Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 24 Nov 1971

Vol. 257 No. 2

Committee on Finance. - Trade Union Bill, 1971: Second Stage.

Minister for Labour (Mr. J. Brennan)

I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

This Bill deals with the conditions for the grant of a negotiation licence. The concept of a negotiation licence was introduced into our law in the Trade Union Act of 1941. That Act provides that a trade union is entitled to a negotiation licence if it maintains a certain sum of money on deposit with the High Court. The minimum deposit required is £1,000. The rules for the grant of a negotiation licence are, therefore, very simple and can be very easily met. This Bill sets out to stiffen the conditions for the grant of future negotiation licences. It will not in any way affect trade unions already holding negotiation licences.

What is in this Bill had already been contained in the Trade Union Bill, 1966—a Bill which lapsed with the dissolution of the Dáil in 1969. The Bill continues the provision that to get a negotiation licence the union must be registered in this country or be a trade union under the laws of another country. It increases the minimum deposit to be maintained with the High Court from £1,000 to £5,000 and it adds two new conditions, namely, that the union must have 500 members in the State and it must wait 18 months from the time of fulfilling these two conditions before the licence can be granted.

It was felt in 1969, when the previous Trade Union Bill was circulated, that it was much too easy for small groups of people to break away from established trade unions and form rival trade unions of their own with all the status and influence that the law of the land and the conventions of the community give to a trade union holding a negotiation licence. I share the belief, long accepted by employers and trade unions alike, that we have too many trade unions in this country. Over the year there have been talks and some efforts at reducing the number of unions through rationalisation or amalgamations, but little of significance along these lines has happened so far. The tendency, if anything, has been the reverse way: there is still pressure from groups to break away from their fellow members in well-established trade unions and set up on their own. This can happen from discontent with their union or dissatisfaction with the way that they feel that their existing trade unions are addressing themselves to the problems of the particular group of members. If there are areas of discontent or dissatisfaction, I would hope that it would be possible, within the trade union movement, to solve the difficulty by some means short of the group breaking out and forming a new union. Up to the present dissatisfied groups have been able to do this and sometimes have done it in a flash of annoyance. This Bill is designed to put a brake on that tendency. At the same time the Bill recognises that, if a sufficiently large body of workers shows a sustained determination to form a new trade union, they must be facilitated by the grant of a negotiation licence.

The Bill will not be an obstacle to existing trade unions with negotiation licences wishing to amalgamate, for it provides that in such a case the new conditions for the grant of a negotiation licence will not apply. The new amalgamated union can be formed immediately and there is no waiting or cooling-off period required.

I am confident that Deputies will agree that the restraints being proposed on the granting of negotiation licences are in the public interest. There may be circumstances in which people will dispute that view and it is being provided, therefore, in the Bill that, if the Minister for Labour refuses to grant a negotiation licence on the ground that the applicant has not met the condition about minimum numbers or the waiting time, the applicant can appeal to the High Court for a declaration that, despite this, the granting of the negotiation licence would not be against the public interest. If the High Court should so declare, the Minister for Labour must grant the licence. This ought to be a sufficient safeguard against any danger of genuine applicants being denied a licence.

I commend the Bill to the House.

Mr. P. Belton

The Fine Gael Party support this Bill. First of all, I should like to ask the Minister is this a part of a bigger Bill to come or is it one of many little pieces that will come in gradually? The two main points in the Bill are the prevention of unofficial strikes by small groups and to prevent English groups with, say, 12 or 24 members here, causing a strike in this country.

In the last Dáil Deputy James Dillon —and I in a smaller way—asked the then Minister would he not bring in legislation whereby there would be a curb put on English unions. We were told no; it could not be done. Now it is being done. It should have been done a long time ago. Our case was that a big company, say, a biscuit company in England, could be against a big business company in Ireland. These companies will be in competition in the EEC and in the Free Trade Area. A trade union in England with 20,000 to 30,000 members and with six members working in the Irish company could easily cause a strike to upset the industry here and let the English firm win. I am not saying that it would happen but it could happen and there was no control over it here by the Irish trade union. We proposed some such measure as this but we were told we were talking nonsense. Now this Bill is being introduced.

