I was going to say that I was disappointed on hearing the Minister's speech. Of course, I am not disappointed: it is a masterpiece of evasion. The Minister does not attempt to give us any direct reason for the Bill, or to explain the thinking behind the Bill. The reason for that is simple: there was no thinking behind the Bill. It was introduced in a certain way as something expedient to do at a certain time. The Government and their advisers knew it was a silly thing to do, and throughout the country the Bill is already known as "Colley's folly". How stupid can people be when they attempt to do things in this way? The Government tried this type of thing before and failed. They are careful to say that this Bill involves no imprisonment. Imprisonment was involved in the last penal Bill under which ESB workers were sent to jail. No one knows who paid the fines or who paid for the taxis to take the workers away from jail. If this had not been done the ESB would have had to close down completely.
One of the things which causes this trouble is the attempt by a man like Deputy Colley to deal with a matter about which he knows very little. I met Deputy Colley as a chairman of the joint labour committee and I felt at the time that he was an intelligent and fair-minded young man. If he had developed along those lines, he could be quite good in dealing with labour relations. I do not know what has happened since that time and whether coming to this House, being appointed a junior Minister and then to a major ministry has changed him and forced him into the position of coming in here with a Bill which, I am sure, if I understood him correctly in his early days, he could not possibly believe in. If the Minister stopped to consider the matter, he would realise that much of the trouble with labour relations in this country has been caused by people who lay down wage increases as being this round, that round or the other round. We have been talking about the 12th round and the 13th round. I do not know when this system of "rounds" started. How many rounds have there been of either a major or a minor character?
I am a trade union official of 23 years standing—of course, I could not be expected to know as much as some of the people who drafted a Bill like this! It is easy to put down a phrase, thinking it will cover everything. The position, as those of us who are in the business know, is that wage increases occurred in the industrial sector, or appeared to occur, each year at regular intervals, and almost every year. Post-war it appeared that there would be increases every year. The lower-paid workers, because they were not on the same level and because their trade unions were particularly active, had to get two or three wage-rounds in between the official rounds. We have now reached the stage where trade unions have got into the habit, having levelled off wages, of trying to have wage increases phased for one year, 18 months or two years. Last year it was suggested that an attempt might be made to cover a three-year period. But the Government came along and successfully ensured that workers will not be prepared any longer to bargain for a wage increase which will carry them forward further than they can see, and that is usually a period of six to 12 months. We are back at square one again when there was a question of trying to get a wage increase every year.
The big trouble about all this is that those who made a wage agreement early in 1969 which carried the workers over until the end of 1970 now find themselves in a position where someone named the increases which they hoped to negotiate from the end of this year or early next year as being the 13th round. Thirteen being an unlucky number, the Government decided to catch this round. Those who succeeded in negotiating an agreement earlier this year calling it the 12th round have got the benefit of an increase. But the trusting workers, those who trusted the trade unions and employers when they said it was all right for them to negotiate for a two-year period ending between October 1970 and the middle of 1971, must be told that the Government are going to have a say in what they will get and that they will not be able to negotiate freely. This is what has happened as a result of the idea that it is possible to take action of this kind and enforce it.
The phraseology of the Bill itself is changed in a number of ways. We have numerous references to increases granted before 16th October and increases granted after 16th October. What happens in the case of a wages discussion perhaps with a settlement in sight, which took place, not before or after 16th October, but on 16th October? This is an example of the loose wording of the Bill. If it is agreed that something which occurred on 16th October is not caught under the Bill, then we know where we are. It is said that increases granted before 16th October are not caught and increases granted after 16th October are to be dealt with in a certain way. What about that one which took place on 16th October? I am mentioning this because it shows in one way how the people who were preparing this Bill do not seem to understand very much about wage negotiations.
We have had numerous statements here by the Minister for Finance. In his effort to tell us something about what is before the House, he gave us a welter of detail which does not mean a damn thing. He seems to forget one thing: a number of Prices Bills were put through this House and that which went through in 1965 included a section which was put down by the Labour Party and accepted by the Government. It laid down that certain things were to be done in public and we got a guarantee that the regulations in that Bill would ensure that prices would not rise.
