I should like to make a short helpful contribution to this debate.
Of all the subjects that have come up for discussion in this House not alone this year because the discussions have been very limited this year but since the establishment of our native Government this is, in my opinion, the most important and the most serious topic with the most far reaching effects. It is a very serious matter dealing with the whole trade union administration, the activities of trade unions, industrial relations, the necessity for greater co-operation between worker and management, in other words it is the drafting of suitable commandments which the worker and the employer will be expected to keep. I wonder is it possible for this or any Government to draft out a code of rules or regulations which could be and would be both workable and acceptable at the same time to employer and employee? No matter how limited rules and regulations may be, it is extremely difficult to keep all of them very rigidly. In so far as Christianity itself is concerned we have the Ten Commandments as the code under which we live. How extremely difficult it is for us all to endeavour to any degree to keep the Ten Commandments. How very difficult it would be for workers and for employers to keep rigidly to whatever code of rules or regulations may be laid down for the common good by legislation.
The Minister for Labour is one of the most recently appointed Ministers. His Ministry is a newly set-up Department. It is my honest opinion that it is the most useless Department of State that has to date been set up because we have seen such little evidence of any practical workings from that Department. It may be that the main activities of the Department of Labour are behind closed doors and that the general public do not realise the high pressure under which the Minister may be working. That does not appear to be evident to the general public because whether there is activity or inactivity in certain other Departments of State, be it in Agriculture, Justice or Education, there appears to be some degree of activity, but the opinion of the general public is that the Department of Labour is the most inactive Department. While the head of that Department is a Minister noted for his kindness, courtesy and his ability to meet people with the highest degree of friendship, there still appears to be a great lack of work in his Department.
It is difficult for this House to debate the problem before us in a cool and calm atmosphere because of the present situation. In recent years we have been jumping from crisis to crisis, from strike to strike, from lock-out to lock-out and from unreasonable demand to unreasonable demand. This is a state of affairs which cannot be allowed to continue indefinitely. It has caused great anxiety among workers and employers, to the Government and Opposition. This is something which is not a plaything of any political Party; it is a serious national problem.
I do not know why the Government have chosen this time for a debate of this character; it would have been more useful this time 12 months. Could it be possible that the Government, on the verge of a general election, are trying to convey to the public that they are taking some practical steps to deal with the whole question of industrial relations and towards solving the problem of our many trade unions? If there are political motives behind the introduction of these Bills at this time that would not be in the best interests of the workers, employers or of the country. It might serve temporarily the political Party so responsible but in the long run this is a motive which will be overtaken in no uncertain way.
The whole question is one for very serious thought and care in the calm atmosphere of Parliament. Do we ever ask ourselves, has the Minister ever asked himself, what is the necessity for a trade union at all? I cannot help thinking that we are now in a period in this country when we have reached full circle. We can remember the conditions under which the masses and the workers lived in the opening years of the twentieth century. No words of mine could describe these conditions. The workers of this country, skilled and unskilled, owe a great deal to their trade unions. Not alone that, but they also owe a great deal to the memory of James Larkin, senior, and men like him who endeavoured at no small sacrifice to lift the workers of this country from what could only be described as sheer slavery, to a level of independence, to a level at which they can now be treated as human beings.
It is correct to say that there were numerous employers in this country— they may have been a legacy from the British time—who were not enthusiastic about giving fair play or justice to their Irish employees. They had a tradition of looking on the worker as an inferior individual. There was always a great appearance of division, a great gap of snobbery so that the employer looked down upon the labourer whether he was skilled or unskilled. In the latter part of the nineteenth century and in the period from 1900 to 1920 the worker was looked upon as the servant and the employer was looked upon as the master. In that time the worker had to doff his cap, bend his knee or lose his job. He had an extreme feeling of insecurity. That did not end at the 1920 period because I can remember that this state of affairs still existed when I started in public life. I saw with my own eyes many injustices and a high degree of discourtesy meted out to the workers for no other reason than that they were workers and that anything was good enough for them.
