I support this motion because I think it calls for a remedy in respect of very deserving classes of public servants. An effort of the Department of Posts and Telegraphs to remedy the outstanding grievances associated with the employment of sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses and auxiliary postmen is long overdue. So far as sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses are concerned, nobody in this country—except the Department of Posts and Telegraphs, which buries its head in the sand, because it is the victim of a vicious and inherited system —will attempt to justify the scales of payment. An examination of the remuneration of these grades will clearly indicate that the Post Office exploit them in a soulless manner while they have their hand on their heart pretending that they are most anxious to do whatever can be done. They never have the slightest intention of doing it.
Before this debate finishes I will get, by means of a Parliamentary question, particulars of the remuneration of these people. If the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs can justify employing people at such scandalously low rates of pay as those which he pays to sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses, then I must say he is completely devoid of all sense of conscience and of the concepts of social justice. These sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses are employed on what is known as scale payment offices. Their remuneration is paid on a unit system of work. That is to say, every transaction in the office is given a unit value. These units are aggregated by a process that is more noticeable for its division than for its addition or multiplication. The Post Office arrives at a scale of remuneration in that way, and then says that is the salary attached to the post. How the Post Office can give to this remuneration the majestic title of salary passes my comprehension. The fact is that what is granted to sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses on the scale payment method is a beggarly pittance for doing important State work.
The Minister will probably say that, every time there is a vacancy in these offices, the Department gets a number of applications, and that a lot of people are keen on getting the appointment. That is probably true. In a number of cases you have many applications for appointment to a particular post. Many of those people just see the rose at a distance. They get the employment, and when they get a closeup view of the rose they begin to realise that there are many thorns associated with it, and that it has not all the glamour that it appeared to have when seen at a distance. There was the case of a sub-postmistress at a place called Portroe who was prosecuted by the State for defalcation in her accounts. That unfortunate lady admitted that when she took the appointment in the first instance she thought she was in a secure position for life, only to realise that not only could she not live on the paltry wage she received but that in fact she had to engage in these manipulations which brought about her downfall. That person would be honest to-day, she would be a free citizen to-day—if she was not subject to the viciousness which goes hand in hand with the payment of salaries on the scale payment method to sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses. These unfortunate people are not only compelled to work at the low salary which the Post Office pays, but in addition they have to provide premises out of their remuneration. They have to provide an assistant if it is necessary. They have to provide light, they have to provide for the cleaning of the office, they have to provide pens, ink and blotting paper—in a word they have to provide a post office for the Post Office, and do the work on the miserable scales which are paid by the Post Office.
Is it any wonder that these exploited sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses, being the victims of the vicious system by which their remuneration is calculated by the Post Office, in turn find themselves in the position in which they themselves become exploiters. The Post Office at the top exploits the sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses by giving them a beggarly wage. The sub-postmaster finds, because he is very often unlearned or unversed in Post Office work, that he cannot do it himself. He may have some other outside interest which engages his attention or in any case he may have no special talent to engage in the kind of nimble financial transactions which are essentially associated with the post office business. In that situation he finds it necessary to employ an assistant so that when the assistant comes in to work for the exploited sub-postmaster or sub-postmistress this further exploitation takes place. The sub-postmaster says to the assistant: "Look here, I have got the best intentions in the world towards you; nothing would please me better than to see you well-paid whilst you are in my employment; the Post Office gives me £1 a week for running this office; I have to provide the premises, the light and for the cleaning of the office, the stationery, etc., you will quite clearly recognise that not only could I not pay you the whole £1 a week which I get from the Post Office, having regard to the other things which I provide in the office, but you will have to work for me for 10/- a week." If the person concerned is in economic stress she will probably take the employment, but that is the kind of employment that a person gets in a State post office. That person may be fed and accommodated by the sub-postmaster and may have to do odd jobs in his house or in some other premises which he may have. The fact, however, remains that, so long as sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses are exploited in that way by the Post Office they in turn will exploit the assistants whom they employ. Is it any wonder that there has been such a spate of prosecutions in the last two years, especially of unfortunate sub-office assistants who defaulted in their accounts? Quite startling cases came to notice recently, not in one or two instances but in quite a consideration number of instances in which unfortunate sub-office assistants misappropriated large sums of money. The most striking part of the whole business was the strictures of the judges on the Post Office system of employment which compelled these unfortunate people to work for the pittances they received. How can you expect to get honest citizens if you pay them 10/- or 15/- a week? How can you get honest, trustworthy service on such coolie standards? How can you expect to get the best people, the most honest and trustworthy people if that is the valuation that you put on their trust? How can you expect them to be people of exalted mind and heart with a nice sense of rectitude if that is the best that the Post Office can do? Is it any wonder that you have defalcations and embezzlements in these offices? You will continue to have defalcations and embezzlements, and you will have young girls sent to terms of imprisonment for defalcations in sub-post offices so long as you exploit them by the present method of remuneration—that is so far as these grades are concerned.