Since the last general election the person who has been responsible for ensuring that prices did not rise was Deputy Colley, as Minister for Industry and Commerce, and the person who now comes into the House and informs us about price rises and who introduces a Bill for the purpose, as he says, of dealing with that question, is the same Deputy Colley, with the difference that he is now Minister for Finance.
The reason why this is necessary, I suggest, is not, as the Government say, because trade unions and their members have been looking for and getting wage increases to which they were not entitled but because the Minister for Industry and Commerce, Deputy Colley, failed miserably to do the job for which he was appointed. He failed to keep prices at a reasonable level and he now has the audacity to come into the House and say that workers have been forcing up prices.
I am sure it has not escaped his notice that certain people, by increasing profits, have seemed to wax wealthy, particularly during the past couple of years. The reason for that is that no effort was made to keep down prices. To make matters worse, since 16th October last, when this legislation was announced, we had the extraordinary spectacle of the present Minister for Industry and Commerce giving a list of items in respect of which he has allowed price increases and consequently we have had a continuing process of price increases while, at the same time, we have had the people responsible for keeping prices down encouraging them to go up without the public hearings guaranteed under the 1965 Act.
The Bill before the House by implication makes certain charges and the Minister, in his brief, makes one charge which was challenged by Deputy O'Donovan immediately after the Minister uttered it. There was a lot of shouting across the House and the last we heard the Minister say was that the statement made by Deputy O'Donovan was a lie. Apparently the Chair did not hear that statement being made. I should like to put it on the records of the House that if the Minister for Finance asserts that there are wage demands being served and processed, under what he chose to call the 13th round, for £8 and £10 per week, the Minister for Finance is not telling the truth.
I want to make this very clear because the Minister for Finance called a member of my party a liar earlier in the proceedings. I challenge the Minister for Finance to produce evidence that any body of workers, through their unions, attempted to process or to make demands through normal channels for wage increases of £8 and £10 a week. If the Minister for Finance is as sure of his facts as he claims, he has a very simple way of proving it when he is replying. Because the integrity of Deputy O'Donovan has been challenged here I wish to emphasise that nobody can legitimately do that inside this House or outside. Deputy O'Donovan is able to stand on his own feet.
As I have said, there is one way in which the Minister can clear this up and I am challenging him to prove the allegation he made. In his speech he made reference to a number of things, kind of throwaways, as if they were something those of us in the House might not understand and which he, being the superman he is, could explain. One of the things he referred to was the discussion which took place at the employer-labour conference. I accuse the Minister and the Government of losing their cool, as they say, in this matter. In fact, the employer-labour conference met and when they did not reach agreement no effort of any kind was made at reconciliation. The Government immediately jumped in to make a statement.
The fact that they made that statement, in which they said they would stand on those grounds and that there was no question of negotiation on the terms which they were laying down, and the following day were prepared to backtrack to some extent and the following week were prepared to backtrack again, does not mean they were being more reasonable. It means they just did not know what they were doing. They had jumped at the suggestion that they should show the whip to the workers of this country, and then they suddenly felt that not only would the workers who supported Fine Gael and Labour not take it, but the workers, deluded as they might have been, who supported Fianna Fáil would not take it either.
In this respect, I challenge the Minister for Labour to come in and to deny that one of the results was that the Donegal workers in the area now about to have a by-election went to his door and said that they would not take it. If the Minister for Labour thought he was getting away with a wages standstill which would not alone prevent workers from an increase next year in the 13th round but which would take away from them something to which the Minister for Finance had been a party in the 12th round, he found out very quickly that it would not wash.
There was a fluttering in the dovecotes, and the result was that there had to be a second look at it. The Government then said: "We will allow the agreement which was made with the workers in the public service to go through". I do not think anybody in the country will prepare a golden crown for the Taoiseach or the Minister for Finance because they agreed to honour an agreement to which the Minister for Finance was a party. All the Minister did was to go back to the position he was in when he agreed to the increases being granted to public service employees.
I wish to repeat that if the Minister for Finance or any of his colleagues in the Government think they can get away with negotiating for months on a wage increase, agreeing to it and signing an agreement and then, when it suits them, declaring that the agreement will not operate, they have another think coming. That is one thing they had better appreciate.
