I move:
That Dáil Éireann is of opinion that manual employees of the Departments of Lands, Agriculture and Fisheries and Defence and the Office of Public Works should have access through their trade unions to the Labour Court in matters affecting wages and working conditions.
This reason for putting down this motion, worded in this way, should be clear to all who know the way in which the State deals with its lower-paid employees. I do not know how or where the idea grew up, but it is quite true to say that manual employees have been treated by the State, particularly since 1946, as if they belonged to some type of inferior race. Until 1946 these manual employees were covered by the provisions in the Industrial Courts Act, 1919. Subsection (10) of section 5 of that Act applied to civilian employees of the Crown Government and section 11 made the Act applicable to the Agriculture Department.
In 1946, the Fianna Fáil Government repealed that Act and left these employees at the mercy of a group of civil servants. There is no other description for it because the situation now is that, when the trade unions representing these employees in the Land Commission, in the Forestry Division of the Department of Lands, in the Office of Public Works, the Department of Defence and the Department of Agriculture, service a demand on behalf of these workers they get a merely formal acknowledgment. They may or may not be invited in at a later date to discuss the matter. After that the civil servants decide unilaterally what is to be done. There is no appeal, no further discussion, and that is it.
It reminds one of the old tag because it is a case of going to law with the Devil and holding the court in Hell. We go to the Department of Lands, or whatever Department it is, and we are there met by these very civil civil servants who discuss the matter with us, assure us they see both sides, but never give a decision there and then; they will consider the matter. Occasionally the Department of Lands may be persuaded to come along with an offer as far as wages are concerned; they make an offer and we are then in a position, perhaps, to accept or reject it. As far as other Departments are concerned the usual practice is that they listen to what we have to say and, after that, it is they who will have the matter considered.
I believe there is some type of inter-departmental committee which meets occasionally to compare notes to see how far they can go or how little they can give; these people make a decision which is supposed to apply all round. For the life of me, I cannot understand why it is that these employees should be in the position in which their unions or they themselves have to accept this sort of thing while everybody else has his own particular brand of arbitration or appeal board at which wages, conditions and so forth can be discussed, and improvements made.
Let me give one or two examples of what has happened. On 11th February, 1964, the trade union that I represent interviewed the Department of Lands and put before the Department a case following on a demand for certain things, which included a sick pay scheme, something that is now almost universal, and also proposals for a pension scheme. The matters were discussed for about two hours. The officials said they would take the matters to the committee and would refer back to us at a later stage. It may be hard to believe this but every letter we have written to the Department since then has received the reply: "The matter is under active consideration". Slightly over three years after the discussion took place "The matter is still under active consideration". I wonder if the Minister knows of any other employment in which that kind of thing can be got away with and does the Minister think this sort of thing should be allowed?
Up to recently the manual employees of the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries were working a 50-hour week. Notice was served on the Department that the men wanted a reduction in working hours. Following a breakdown in discussions, which got us nowhere, strike notice was served. A strike took place. It lasted for six weeks. During that strike one of the officials of the Department warned officials of our union that we were breaking the law. The Department did not go so far as to try to invoke any powers and, after six weeks, our men had to go back to work, without any change.
Deputy Paddy Smith was then Minister for Agriculture. Not one inch would he budge. A remarkable thing happened: a week after the men had gone back to work the card steward was sacked—just to show there was no ill-feeling, I suppose. I will say this for Deputy Paddy Smith: when I took the matter up with him the man was reinstated very quickly. But all this gives one a pretty good idea of how things can work out. We have since got a reduction of sorts in working hours for employees in the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries, but we have not got anything like what has been granted in industry generally.
As far as these employees in the Land Commission and the Forestry Division are concerned, when local authority employees had their working week reduced to 45 hours the Department of Lands agreed their people would also be reduced to a 45 hour week. So did the Board of Works. The only way we could get some local authorities to agree to operate a five day week all the year round was by agreeing that the people concerned would work a slightly longer than 45 hour week in the summer, for nine months, so that in the other three months of the winter, when they could not work a 45 hour week, they could be allowed off with less than 45 hours; in other words, an average 45 hour week.