I suggest to the Minister that this method of employing sub-postmasters, with its corollary of exploiting the unfortunate sub-office assistants by the underpaid sub-postmasters, is a system that ought to be brought to an end at the earliest possible moment. A decent standard of remuneration ought to be provided for those who are doing this responsible work. They are engaged in the transaction of post office business for the community. The community have the right to expect that the citizens serving them in these sub-post offices are properly paid so that they can discharge their duties without the besetting fear that they will not know on Monday how they are going to meet their liabilities on Saturday.
I was somewhat amused by a statement which was made in the Seanad the other day by the Minister when apparently this matter was raised. I have not had an opportunity of reading the Official Report. The Minister was doing his best, as he gallantly does on occasions like this, to justify the low payments to sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses. He tried to excuse himself from the responsibility which he has for the exploitation of these sub-office assistants, and said that the Post Office does everything it possibly can to see that the sub-office assistant is not sweated. I do not know where the Minister got that notion. I can tell the Minister—he can confirm this if he makes inquiries—that the Post Office does absolutely no such thing. The Post Office machine works with the utmost complacency. It knows from its own records that sub-office assistants are being paid unscrupulously low wages—the Post Office knows the remuneration that is being paid to every sub-office assistant in the country, or at any rate it can get the information within 24 hours—and if it took the slightest human interest in those people or cared in the slightest for the scale of salaries paid to them, it would long ago have taken action in the matter. The Post Office has got the records and knows the low payments that are made to these sub-office assistants. Yet it has done absolutely nothing to call the attention of sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses to the low wages that are being paid. The Minister knows perfectly well that the sub-postmaster will say: "What do you expect me to do out of what you pay me?" If the Minister wants to realise how unconsciously humorous his statement the other day in the Seanad was, he ought to ask the Department to tell him how often, within the past five years, the Post Office has said anything to a sub-postmaster about the rate of wages paid to assistants. He ought to find out the rate of wages paid. The Post Office has all the records. He will see that the Post Office is an accessory before and after the fact of the exploitation of young post office assistants. I leave the position of sub-postmasters to whatever sense of social justice and whatever sense of abhorrence of human exploitation it is possible for the Minister to enshroud himself in when considering this motion.
I pass on to the section of the motion which expresses the opinion that all auxiliary postmen should be put on the established list, so as to ensure for them not only reasonable remuneration, but also decent pensions after long and strenuous service to the community. There is nothing unreasonable in that claim; in fact, it is an eminently reasonable claim. If one were to approach this problem of the employment of auxiliary postmen with even a modicum of honesty and decency, one would realise that the claim set out in the motion is one which ought to be implemented.
The Post Office employs about 2,500 auxiliary postmen for not more than 30 hours per week. There may be isolated cases where they are employed a little longer. The Post Office employs another 1,000 persons, described as allowance deliverers, for not more than 18 hours per week. Efforts have been made from time to time by unions representing the staff to get the Post Office to recognise that part-time employment is an evil which ought to be eradicated with the utmost expedition. Whilst I am aware that, under intense pressure, the Post Office has grudgingly and reluctantly avoided part-time duties and created full-time duties in certain cases, the fact remains that there is still a large number of part-time employees in the Post Office. They are paid a low rate of wages because of their part-time employment and their employment very often, because of the hours at which that employment is available, prevents those persons from securing any other employment to supplement the inadequate wages they receive.
