not including the clerical worker, there is no case whatever for excluding the manual worker. In my constituency there are men engaged on direct labour schemes, erecting cottages for labourers, and there are workmen engaged in other building operations in various parts of my county. Surely, the tradesmen who are employed in that way, the painters and plasterers and carpenters, are all industrial workers? Apart from them, you have fitters and mechanics engaged in repairing rollers, granulating plants and machines and vehicles engaged on road surface work. Why are those men to be excluded?

Quite recently, in a certain area, men were engaged on a direct labour scheme. They were getting the trade union rate of wages. They simply crossed over the electoral area boundary—a matter of a few hundred yards —and the wages of the labourers and carters were reduced. There was a strike, which continued for a month. At a meeting of the county council it was intimated that a notice of motion would be required for the purpose of granting the increase in wages. It was passed practically unanimously and then we had to wait for the Minister's sanction. No sanction came from the Department, but we received a guarantee from the manager that he would urge the Minister to make the payment retrospective, and the men returned to work.

The Wicklow County Council are the largest employers of industrial and skilled workers in the county. Are you to have the county council in competition with a private employer, who will have to pay increased wages from a particular date? Will you allow the county council to employ skilled workers, such as building labourers, and, paying less wages, to be in competition with ordinary contractors? If that state of affairs is allowed to exist, you will find that sections of the workers will not go into the labour corps. The argument will be advanced that the largest employers in the county are paying 2d an hour less than the ordinary contractors. The way to achieve success is to get the largest employer in a particular area to set the standard by going into this court and in my county the county council is the largest employer.

I appeal to the Minister to meet the wishes of Deputies in this respect, notwithstanding whatever points were made about the status of workers of local authorities. I have never known a skilled worker or labourer to be termed an officer or even an official under the Local Government Act. They have always been termed employees in order to deprive them of pensions. I think the Minister should give them whatever advantages are given to other workers under this legislation.

Mr. McGilligan

I suggest that the point made by Deputy Dockrell is one which should be looked into. If it is a good point, it is probable that the matter has been overlooked. As this clause is drafted, it means that a person who is a carpenter, and who becomes for a time employed by a local authority, might thereafter find himself excluded from the Bill. I am sure that is not meant. It does seem that this ought to be narrowed to its relation to the excluded occupations.

The Minister made a case that the House has laughed at. Nobody has taken it seriously. His case is that this is a matter for local government legislation. If it were intended to meet that difficulty, the easiest possible thing to do is to put in a new repeal in the First Schedule and the matter could be raised in that way, in contradistinction to the point urged by Deputy Larkin, which may be the governing situation in regard to the advisory functions of the board. In so far as this court could be made operate in relation to a local authority, once it was introduced to that sphere of occupation its decision would bind the Minister for Local Government and could be enforced against him, just as it could be enforced against any employer.

This can work only with the goodwill and the enthusiasm of the people affected by it. The point of view that the Minister should honestly put forward is this. He is interested in industrial occupations in the country; he is interested in having means for resolving industrial disputes. He knows, on account of the way in which the cost of living has been allowed to rise, that there is a very important adjustment in wage conditions required, and the longer it is delayed, the more violent will be the reaction to the adjustment.

It has been announced as Government policy that the main occupation in the country is agriculture, and that will be the standard for the rate of remuneration right through the country. We were told that when we were dealing with local government legislation, and it has never been denied. The Minister never disagreed with the point of view expressed by his colleague, and that was that wages are to be pegged down to the agricultural workers' wage rate. The Minister knows that if he gave this up, if he did not insist on having the exclusion of people employed by local authorities and others, the floor on which the workers stand would rise a bit and there would be a better standard. He has brought about a certain situation by precluding the higher standards. He will not allow this court to have anything to do with certain groups of workers or the employees of local authorities, because that might raise the bidding; it would raise the standard for everybody else.

The Minister must often find himself a lonely person, not merely here, but in the country, with regard to one view, which he repeated several times, and that is that the £1 is still worth 20/-. That is an old view of the Minister. He asked whether or not the road workers' wages had been increased. They have, in terms of money, say to £2, but it is well recognised through the country, if we expect the Minister, that £2, is worth 20/-, and that has to be compared with the old 35/-.

I suppose the Minister has heard of "Wood's ha'pence" of long ago. Swift talked about these. They were classified as "ha'pence". He started in to write satirically about the buying power and he said with regard to them that you might as well give a beggar four pins out of your coat lapel as give him four of the ha'pence put into circulation under the auspices of Mr. Wood. The de Valera pound or the Lemass shilling is just about on a par with Wood's ha'pence. One can still be called a pound and the other can still be called a shilling but, in terms of what they buy, they certainly have been reduced in value as much as the reduction between the h'penny that was current at the time Wood's ha'pence were introduced and the ha'penny that it was attempted to introduce. The Minister makes his foundation upon two things—first, I still think that we can measure wages in terms of pounds, shillings and pence and, second, there is no difference between the old shilling and the present shilling and the old pound and the present pound. Whether that be so or not, the Minister here says to the House, "I am going to let no outside body adjudicate on what is the proper wage to give to the employees of local authorities or to agricultural labourers because, if I do, then I have nothing to tie everybody else down to." The Minister wants a secure floor under his feet and, unfortunately, wants a floor that is put on a low level Then he is going to try to adjudicate wage standards in relation to that.

