I would conceive the function of the Department of Labour, which was created only four or five years ago, to have in the forefront of its administrative policy the means to deal with the problems of unemployment and industrial unrest. It is rather disappointing that the major portion of the Minister's speech has been devoted to the training of employees. It is all very well to train people and it is very necessary but the difficulty they face when they are trained is to get employment. The Minister mentioned that the unemployment figure was about the same as it was this time last year. That is totally untrue. Unemployment has risen at an almost alarming rate in the past six months or so. It is the twin brother of inflation. When you advance deep into inflation, as we have done here, unemployment rises and is bound to rise more and more. It is disappointing that the Minister who should be actively concerned with unemployment had very little to say on the subject except that the figure was nearly the same as the figure last year.
He also had very little to say about industrial unrest which must be causing everybody considerable apprehension, no matter to what sphere of society they belong. In the past 12 months we had two major strikes. Of course, we had a number of minor strikes as well. So far as I know, the Minister took no action whatever in relation to the two major strikes. One was the bank strike. I heard the Minister saying repeatedly that he had no function in that matter, that he had set up the Labour Court which was competent to deal with the situation. The same thing applied to the cement strike.
I mention both those strikes as they were major strikes. They were major issues in our economy. They disrupted our economy. They increased unemployment and they threw the country into financial chaos. The big combines were thrown into financial chaos by the bank strike and so was practically every individual. If the Department of Labour which costs £3,600,000 a year has any function, it ought to have been able to intervene in that strike and do something about the very undesirable state of affairs we all had to endure for six months, and which is now acknowledged by members of the Government to have done in calculable harm to the country. At the time it was brushed aside as something that had to resolve itself.
The Minister more or less suggested that the Labour Court is an autonomous body and fully in a position to deal with any industrial situation that arises. My reading of the situation is that nobody seems to take any notice whatever of the Labour Court. It provides a method for both sides to bring their dispute into the open and to convey to the public at large that they are willing to settle.
Whatever the findings of the Labour Court are, they are not acceptable to either side and it has no further function in the matter. Let us face the issue. We have strikes or industrial disputes, or whatever you like to call them, and they are taken to the Labour Court. Everybody hopes they will be settled. There is no settlement and the Labour Court has no power vested in it to settle a dispute. The Minister divests himself entirely of responsibility. As an elected representative he represents both the employees and employers. It is his job to see that industrial disputes are settled. If the Department of Labour has any function, whenever there is an industrial dispute the Minister should call the two parties together almost immediately. Since the Department was set up I know of no instance where that happened.
In a cross-Channel dispute recently —the postal strike was most damaging to the British economy and should never have taken place like the bank strike here—the Minister intervened straightaway. He did not settle the strike but he intervened time and again. Every week in the Dáil we were told there were adequate facilities for settling industrial disputes. We cannot afford any more industrial disputes on a major issue. If we learned nothing else from what happened over the past 12 months we learned that.
There are far too many unions in the country. When Deputy Hillery was Minister for Labour there was some dispute and I said they should try to reach an agreement. I forget what the dispute was about but three or four unions were involved. The Minister asked me how could you negotiate with 120 people. That may be an exaggeration but I know there are over 100 unions in the country. The Federal Republic of Germany, with a population of about 62 million, had about 200 unions at one time. They were facing the same difficulties as we are facing here but on a much larger scale. They were realistic and they amalgamated the unions into the different representative sections. At one time they had only seven major unions. I think they have about 20 unions now. If a population of about 62 millions can manage their industrial relations with just a few unions, surely with a population of under three million we should be able to do the same. I believe that is one of the functions of the Department of Labour.
I am glad people are being trained for industrial employment. No doubt we will require skilled workers in the future in the industrial expansion that may face us if we extend our economy into the European Economic Community. We must have an industrial policy and surely we should see what other countries are doing. We have had the Labour Court for 20 years, 20 years of industrial relations futility. That is the only way I can think of to describe it. I am not casting any aspersions on the officers of the Labour Court. People cannot function unless they have the authority to function. The Minister should take a long look at the situation. I am perfectly happy to support free collective bargaining in every way possible. That is the democratic view we must take in a free society. To have collective bargaining you must put people into a position where they can bargain.
I have been involved in trying to get peace in my own constituency in minor industrial disputes. I have always found that the representative of the union is willing to talk sense, to negotiate and to accept a basis for agreement or discussion, but he has to go into the next room and talk it over with his executive, or whatever it is. That is all right, but he comes back very soon with the answer that he cannot get agreement. It is easy to say to him: "Surely you are the boss. You are in control. You are representing them and their views and surely they should stand by what you decide in their best interests." The answer is that if he does that he may be removed from office. That is not an exaggeration in any sense of the word.
A trade union leader today, or a trade union official, is placed in a very difficult situation. Possibly at one time he was an ordinary member of the union and, by virtue of his ability and his organisational capacity, he has been elected by ballot as the representative of the other members. Unless he is in a secure job and has the full backing of the State to ensure that he remains in that job so long as he carries it out reasonably well, he is not in a position to negotiate authoritatively on behalf of the members of the union. Therefore, the time has come for the Minister for Labour to see if he can do anything to make the union official part of our organising society in any disputes that may occur in the future. There is nothing revolutionary about this; it is something that has happened in many other countries. I might add that the countries who first practised this were countries under socialist governments. They found that when industrial disputes took place they were being pushed about and they had to adopt the procedure I am advocating now. There is no use in talking about free collective bargaining if unions are not in a position to speak on behalf of their members. Any legislation or administration the Minister may have in mind would have the backing of the overwhelming number of people in the country because everybody is sick to death of industrial disputes.