The Department of Lands and the Board of Works refused to operate this, giving the excuse that they could not break the law. They said the people concerned would have to work a few minutes over nine hours in the day and that they could not agree that they should work more than nine hours. We pointed out that certain local authorities were giving a 45 hour week in the summer and whatever number of hours could be worked—40, 41 or 42—in the winter. We asked that this be applied, but the Departments concerned could not see their way to do it. This just shows the thinking, because the same people who were insisting on those unfortunate men working out in the forests and rivers, working in muck and dirt for a very low wage, that they should work the necessary number of hours on a Saturday to make up their 45 hours in the middle of winter, were people who themselves finished work at 5 o'clock on a Friday evening. It looks a little odd that this should be allowed in State employment. It is typical of what I have just mentioned: the attempt by certain people to class manual workers as some type of inferior being. According to those people, they are only labourers; it does not matter, they are not entitled to anything better.
Most public employments now, even local authorities, who cannot be held up as any great example of how things should be done, have at present pension schemes and sick pay schemes. We attempted to get the Departments to apply this to their manual workers. Nothing doing. They said they would have the thing considered. This consideration has been proceeding for over three years. When the Forestry Division introduced a bonus system some years ago, they tied up with that scheme, which was being introduced gradually, that when it was in operation in all the forests in the country, they would then introduce some type of arbitration within the service for the purpose of discussing wages only. We objected to this because we felt, and still feel, that you cannot discuss wages without also discussing hours of work. There is no point in saying you are giving a man £15 a week if for that £15 he has to work 80 hours. We felt it was reasonable to suggest that the terms of reference of this proposed committee or board should be wide enough to cover that aspect of it. The forestry people were adamant. They would not move. But we need not have bothered our heads. It has not been found possible to get them to establish this committee, although the full scheme has been in operation all over the country for years.
Occasionally we serve demands on people. A typical example is the demand we served on the Land Commission about nine months ago. It was acknowledged. After waiting a reasonable time, we asked for a decision on it. It was acknowledged again. We have been doing this regularly and getting an acknowledgment for the past five or six months. About six weeks ago my executive told me to write to the Forestry Division and to the Land Commission and ask for an interview with the senior officials. As I said, on every possible occasion Ministers hold forth on the necessity for good labour relations. They say the one way to prevent disputes is to talk the matter over. All disputes, whether they are workers' disputes or farmers' disputes, must eventually be settled round the table. On this occasion we asked these two sections of a Government Department to meet us. We got an acknowledgment. Despite telephone calls and letters since, we have not been able to get discussions going with the officials of those Departments.
Could anything be more ridiculous than that situation? Do you know the reason why? Because the officials of those Departments know that, if 4,000 or 5,000 men working in the forests all over the country stop work, the forests will still be there as they have been for thousands of years. That is the thinking of those people. They know quite well that if a strike takes place it will be a long time before any pressure can be brought to bear. If those men picketed Merrion Square or Merrion Street, I am sure the law would be invoked, they would be told they could not picket Government offices and that they were breaking the law. If there was room for them, perhaps they would finish up—maybe all of us would—in Mountjoy. It may be funny; in some ways it is. It is funny to find a Department of State under a Government who have been constantly preaching the necessity for good labour relations, blatantly ignoring even fundementals of this kind, blatantly ignoring the right of these workers to be treated in the ordinary way as if they were workers in any other type of employment.
I come now to the workers employed by the Department of Defence. They are usually the people who do the dirty jobs around a barracks. Those employees engaged on maintenance work are classified as building trade operatives and, as such, the building trade agreement applies to them. Can the Minister think of anything more ridiculous than 12 men working in a barracks—carpenters, painters and so on engaged in the repair of buildings— all doing practically the same work? Yet two of them, who clock in at the same time in the morning, have a five day week and who clock out at the same time in the evening, who do practically the same work as the other people, who lend them a hand when they require it, are not classified as building trade operatives, are paid a lesser rate by about £3 a week and are asked to work for two and a half hours a week longer.