I consider this a very small stepping stone to improve industrial relations and to reduce the incidence of unofficial strikes. I would say—I am not sure— that this would have the backing of the trade unions. It is clearly indicated to the unions that it is the smaller unions that have been causing unofficial strikes. There is something in the region of 100 trade unions in the Twenty-six Counties and 128 approximately in the Thirty-two Counties. We have had strikes caused by small unions and these strikes have resulted in hundreds of people being put out of employment, people belonging to much bigger unions. The only way in which we will prevent small unions behaving in this fashion is by having an industrial union in each factory with one negotiator. That would be a step in the right direction, a tiny step but an important one.

Much could be added to this Bill. When the Trade Union Bill was being passed I said more teeth should be given to congress so that it would have greater control. To me, this is vitally important. At the moment you have unions acting on their own. They go with congress when it suits them and they go against congress also when it suits them. Congress must get more teeth and greater control.

The bigger the union the better. The Minister said he hoped congress would set up some type of appeal court. It should be remembered that the bigger the union the less likely it is the individual's voice will be heard. He becomes just a number, unheard and forgotten about. I do not blame the officials for this. They are busy men. A court of appeal, presided over by a member of the judiciary, could serve a useful purpose because cases could be heard quickly. At the moment it can take anything up to eight or nine months before a conclusion is reached. There should be machinery to ensure quick decisions. The strike by the maintenance workers in Cadbury's resulted in over 1,000 workers losing their employment because of the 20 maintenance men going on strike. The union involved is not a small union. It is a big one.

I hope the Minister will bring in a consolidating measure and not just a succession of piecemeal legislation. This will have to be done before we enter the EEC. If it is not done we will be up against it. I think the most appropriate figure would be 750 and not the 1,000 mentioned by the Minister. This would result in fewer unions and bring us nearer to the point at which we would have just five or six large unions. Germany is not really a good example, but there they have nine or ten unions. Where there is a dispute over wages, conditions, or anything else, there should be one industrial union and one negotiator.

The subscription paid by trade unionists is very low. Unions today need the assistance of experts and they cannot pay for this expert assistance unless subscriptions are adequate. Members should be able to afford an increase now. Labour Party Deputies, when speaking about salaries, criticise employers. Some three years ago on the BBC a man was interviewing a trade unionist who was in charge of 500,000 or 1,000,000 men. When asked what salary he got he said £2,500. Most of his men were earning double that. Trade unions, as employers, should pay their own officials properly. That will ensure that they will get the best men for the job.

With regard to cutting down man-hours lost, six years ago the figure was 265,000 man-hours lost as a result of strikes. It is now over 1,000,000. The total number of man-hours lost last year was in the region of 4,000,000. Of this figure 1,000,000 was due to strikes and 3,000,000 to sickness, absenteeism, accidents and so forth. I do not think this Bill will cut down the 1,000,000 man-hours lost through strikes. The only thing that will reduce that figure is one industrial union in control in the big companies. The Minister should have a look at the other 3,000,000 man-hours lost. This Bill will get rid of a number of small unions. We seem to be under the impression it will do a great deal for the country, but other things such as employee-employer relations need to be rectified.

One of the main problems is taxation. The personal allowance should be increased and overtime should not be taxed. If a man living in a house for which he is paying a differential rent works overtime not only is he taxed on the overtime but he will have to pay more rent as well. If he is working at a job where the rush comes at the weekend he will do the overtime and earn some extra money but by the time he has paid extra tax, an increase in his rent and his expenses to and from work it is hardly worth his while and he asks himself "What is the point of going to work?" So he will probably take a day off. Any builder in the city will admit that there is 15 to 20 per cent absenteeism on Mondays. If we want to get rid of absenteeism in industry the Government should have another look at the differential rent system and at our present tax system. It can be argued: why should a man who works overtime get tax relief when somebody earning the same amount of money without doing overtime will not get that relief? I am sure the Minister for Finance could find some way of dealing with this problem.

Both the Minister and his predecessor promised that more safety-first inspectors would be appointed. An additional one or two inspectors have been appointed in the past few years but many people are absent as a result of injuries received at work.

One of the biggest causes of strikes is that employers do not bother to look at union demands for increased wages until the unions threaten to strike and then they rush to fix matters. A time limit should be laid down and if employers do not meet the union for a month and then they spend two months negotiating, whatever final increase is agreed upon should be made retrospective for three months. At this stage it is not usually money that is involved but anger and temper on both the side of the union and of the employers.