It was only through the trade union movement that these people banded themselves together in the hope of obtaining some security so that they could bring up their families in Christian decency. I have seen employers in this country who singled out shop stewards, the spokesmen for the trade unions, to be the first to be dismissed whether it was on a building scheme or in some other concern employing labour. If these employers did not dismiss the shop steward they had him transferred into some other employment under conditions which compelled him to leave himself.
Then there were on the other side the injustices perpetrated by the worker against the employer, which in many instances were revolting: workers deliberately slowing down production, workers not doing a fair day's work for their employer. It is clear that there was injustice on both sides, but the greatest degree of injustice, to my knowledge, was inflicted by ruthless employers against defenceless workers. That is why I often thank God we have seen the day in which there is a strong trade union movement. However, there is a vast difference between a strong trade union movement and a responsible trade union movement. The great fear I have is that its strength and growth will be eroded by irresponsibility. When one is dealing with the livelihoods of the organised masses there is a grave responsibility to ensure that action taken on their behalf is the result of calm and careful consideration and the exercise of the highest degree of responsibility.
When I refer to employers who have displayed snobbishness towards workers, who have not treated their workers as they might, I refer to the days of what was commonly known on building sites as the "billy can", where there was no shelter for workers to have a meal; they were working at the whim of a foreman. If he liked the look of them he kept them on and if he did not he let them go, and there was nothing they could do about it. All these workers were human beings with families and responsibilities.
The injustices that were inflicted on working-class people helped considerably to build up the trade union movement in this country. The more unreasonable employers were the greater strength it gave the trade union movement, and that is as it should be. When I speak of employers I do not mean individual employers of 40, 50 or 60 workers; I speak mostly of the State as an employer, the local authorities, the semi-State bodies who are far from having clean hands in the matter of dealing fairly with their employees. They are not behindhand in treating their employees in a high-handed and very coarse manner. The State as an employer has the same responsibility to its workers as an individual employer.
In many instances the worker feels that because his employer is the State he can justly do the State. It has been said in the course of this debate that the trade unions are spending substantial sums of money on education, on lectures and bringing home to their members their responsibilities. These people do not need a lecture from me on that. Far from it, but any money the trade unions would spend in that direction would be money well spent. The workers have responsibilities to their employers but, above all, the employers have a responsibility to their workers. I do not know of any State organisation—certainly any State organisation operating in my constituency —that exercises justice towards its workers. In many cases where the local branch of the trade union would address inquiries to the management these inquiries would not be taken seriously. When reasonable demands were made for improvements in working conditions in either a State or a semi-State organisation these requests were not met. In these circumstances the workers were forced to go on strike. It was due to a lack of co-operation, to a display of snobbery. The management did not want to talk to workers. The worker had no right to offer an opinion or advice. A man in overalls and wellingtons should not have the impertinence to walk on to the office floor and tell the management what improvements there should be or should not be. The sooner employers, whether they are State or semi-State or individual employers, realise that the day when man was slave of man is long past. The animals in the jungle may turn treacherously on us, but there is no animal can be as tough on man as man himself.
I have seen that on building sites in Birmingham, Coventry and outside London, which I have visited, and which I shall visit again next month, to see emigrants from my constituency. When you visit a group of workers and have a confidential chat with them they will tell you the toughest foreman they ever worked for was the Irishman who was put over them. He would stand over them and make them do the work. Man has so little regard for his fellowman that he becomes over-influenced by the power that is vested in him when he is appointed as a manager, a foreman or a ganger, as the case may be.
As a result of man's treatment of man we have been given a lot of food for thought. The present Government or any incoming Government must realise that in 1969 we are dealing with a different element, one that has never before appeared. We are dealing with masses of workers who will not allow snobbery to stand between them and their rights. The worker is regarded as being as good as his master, and rightly so. If the master is not prepared to sit down and talk with his employees it causes industrial strife and chaos. Many strikes, past and present, could have been avoided if the snobbery were eliminated and nobody knows that better than the Minister for Labour. Naturally, the employer has a high opinion of his own importance and is only concerned with himself. He wants nobody else's views and feels that nobody else has any right to discuss his business with him and that he should have the final say in it.