Surely this is absolutely nonsensical? It is something that should eventually be the subject of a comic opera. It is so funny to see somebody trying to classify two groups of people doing the same work, working with each other, trying to get that little bit of difference to prove that one or two of them are not what the others are. There is one way to do it and solve the whole problem and that is to give the right to those people to go before the Labour Court.
Some years ago another Government were in power and decided that the repeal in 1946 that had put this type of worker and employees of local authorities outside the scope of the Labour Court was not good enough and they altered it but only in part, because they did allow local authority employees to have the benefit of the Labour Court. The Minister may not be aware of it, but for the information of the House this had the effect almost immediately of jumping up wages and improving conditions of employees out of all recognition. Until this happened a local authority sat back and said: "We will give you this—take it or leave it." There was no way of testing whether they were right. They felt quite happy when their decision was final but when they found it was possible to have another look at it and have people not involved passing judgment on it and possible to have brought out before the public the unfair conditions in which these people were working, it became very much easier to talk to local authorities and to get county managers to see the light and see that improvements had to be granted, with the resultant advance we have seen.
The whole question of employees of the State—I am not talking about salaried staff because, in my opinion, they are well able to look after themselves and have this right which we are seeking for the others—can be solved only in one way so as to give justice to these people and that is to do what this motion seeks. It does not call on the Government to take any major decision: it wants the Government to put the clock back and allow these workers in 1967 what the British Government allowed them in 1919. It was in 1946 that the right to have their disputes heard by an outside body, a court which would give a recommendation, was taken away. We are now asking that it be given back.
In talking of these workers, I may be talking about conditions of which the Minister may not know much, but I am sure that as a Deputy in his own constituency representations have been made to him particularly by forestry workers—I am sure there are forests in Clare—about conditions of employment and wages. While at present we feel we have got a certain distance on the question of wages and bonus, there is absolutely no reason why conditions of employment should not be improved.
The Board of Works are in a peculiar position because while we have been working for, and had hoped to get, both sick pay and pension schemes for the people employed by the State, and while it is easy enough to deal with the Board so far as the Land Commission and the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries and certain others, those employed in parks and so on around the city are concerned—I am sure Deputy Larkin knows more about this than I do—those who are employed on arterial drainage are a different matter. I do not know whether the Minister has ever bothered to look at men working on arterial drainage. I think it is the dirtiest and most slavish job in the country. I understand one of the big objections to reducing the working hours in that type of work originally was that there was a considerable amount of overtime done in the summer and I was told on one occasion that they were not very anxious to pay pretty high wages because it was felt that it would reflect so much in overtime and would mean that, possibly, people would have sufficient wages without working overtime and, therefore, would not work it.
I have been visiting gangs working on arterial drainage who start at 8 o'clock in the morning in the summer and are still working for the State at 9 o'clock at night and the excuse always given is that they must take advantage of the fine weather. What does this do? A certain amount of money is allocated for a particular job at the beginning of the year and, as happened last year at one of the rivers in the west, a big number of men may be laid off over the winter period because the money runs out. What I could not understand in that case was that when very many of these people went to the labour exchanges and signed on they received as much as or in some cases more than, they had got for working the full week. These people would rather work but the State decided in its blindness that was how the matter should be dealt with.
The argument in favour of giving the right to appeal to an outside court to the State employees to whom I have referred is, in our opinion, unanswerable. I am very anxious to hear what the Minister has to say on this matter. Possibly he will stand up and shorten the discussion by saying that he now proposes to give full rights to these people straight away in which case we shall not need to continue the discussion. We feel that our argument is unanswerable and that the Minister and the Government must at the earliest possible time decide that these people are entitled to have their cases heard and so put an end to this business of fair claims being put to State Departments, getting a reply that the matter is under consideration and finally having it dealt with unilaterally by civil servants stating that the matter has been disposed of by the Minister. They always quote the Minister as having made the decision but in many cases the poor Minister does not even know the cases are being considered; he would not know anything about it, in any case. I ask the Minister in this case to make the necessary decision and have what is sought in the motion granted as soon as possible.
