When I moved the adjournment of this debate on Wednesday last, I pointed out that we were opposed to this Bill because we believed the existing machinery was the most effective that we could find for the specific purpose for which it functions. It is important to note that the function of the Agricultural Wages Board is not to fix agricultural wages in the same sense as a trade board fixes wages in an industry, because a trade board fixes the rate of wages to be paid. The Agricultural Wages Board, on the other hand, fix the minimum rate of wages payable to an agricultural worker, with the proviso that anybody who pays an agricultural worker less than that minimum rate, commits a statutory offence. In fact, I believe it to be true that the vast majority of agricultural workers receive a rate substantially higher than the minimum rates fixed by the Agricultural Wages Board.
The alternative proposed, as I understand it, by the promoters of this Bill is that the functions of the Agricultural Wages Board should be transferred to the Labour Court. It is to be borne in mind that if this were done, wages agreements between employers and workers, when registered by the Labour Court, would become legally binding on all workers and employers of the same class, whether they were parties thereto or not. In any particular area certain farmers might well be able and willing to enter into a registerable agreement which would be binding on everybody in that area, but many others in that area could very well find themselves wholly unable to pay the rates prescribed in the registered order.
You could easily have, in the one area, very large farmers whose operations were substantially mechanised and whose workers would be paid on the basis that they were operating complicated and expensive machinery, whereas the small man who is employing perhaps one or two agricultural workers and is not financially circumstanced to instal the elaborate types of machinery his larger neighbour employs, would be simply excluded from the possibility of employing anybody at all. The holding on which he depended might, as a result, become wholly uneconomic and unworkable as being too big for the man to work by himself and his family, and yet not big enough to permit of a rate of wages appropriate to the employment of the man who works elaborate machinery the capital cost of which he has not got.
No system which has been devised by human beings could ever be presumed to be perfect and I am quite prepared to examine any proposals to improve the existing system if somebody had constructive proposals to offer. However, I am bound to say that when I was Minister for Agriculture for two periods lasting for six years, I examined this question repeatedly with a view to improving the machinery, if that were possible, but could not devise any more effective machinery than at present exists for the purpose for which it is in existence —that is, the fixing of minimum wages. Everybody in this country wants, most especially the Party which I lead at the present time and of which I was a member when I was Minister for Agriculture, to see the standard of wages earned by agricultural workers brought up to the same level as that enjoyed by workers in industry.
I do not conceal from the House, and I have never concealed from the country, my deep sense of dissatisfaction that agricultural workers should be working six and seven days a week for wages which, in many cases, are little more than half that paid for a five-day week in industry. However, the plain fact remains that that is not the only comparison which gives rise to dismay on the part of all those who are concerned with the agricultural industry in this country.
A more glaring comparison exists between the rates of wages prescribed as minimum wages in Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the corresponding rates prescribed in this country. I think there are minimum rates prescribed in England at the present time in excess of £8 per week for a shorter working week than that prescribed for workers in Irish agriculture. The only way I know of, in which we can attain the ideal of equating the rates of agricultural wages paid here with those paid in Great Britain and Northern Ireland, is to get for the agricultural industry the same prices for our agricultural produce as the farmers in England and Northern Ireland can get for theirs.
Until we get these prices, we cannot get out of agriculture, either for the farmers who own the land or for the men who work beside them for wages, the same standards as are enjoyed in Great Britain and Northern Ireland. It is for that reason this Party has consistently declared itself as being in favour of entering the European Economic Community, because one of the fundamental purposes of the Treaty of Rome is to secure for farmers and farm workers a standard of living comparable with that enjoyed by those engaged in industry. I believe that if Great Britain, Denmark, Norway and Ireland, adhere to the Treaty of Rome and become part of the European Economic Community, then we can look forward with reasonable confidence to the agricultural workers of this country, and the farmers who employ them, enjoying a standard of living equal to the farmers of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, France, and Germany as well.
I hope we may live to see the day when farmers and farm workers in all parts of the world will have their labour recognised for its true worth and that those producing indispensable food will become entitled to a reward at least equal to those producing lipsticks and motor cars; but the plain fact is that so long as people are prepared to pay more for lipsticks and motor cars than they are for bread and butter, those who produce lipsticks and motor cars are likely to have a higher standard of living than those who produce the essentials of life. That is not peculiar to those sections of the community which are engaged in production.
It may seem incongruous that Elvis the Pelvis enjoys an income ten times as great as the Prime Minister of England and five times as great as the President of the United States. The fact is that the public are prepared to pay more for the gyrations of Elvis the Pelvis, whether on the radio, the television screen or the gramophone disc, than they are prepared to pay for the wisdom, experience and fortitude of President Kennedy, Prime Minister Macmillan, Prime Minister Diefenbaker, Prime Minister Menzies, Chancellor Adenauer or even General de Gaulle.
If people are to live in a free society, within certain minimum limitations, they are entitled to make their choice. Those of us who are prepared to surrender liberty, in the illusory pursuit of absolute equality, may contemplate legislation to eliminate the incongruities to which I referred. Those who take a longer view, and I think a wiser view, will recognise that the supreme good is that men should be allowed to live free. So long as we reserve that right, we have to accept what seems to us incongruities in the reward available to those who produce the necessities of life as compared with the rewards available to those who manufacture and purvey the luxuries that an affluent society demands.
Our aim on this side of the House is to work actively to procure for the farmers and for the farm workers of this country a standard of living no less than that enjoyed by the farmers and farm workers in any other country in Europe. The proposer of this Bill has spoken with nostalgia of the wage levels obtaining in Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