The Minister for Finance should have known all this because he has had the experience of being chairman of a joint labour committee: he has had experience of the way in which trade union agreements operate. There are others in the Government whom I would forgive for not knowing, but I will not forgive any of them for breaking their word. I must give credit, however, to the Fianna Fáil backbenchers, some of them not dissidents, men who have always supported the Government from the back bench. I am glad Deputy Dowling is here. They were men enough to say: "We come from the working class and if you do this we will not support you in a vote in the Dáil."
If Deputy Dowling or other people want to say afterwards that I am not giving the facts they are entitled to do so. I will give credit to them because they realise, and anybody who ever had anything to do with trade union negotiations, or even working for a wage, realises that this is something which will not be taken from a Government or anybody else. I congratulate the Fianna Fáil backbenchers who assisted the trade union movement, the Labour Party or anybody else who helped to put pressure on the Government to make them change their minds. They also made it clear that the 6 per cent next year was not on. Therefore, the Taoiseach said he would meet the Irish Congress of Trade Unions and he then took this way out. He said: "Oh, we will allow you to negotiate." I am not quite with Deputy Belton's view when he said that they could negotiate up to 6 per cent but that they would not sanction anything over that, because the executive of Congress would not be such fools to take that even from the Taoiseach. I know that the Taoiseach said they hoped it would be kept pretty close to the 6 per cent.
Now, it is either free negotiation of wages or it is not. If the Taoiseach or the Minister or anybody else thinks that he can get a respected body like the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, and the trade unions associated with it, to negotiate on a wage agreement with the whip of the Government over their heads —"Be good boys or this will come down on you"—then he is making a mistake again. As I said before, I give credit to the Fianna Fáil backbenchers or anybody else who helped to have this 6 per cent restriction removed, but I would warn them that it is not the end of the road because there is the grave danger that at the back of their minds the Government have the idea that if the employers and the trade unions reach an agreement which they think is too high then they can step in and say, "You just cannot do that." Certain sections of the Bill hint at this in a vague way. If section 22 of the Bill is passed it would mean that in future legislation passing through here will assume a different pattern. We will not be arguing for days or for weeks over sections of the Bill. All we will need to do is to put down what is in section 22 (1) which reads as follows:
If in any respect any difficulty arises in bringing into operation or giving full effect to any provisions of this Act, the Minister for Finance may by order do anything which appears to be necessary or expedient for bringing that provision into operation and giving full effect thereto.
If this is passed as it is future legislation will consist of one-section Bills: if a difficulty arises in bringing into operation anything a Minister wants to do, then he may by order do anything that is necessary or expedient to bring what he wants into operation. Is the Minister for Finance serious in suggesting that this House, consisting of adults who have been elected to the House, are going to accept that? Has he the idea that after what happened here last week all members of the Fianna Fáil Party will accept anything? I do not think they will swallow that. I do not think anybody will agree that a Minister, whether he be the Minister for Finance or any other Minister, shall have the right not to carry out what is laid down in the Bill, that if at any time he gets an idea that something should be done he shall make an order and that shall be done. The Minister is not going to get away with that. If he thinks he is going to get away with it I suggest he should look back on his own experience of dealing with trade unions and find out whether or not they consist of the sort of people who will accept that sort of thing.
The Minister had a lot of pious stuff in his speech. It says very little about the Bill and it refers to all sorts of reports. If there was a prize for the production of reports this Government would get that prize. We have had more reports on all kinds of things, on everything under the sun, with no action being taken on most of them. The Minister must realise that and that various types of reports which were introduced over the years were forgotten as quickly as they were produced and I am quite sure that he does not expect us to take his reference to them seriously. In his speech he stated:
The Bill makes it crystal clear that the Government has not deviated by one iota from that principle.