Times are changing and employers whether State, local authority or individuals, if they want to get work done and cannot do it themselves and must employ somebody to do it, must talk to the heads commanding the hands of those who do the work. May the day never return when workers will be treated as slaves. I do not want to single out employers—far from it— the Leas-Cheann Comhairle would not permit me to do it in any case—but in recent years we have had the experience of the bank officials' strike and we saw that the bankers were made to listen and see reason and the employer today, whether a bank or local authority or the Government or a private company, that is not prepared to sit down and talk with the employees will be taught a serious lesson.
I have yet to see a strike that has done any good. Certainly, every strike I have seen in the past quarter of a century left a bad taste or bad mark. Whatever were the results, whether satisfactory to the worker, or a giveand-take between workers and employers, the wives and families of the workers had to suffer. Strike action should be the final resort and should be taken only when every other course has failed, including intervention by Ministers or by the Prime Minister, should it be necessary. At all costs, the strike weapon should be left on the shelf. There has been some degree of understanding reached between workers and certain employers in recent years. No matter what appeal the Minister or the Government may make in this regard this debate should serve as notice to every employer in the country to change his attitude and be prepared to sit down with the employees and a similar message should be taken from it by the organised workers as regards their responsibility to their employer.
The Minister for Labour may shrug his shoulders but he cannot shirk his responsibility in this regard because at present we find workers are suffering from a sense of grievance against the powers that be such as they have not experienced for a long time. They work hard and find that the cost of living is allowed to soar, that each increase is no sooner granted than it is cancelled out by some action of the Government. The Government have taken no serious action to control living costs. That is one of the main reasons why workers are so perturbed, so disillusioned and disappointed. Perhaps, it is one reason why organised trade unions are availing of every opportunity to use as a lever the Government's inactivity in regard to the cost of living.
The whole problem has very grave economic consequences. The management of every concern should be prepared to sit down with the workers and plan ahead. Might I ask the Minister what encouragement there is for workers to work harder, to respond to the plea of the employer to work overtime so as to step up exports, for example, when for every hour of overtime worked the cold hand of the inspector of taxes falls upon the pay packet? That is why some thousands of workers who could work overtime on certain occasions will not do it. They will not deprive themselves of an evening off for the amount that is left of their overtime pay when the Revenue Commissioners have taken what they must get out of it. That has aroused the anger of some thousands of organised workers and that anger has not helped.
I do not know if the Labour Court furnishes an annual report of its activities. The court has been the subject of great criticism from time to time. I believe the court has done that which the law enabled it to do and the officers of the court have done an excellent job of work under trying and difficult circumstances. The fact that decisions of the Labour Court can be ignored would suggest that the hearing of evidence and the promulgation of findings on the part of the court constitutes so much useless activity and I have often wondered why, when the court was being established, its decisions were not made binding.
There is nothing easier than to say that employer/employee problems can be and should be settled by agreement. There is nothing more difficult than finding agreement. It has been pointed out that no amount of legislation passed here will make a man work if he does not want to work. That is very true. That is why I believe the time has now come for the introduction of a greater degree of responsibility and sanity into labour relations. At the moment it almost looks as if labour relations have broken down completely. There is what appears to be the unreasonable attitude of small minorities within the trade union movement. That is not the kind of trade union activity that the late Jim Larkin and his father before him did so much to encourage. Both these men were hard bargainers but they always exercised a great measure of responsibility.
What we must endeavour to ensure in this legislation is that there will be no opportunity for worker to inflict hardship on fellow worker. It is difficult, of course, to blame the workers because they are disturbed and discontended element. The cause of that discontent is the dictatorial attitude of employers and the State itself cannot disclaim responsibility in this regard.
It will be interesting to observe the outcome of this legislation. Will it improve the relationship between worker and employer? It may or it may not. No amount of law will make a man work if he does not want to work and all the law on the Statute Book will not make an unreasonable employer reasonable. We have seen from time to time efforts made to kill the trade union movement. The best efforts employers could make have not succeeded in doing that but what I really fear is that efforts will be made to kill the trade union movement within the trade union movement itself. That would be an unknown and an indescribable loss to the working class people. That is something that should and must be avoided.
