Last night, I followed irrelevancies or what I considered to be near irrelevancies—the Chair graciously ruled them in order— and I propose to confine myself at this stage to what I consider to be strictly relevant. One section of this Bill, Section 7, has called forth considerable comment. The background for that comment was that there was a dispute in the offing concerning certain employees of the board and the suggestion was repudiated by the Minister that the Bill was now being hurried through in order to meet that dispute. It was pointed out to the Minister that it was a peculiar circumstance that the Bill comes in now, while this dispute is pending, and also peculiarly coincident with a motion regarding pensions yesterday. Be that as it may, the factual position is that it is a pity that this Bill was not introduced earlier because we would not then have the difficulties of the moment. I do not know why the Bill should have been delayed. I understand practically from the Minister's mouth that the bulk of it was drafted before he came into office, that there has been very little change; but a whole year has elapsed, and, if the timing of this Bill is unfortunate, it is due to the fact that there seems to have been unexplained delay.
It is suggested by some people that if this Bill is passed it will operate as a break on a proposed strike. I do not propose to go into the merits or demerits of this dispute or any proposed strike, but, on the wording of the section, it appears to me that it cannot affect any action taken prior to its passing. This point was made by Deputy Con Lehane yesterday and I think his case is quite arguable on the face of the section. Supposing this dispute, which, we understand, is in progress at the moment, should result in a strike, then this section as it stands cannot affect the position unless that strike takes place after the Bill becomes law because of the wording of the Section 7 referring to a break in the period of service:
"Any period of service of the employee in the employment of the board, prior to a break after the passing of this Act."
It seems to me that the plain and fair English meaning of the word "break" is "break", that is, the commencement of the break in employment. Therefore, unless the break takes place after the day the Act formally becomes law, which is a date usually considerably later than the date on which it is passed in this House, as it has to pass through the Seanad and be signed by the President, I fail to see how the Bill can have any effect, good, bad or indifferent, upon the present situation except that it holds out to the employees what appears to me to be a very equitable means of dealing with a dispute, namely, the setting up of a tribunal.
I have not the actual report and I quote from memory subject to what appears in the report, but I think Deputy Larkin said that he doubted if the time had come for the mass of the workers—I think that is the phrase he used—to submit themselves to the decision of three men, in other words, that time was not yet ripe for people to submit themselves to a tribunal. My only comment to that is that if the rule of law is to prevail, if social relations between individuals and groups is to be governed by order and law, then human experience seems to show that the only practical way of securing a balance between all parties is a tribunal. The alternative to that solution is simply might against might and if you pit might against might, whether in a physical brawl or riot or in war or whether it is moral force, the net result for all parties is chaos. I fail to see how you are to settle disputes except by such mechanism or by giving power to somebody else in a tribunal which is applicable where one person is directed to conduct and another is directed to carry out the orders of that person. If that is so, I can see nothing wrong in the proposals for arbitration here. It has worked out efficiently in other cases and has been sought for by many bodies. In practice it gives a reasonably sure prospect of smooth working. You have got to consider that in the case of the Electricity Supply Board you are dealing with what is virtually a State service and the employer is virtually the State, in other words, the people as a whole. The remedies usually available to individual employers such as the remedy of quitting which Deputy Larkin mentioned last night are not readily available, in fact they are not available at all, to the mass of the people who are faced with dictation in regard to an essential service. For that reason I think it is very reasonable to have the control that the Minister has here with regard to disputes. Deputy Larkin pointed out that private employers had the remedy of going out of business if they did not like it and that workers should have the right to strike. Supposing I grant that argument to Deputy Larkin, let me put the State in the position of a private employer. If a private employer is paid a pension while he is in business and his employees go out on strike and he goes out of business, liquidates, he loses that pension and why should the ordinary taxpayer and consumer be put in a different position with regard to this? Some sanctions are very often necessary in human affairs if only as a brake. I can find many arguments in support of this section as it stands. I think that this is a useful bit of legislation as a whole, particularly as it was acceptable to other groups and is, I understand, a case of merely extending machinery which is already available to other workers to the non-manual workers.
There is one further comment which I would like to make. In extending it to non-manual workers the Minister is now extending something to a grade of people in the State who have tended in modern times to be sufferers in times of economic difficulty, a group of people, the so-called white collar workers, who have not been as highly organised and who have not had the homogeneous numbers that manual workers have had and who, therefore, have not been able to make their claims felt in a varying economic situation to the extent other workers have been able to do. In fact, both in State service and out of it, many workers in this white collar grade are virtually at the mercy of their employers. They had very little redress in the case of a claim for a wage increase with the changing times, of arbitration in a dispute or of settling a dispute. They have had practically no redress compared with the highly organised workers in the manual and skilled craft grades. In all equity then, I think that the extension of this tribunal to them is an advance.
It at least ensures an opportunity of redress to these harassed members of the community. Many people in these non-manual grades were hit harder by the rise in the cost of living and other economic factors of the day than many other sections of the community and it is only fair that they should have the same opportunity of having their grievances heard and their disputes decided as other people in what is virtually the same employment. The only pity is, as I say, that it was not a little earlier.
An undertaking like the Electricity Supply Board, which is largely technical, requires a high degree of skill in its operation. Even its administrative and clerical staffs must border on the technical. They are doing an essential service to the State. The body is statutorily composed equally with any Government Department. There is a very strong case indeed to be made for treating these employees on the same basis as employees are treated in the State service as a whole. There is a very strong case, in other words, for clerical and non-manual workers, particularly clerical workers, to be treated on the same basis as civil servants.