It has been suggested to the Post Office time and again that the problem of part-time labour can ultimately be solved, or at least it can be brought within manageable dimensions inside a relatively short period. The Minister for Industry and Commerce has made speeches throughout the country indicating that the Government are wedded to a policy of full employment, that that is the new goal of the Government so far as its social and industrial programme is concerned. While you get the Minister for Industry and Commerce talking about the desirability of full employment, his colleague, the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, endeavours to justify not full employment, but permanent part-time employment for State servants. That is what is happening in the Post Office to-day.
The Post Office to-day is the greatest enemy of full-time employment that there is in the country. Not only does it employ the largest number of part-time employees in any single industry, but it seals its intelligence against any possibility that anybody will ever persuade it to depart from that vicious system. I know the Post Office service very well. I know what can be done with the service. If only somebody will apply his imagination and decent concepts of life to the reorganisation of it, there would not be the slightest difficulty, now the Government have accepted the policy of full employment, in the Post Office accepting an obligation to build up their services on the basis of full-time employment. It can be done. It may present certain difficulties at the outset, but these are not insuperable. Every one of the 2,500 who are under-employed in the Post Office could be employed for full-time if the Post Office would provide additional services for the public.
At a time when the Post Office is yielding a substantial surplus, and apparently hopes to yield a bigger one, there would be no difficulty in providing sufficient additional work in the form of improved public services which would be capable of providing full-time employment for all who are at present employed part-time. In addition to that, when vacancies occur in part-time posts the Post Office could amalgamate the vacant post with an existing part-time post and make a full-time post; they could make three full-time posts by the merging of four part-time posts. In a variety of ways full-time employment can be provided for auxiliary postmen. By the provision of additional public services, in towns and cities particularly, it should be possible to eliminate part-time employment completely.
If once the Post Office can be got to recognise that this problem can be dealt with on the basis of courage and vision, and if it can be got away from the mentality that it must always have part-time employees, that it must have them, especially, in 1946 because it had them in 1906, that would be a step in the right direction. I have never seen the Post Office attempting to face up to its moral responsibilities. It is easy to do nothing; there is nothing easier in the world than doing nothing. So far as part-time employment is concerned, the Post Office, while it has faced up, under pressure, to the abolition of part-time duties in Dublin and certain other cities, it has made no real effort to get down to the abolition of the post of part-time postman in various towns throughout the country by providing full-time employment for him, and in the rural areas I do not think the Department has yet been able to tune its mind down to the need of examining that problem.
I can prove to the satisfaction of the Post Office that within two months the Minister could abolish part-time posts at every head office in the country without the slightest difficulty in providing additional services for the public in all these towns. If this discussion does nothing else but fertilise the Minister's mind on the necessity for applying himself to the discharge of his responsibilities towards those whom he employs, it will have been well worth while.
Another portion of this motion suggests that auxiliary postmen should be granted pensions on retirement. That is a matter to which, I understand, the Minister promised to give some consideration, when this matter was discussed on the Estimates this year and last year. At all events, the Minister has written that promise into the official records and I assume he did so with such deliberation that he has not forgotten his promise. I do not know how long it takes him to consider matters of this kind, but we have been told this is under consideration for two years—and, even for the Post Office, that is a bit thick. It may well be that the Minister intends to seek financial sanction, but if he has not yet made a move in that direction he should apply himself to that task with some agility immediately, so that this problem may be ended, so that the State can look those who served it for upwards of 40 years in the face, without feeling it has treated them in a way which would shame any private employer.