The principle referred to is one enunciated in the previous paragraph. I suggest that the Government have deviated by two large iotas and before they are finished with the Bill they will be deviating by quite a number of iotas. The Minister also said that the Government "want to see, and they are entitled to expect a voluntary wage agreement which is realistic and adequate to our situation". I hope he means that because I have a suspicion, and so has the trade union movement, that what the Government mean is: "You are going to be good boys, you are going to do what we want and, if you do not, you know what is going to happen". I suggest to the Minister that the less pressure he tries to put on at this stage the better for all concerned. The Minister also used a number of peculiar phrases. He said that:
Setting a limit to increases in rates of pay by reference to the rates in payment on 16th October, 1970, could be unjust in some cases where the rates in payment on that date were obviously inappropriate. In particular, some groups of employees, especially non-unionised groups, who usually get their increases towards the very end of a pay round when the pattern has been clearly established, could be very harshly treated.
I am glad the Minister has put his finger on this point, which perhaps many non-unionised people in the country will take, that if they are not members of trade unions they can expect to be harshly treated. The Minister went on:
Accordingly, provision is being made for exceptions from the overall limitation. The details of this provision might be more appropriately discussed at Committee Stage of the Bill;
He went on to say that at this stage he would confine himself to saying that the exceptions were being limited to cases where employees had got no increase in 1970 or where they had submitted claims which had not been disposed of before the 16th October, 1970. Reading the Bill it does not suggest that that was what was in the draftsman's mind.
Let me say that one of the peculiarities of the Bill is that where small increases were given, I will not say granted, in 1970, they are being used as an argument for no further increases in 1970 while others have had the advantage of larger increases. I know of a particular instance of a case in point. A group of people are employed by CIE as school bus drivers. They are very badly paid. When a wage demand was served on their behalf by the trade union, CIE said first that they were contractors and then that they could only deal with them individually. They then gave them £1 a week out of the goodness of their heart. They nearly said: "This is not because of a wage demand. We are giving you this anyway." Eventually when they had to go to the Labour Court, they adopted a line which I understand William Martin Murphy adopted in 1913 with the strikers in Dublin by saying: "Oh, we cannot deal with you as members of a trade union or as a group. We can only deal with you as individuals."
Does the Minister suggest that, because CIE gave an increase of £1 a week to these people who are very badly paid, that should satisfy them? Does he suggest that a percentage increase next year—6 per cent or whatever he has in mind—should be sufficient? Does he not know that there are many workers in the country who are in the same position? If he works that one out—and maybe he might before he replies—he might have some other ideas on this whole matter.
The Minister also said:
With regard to other terms and conditions of employment, the Bill makes it an offence for an employer to amend or vary the terms or conditions in operation or effect on 16th October, 1970. This means that improvements in such things as hours of work, allowances, and rates of remuneration in respect of overtime are barred by the Bill.
I am quite sure the Minister knows that, while the standard working week has dropped down in most cases to 40 hours, there are still people who are required by law to work 50 hours per week. Quite a number of them are working 48 hours. Quite a number are working 45 hours. Many State employees are working 42½ hours and negotiations have been going on for some time to have this reduced to 40 hours. Local authority employees are working 42½ hours. That is supposed to be coming down to 40 hours.
The Minister says that all these are now cemented, that they cannot be interfered with until the Minister decides that this Bill will cease to exist at the end of 1971 and then they can move again. Is it reasonable that, if the professional and nursing staffs in hospitals are given a 40-hour week, the non-nursing staff, who also do a considerable amount of nursing and who do hard work—they must be dedicated because they work for very bad wages —must work for 42½ hours, not because it is the right thing to do but because the Minister says so?
Is this the general idea or is there something else which we seem to be missing in the Bill? The Minister made it very clear that there can be no question of increases being given in bonuses for increasing productivity and yet he said:
These existing powers will be rigorously applied to ensure that only unavoidable increases in costs are passed on to consumers and that every effort is made to absorb them first, either by raising productivity or by accepting a lower level of profit....
Will the Minister tell me how he proposes to raise productivity without offering an incentive to the person from whom he expects the higher productivity? Maybe there is a way which I do not know anything about and, if there is, I will be glad to hear from the Minister what it is.
During the passing of the 1965 Bill the Labour Party were adamant that there was only one way to insist on the proper price being paid and that was by an order ensuring that the price range and price list would be exhibited in every retail shop. The then Minister, the present Minister, said: "Not at all. It cannot be done. We will not insist on it. We will not say it should be done", and eventually they voted it through this House.