Nobody objects to an official industrial dispute where negotiations have taken place and where a vote has been taken on a particular issue. What is happening is that in many cases there are two or three unions involved in a dispute. Two unions may agree to negotiate on behalf of their members but the third might disagree and decide to have nothing to do with the proposed settlement. In addition, there is an even more undesirable state of affairs where the unions take an official position but some extremists might decide that they want nothing to do with the negotiations and decide to go on strike. I might add that in many cases the extremists are unmarried men without dependants who have not the same responsibilities of the majority of their associates.
The employers have a responsibility also. It has happened time and again in this country where a group of a particular industry or business concern have agreed to some settlement with the union that the extremists have decided they will not accept. In some cases some of the employers break away and make a settlement. Where does the union leader stand in all of this? It is thrown at him by the people he represents that if they had listened to him they would not have got the settlement. This is the hard core of all the industrial troubles in this country.
If the Minister for Labour has any function whatever he must take note of this position. Otherwise we will have unhappy industrial relations in this country for a very long time. It does not matter what is our walk of life or what type of person we are, we are all in this together. At the moment we are going through one of the worst inflationary situations that will lead to massive unemployment. Unemployment is only beginning now but unless someone with some courage steps in and says we need a new industrial relations set-up the position will deteriorate rapidly.
Therefore, I would appeal to the Minister for Labour to call the unions together. I should like to offer the Minister some suggestions. First, there is no doubt that there are too many unions in this country. Secondly, there are quite a few overseas unions, particularly in relation to the engineering trades. These unions, although they are not directly concerned with the internal administration of this country, have a very big influence. Our unions should be national unions, associated with, and controlled in, this country.
There is an urgent need for a cooling-off period which would prove advantageous to both sides. The trouble has been that everything has been put on the long finger and we usually find out at the last moment that the country is on the verge of a serious strike. To take an example, we hear suddenly that fitters in the ESB are going to go on strike, they are going to put pickets which the rest of the staff will not pass. The result is that the country will suffer severe electrical cuts.
Perhaps the worst example of industrial trouble we have had here was what the Minister referred to in his speech as the "maintenance men's strike". In this case there was com plete dependence on the maintenance men who were numerically a minor group. However, as they were responsible for the maintenance of machinery they were a key group. The operation of the strike meant that industry would have ground to a halt. I remember the present Minister for Foreign Affairs was then Minister for Labour and I mentioned to him that if this strike took place it would ruin our balance of payments and our industrial production. The Minister told me that there was no way he could settle it except by forcing the employees to take the award.
If ever there was an argument for a cooling-off period, surely this was it? Had there been a cooling-off period in the maintenance men's strike possibly there could have been a settlement. Instead, there was a rushed settlement at the last moment and they were given a far higher percentage increase than was economical at the time. From that time the rot set in. The other unions came on the scene and stated that they were entitled to the same kind of settlement. The Minister should bear in mind all these facts.
There has been some attempt to make the bargaining both collective and secure. We have two rights commissioners and if both sides in a dispute agree to go to the commissioner it is mandatory on them to accept the findings of the Labour Court. The Bill regarding the rights commissioners which was introduced here could be regarded as the industrial fiasco of the century because it has not achieved any industrial peace in this country. I would ask the Minister to consider those points. We need to take some action if we are going to have industrial peace.
We should have union representatives of particular types of trades. I do not see why we should have half a dozen engineering unions some of them being controlled in the United Kingdom and why the Workers Union of Ireland and the Irish Transport and General Workers Union should be catering as far as I know—although I speak subject to correction by experts on this— for the same type of employees. In all the big strikes there have been, we have always had to face the situation that, while the Irish Transport and General Workers Union agreed to a settlement, the Workers Union of Ireland did not, or vice versa. This has led to interminable delay, extra expense, loss of manpower and so on. This country cannot afford the present industrial situation.
In regard to the banks strike, what happened there was that the bank employees and the directors of the banks never met to discuss a settlement, because they could not agree on one or two small points, that is, small points in comparison with the trouble and confusion that was created by the strike. While the banks opened after months and months of discomfort to the country, there does not appear to have been a final settlement. From what I can see those who control the banks, the directors—most of whom are from the city of Dublin—know little or nothing about rural life from which the vast quantity of the money which they hold on behalf of clients comes. The settlement is not a lasting one. The relations are bad and it is quite possible we shall be faced with further trouble in the future. I know the Minister said he intended to set up a board of inquiry or something like that to look into the matter. I am glad to hear that, but it is rather like locking the stable door after the horse has bolted. If he had actively participated in this long ago it would have been to the advantage of us all.
Perhaps when the Minister is replying to this debate he will give some hope to those of us who are interested in the welfare of this country and who like to see progress that he intends to establish good industrial relations here. I do not see a scintilla of hope in the speech he made this morning that there will be any move other than to deal with everything that happens in the way it has been dealt with before, that is, by the Labour Court, a body that has been totally filleted, that has no power except to recommend. The only thing for which it can be commended is that those who act on the board, being mainly civil servants, have a wide experience of negotiating and this provides some hope of bringing the parties together. However, with existing labour relations, something more than that is needed. I am not an employer or an industrialist myself. I am speaking purely as a public representative. This country cannot afford to continue as it is, with raging inflation, an adverse trade balance and so on. What we want above all is industrial peace and I think it is true to say that 90 per cent of employers and employees would advocate that to the fullest extent.