Many of these men have served the State for 40 years—and many for more than 40. During that period, they have given service roughly equivalent to half or threequarters' full-time employment, working every day in the week for the Post Office to the extent of 30 or 32 hours per week. It may be that the 40 or 45 years started when the man was 20. Now that they are leaving the service, on coming towards the age of 70, they will not get, as a matter of right, as much as 1d. in pension. The most they may get is, if they go out in necessitous circumstances in which they would appear to be a liability on the home assistance authority, that the Post Office will graciously consider making them a miserable grant from what is known as the Minister's special fund. A few hundred pounds is put into the kitty each year and, bear this in mind, if an abnormal number of people apply in that year, the fund is not replenished but what is in it is spread out in still more meagre sums amongst those who retire. That is the best sense of humanity the Post Office is able to develop to reward those people.
If the retiring employee happens to have a son working in England or a daughter in domestic service, who think of dad in his old age and send him a few shillings now and again, the Post Office will calculate the amount sent and say: "He is getting so much and we do not think the circumstances are such that a grant should be made from the Minister's special fund." I put it to the Minister that amongst all his acquaintences, in his own constituency or elsewhere, he will scarcely find a single employer who would employ a person for 50 years and would send him out at 65 or 70 without as much as one penny in pension. That is what the Minister is doing and, strangest of all, nothwithstanding the high-sounding sentiments in the Constitution, he is purporting to do all this in the name of the Constitution and in the name of the community. I hope he will avail of this discussion to tell us by what process of social thought or by what sense of human reaction and understanding he can justify employing these people for 40 years and then sending them out, when unable to earn any further income, without one halfpenny in compensation. How can he justify subjecting them to this odious means test, in order to grant them a small lump sum of £20 or £30 from this special fund?
I do not know whether the Minister takes his responsibility towards his employees very seriously or deeply, or whether he has got a cavalier outlook on the whole matter and looks upon his position as Minister for Posts and Telegraphs in a very perfunctory way. While that outlook is a very pleasant one and may not worry him too much, I would say to him that there are serious social conditions involved in this whole motion. Right down behind it is an effort to put on him some moral responsibility for the conditions he is enforcing on his employees. The Minister has been found guilty, before the bar of free public opinion in this country, of exploiting sub-postmasters and postmistresses; every newspaper that is free to criticise the Minister has complained of his attitude regarding the remuneration of those officials; and I venture to say that, if we could get a Gallup Poll on the question, the Minister would be found guilty and sentenced to political extermination for life.
In regard to part-time employment in the Post Office, many newspapers, organisations of public opinion and local authorities have expressed the opinion that these employees are underpaid, that it is nothing short of a scandal to deny them a pension. All that censure has left the Minister cold and indifferent to the sufferings of these people, but I think he can no longer fail to recognise that he has a moral responsibility in this matter. Newspapers have endeavoured to bring home to him a sense of realisation of what he owes to those whom he employs. Staff organisations have endeavoured to do the same. This House, during discussions on his Estimates, has endeavoured to bring him up against the cold facts, but so far he has adopted a Pharaoh-like attitude to all these demands for decent treatment. He should shake himself out of the Micawber-like attitude into which, either consciously or unconsciously, he has dropped; he should realise that he, in the last resort, is the employer of those with whom this motion deals, that he has a moral responsibility before his own conscience, before the Constitution and before every decent thought, to ensure that these people are treated properly. He can best discharge that responsibility by saying that, if he will not accept the terms of the motion, he will at least accept the spirit of the motion, that he will go to the Government and say: "It is not fair that I should be put in the position of exploiting these people"—if his sentiments lack any direction other than exploitation. He should ask the Government to provide the necessary funds to pay these people decent salaries and give them decent pensions, so that there may not be permanent economic ghosts appearing before the Minister for his economic misdeeds. He has an opportunity now to accept the spirit behind this motion. I hope he will do so and be able to tell the House —now that the Government is making allocations of money for this, that and the other—that he is not always the person who arrives too late to get anything. He ought to accept the principle of this motion, take it to the Government and tell them the views which I feel sure will be expressed here during this debate; and, if he does that, I cannot imagine the Government being so completely devoid of its sense of responsibility to the country that it will turn a deaf ear to his reasonable demands.