General Mulcahy

Deputy Everett speaks of the law by which the Minister for Local Government controls the rates of wages paid to the employees of local authorities. We have had more than the law operating for a very considerable time past. We have had a situation operating whereby county councils month after month, and carried on from one year to another, have protested unanimously against the wages that they were kept down to in respect of road workers.

Time after time, from the various local authorities, not only have resolutions gone in unanimously from the representatives of the ratepayers there but strong demands have been made to the Minister for Local Government to receive a deputation of the representatives of the ratepayers who would be willing to come to Dublin and to talk with him about the conditions under which road workers were compelled, because of the present circumstances, to maintain and rear their families. We have had a situation in which the Minister for Local Government, sitting in his office, not only said "No" to any representations that the pay road workers were forced to take was inadequate to meet their family commitments, but said "No" to any suggestion on the part of the local authorities that they would come up and talk over the facts with him.

If this paragraph is allowed to stand in this section of the Bill, the Minister is apparently prepared to face a situation in which, with the continuing emergency and continuing distress arising out of the cost of living, we are going to have the Minister for Local Government sitting in his office and saying "No" in the same way to the serious representations of local representatives, who are in touch with local conditions, appealing to him to realise that it is impossible under present circumstances for the road workers and other employees of local authorities to maintain their families in any kind of reasonable decency at the present cost of living. I ask the Minister whether he views that situation with equanimity and how long he expects it to last and whether he has in his mind as mitigation of the situation for the employees of local authorities at the present time some change of tactics on the part of the Government or on the part of the Minister for Local Government in relation to local authorities standing over their responsibility as administrators of their local areas and having a Christian sense of duty to their employees and watching the situation in which their employees have to live and rear their families. I would ask him that.

Mr. Lemass

I do not think I have anything more to say on the section. It has been debated very fully.

An Ceann Comhairle

In order to save 7, I am putting the question that the words "a person" stand.

Question—"That the words proposed to be deleted stand"—put.

The Committee divided: Tá, 58; Níl, 40.

Tá

• Aiken, Frank.
• Allen, Denis.
• Bartley, Gerald.
• Beegan, Patrick.
• Blaney, Neal.
• Boland, Gerald.
• Bourke, Dan.
• Brady, Seán.
• Breathnach, Cormac.
• Brennan, Martin.
• Brennan, Thomas.
• Breslin, Cormac.
• Briscoe, Robert.
• Buckley, Seán.
• Burke, Patrick (Co. Dublin).
• Butler, Bernard.
• Carter, Thomas.
• Childers, Erskine H.
• Colbert, Michael.
• Colley, Harry.
• Corry, Martin J.
• Crowley, Honor Mary.
• Derrig, Thomas.
• De Valera, Eamon.
• De Valera, Vivion.
• Flynn, Stephen.
• Fogarty, Andrew.
• Fogarty, Patrick J.
• Gorry, Patrick J.
• Harris, Thomas.
• Humphreys, Francis.
• Killilea, Mark.
• Kissane, Eamon.
• Lemass, Seán F.
• Little, Patrick J.
• Loughman, Frank.
• Lynch, James B.
• McCarthy, Seán.
• McEllistrim, Thomas.
• MacEntee, Seán.
• McGrath, Patrick.
• Moran, Michael.
• Moylan, Seán.
• O Briain, Donnchadh.
• O'Connor, John S.
• O'Grady, Seán.
• O'Loghlen, Peter J.
• O'Rourke, Daniel.
• O'Sullivan, Ted.
• Rice, Bridget M.
• Ryan, James.
• Ryan, Mary B.
• Sheridan, Michael.
• Smith, Patrick.
• Traynor, Oscar.
• Ua Donnchadha, Dómhnall.
• Walsh, Laurence.
• Walsh, Richard.

Níl

• Beirne, John.
• Blowick, Joseph.
• Browne, Patrick.
• Byrne, Alfred.
• Cafferky, Dominick.
• Coburn, James.
• Cogan, Patrick.
• Coogan, Eamonn.
• Corish, Brendan.
• Cosgrave, Liam.
• Costello, John A.
• Davin, William.
• Dillon, James M.
• Dockrell, Henry M.
• Doyle, Peadar S.
• Everett, James.
• Giles, Patrick.
• Halliden, Patrick J.
• Hughes, James.
• Keyes, Michael.
• Larkin, James (Junior).
• McAuliffe, Patrick.
• McFadden, Michael Og.
• McGilligan, Patrick.
• McMenamin, Daniel.
• Morrissey, Daniel.
• Mulcahy, Richard.
• Murphy, Timothy J.
• Norton, William.
• O'Donnell, William F.
• O'Driscoll, Patrick F.
• O'Higgins, Thomas F.
• O'Leary, John.
• O'Reilly, Thomas.
• O'Sullivan, Martin.
• Pattison, James P.
• Reynolds, Mary.
• Rogers, Patrick J.
• Sheldon, William A. W.
• Spring, Daniel.

Tellers:—Tá: Deputies Kissane and Ó Briain; Níl: Deputies Everett and Spring.

Question declared carried.

Amendment declared lost.

Progress reported; Committee to sit again to-morrow.