This Bill is a drop in the ocean; it is doing nothing except ensuring that English trade unions do not interfere with Irish business. Yesterday Deputy Desmond asked a question about industrial democracy. The Minister would be well advised to pay attention to industrial democracy in decision making, particularly in relation to semi-State bodies. This Government have a habit of setting up commissions to look into the causes of strikes et cetera. When these commissions report the Government take what recommendations they like from the report and ignore the remainder. The Fogarty Report in relation to the ESB stated that employees should be involved in decision making, but the Government have done nothing about it whatsoever.

The idea that a man is a mere number on the job was all very well in the middle ages but a worker now wants to be considered as a person who is taking an interest in his job. Unless a man is interested in his work his employer will not get the best out of him. This also causes absenteeism. I know of a man who works for a firm which is very busy around Christmas time. He had flu and he went to the doctor and asked him to do something for him. The doctor said he would give him a certificate but the man said, "I do not want a certificate, I want an injection so that I can get back to work". This interest is sadly lacking all too often.

This Bill is attempting to get rid of a few small unions; it is like trying to kill a giant by cutting off his big toe. While I accept the Bill I should like the Minister to tell us whether this is just one of the many pamphlets he is bringing out or whether he intends to bring in a consolidated trade union Bill later.

Mr. Desmond

The Labour Party welcome the Trade Union Bill, 1971. We feel it is in the national interest that it should be introduced. It will be of advantage to workers particularly trade union members and of course employers whether they be State sponsored employers or private employers. It will make a positive contribution towards the emergence of a more effective and more rational system of industrial relations and as such we welcome it.

I hope that not only will we see the Trade Union Bill, 1971, pass through this House but also during the lifetime of this very uncertain Dáil that we shall see complementary legislation brought in to deal with the question of amalgamations. I appreciate there is an understanding between the trade union movement and the Department that the Bill will be taken separately but it is essential that we look at this piecemeal legislation, as the Minister has so described it, as part of a better approach. The current legislation dealing with amalgamations is bound up with the question of break-away unions and the question of fragmentation. There is a need for legislation relating to trade union amalgamation and I would appreciate some assurance from the Minister in this regard.

As the Minister is aware, it is not enough that in the public good we merely introduce this legislation to prevent flash break-aways in the trades union movement. We should introduce more positive legislation on amalgamations to ensure that the current rigid statutory requirements are substantially mitigated. In some cases precise voting arrangements have to be followed by trade unions in regard to amalgamations, precise majorities are needed and we have had instances of these difficulties in amalgamations in recent years. The most notorious case in this regard was the attempt by the National Engineering Union to amalgamate with the Irish Engineering, Industrial and Electrical Trade Union. to form the new union as the National Engineering Electrical Trade Union. In that case there was major difficulty and it was considered that the current legislation was not developing and assisting the amalgamation and merging of trade unions. Complementary legislation came into operation recently in Britain and I should like to see legislation introduced here to facilitate amalgamations.

It is bad enough to see trades union members fragmenting within the trade union movement. When an attempt is made to amalgamate two unions and to fuse the two executives, legislation which would facilitate this and facilitate payment of some of the costs involved—particularly in relation to the full-time staff of the unions—would be a step in the right direction.

From a superficial reading of the Bill it appears two different scales of deposits will be in operation. One cannot say much about this; it is a once-and-for-all operation with regard to the placing of deposits. While I do not think that the operation of the two different scales of deposits will be a grave imposition on the trade union movement, in the interest of an orderly system one would be happier with one general scale but in this instance I am not advocating a levelling up.

In the amalgamation of two or more authorised trade unions, each of which had been the holder of a negotiating licence before amalgamation, I gather subsection (1) of section 2 shall not apply. I should like the Minister to state if the situation is more complicated if one of the unions have a negotiating licence and if the other organisation do not have such a licence. I presume it is covered under section 2 but it is important to bear in mind that amalgamation can take place where only one of the parties have a negotiating licence. I gather where such amalgamations take place they pay the old scale of deposit for the new licence.

A matter I would raise with the Minister is that of exemptions being granted. One could argue it would be self-defeating to have a Bill that would insist on new unions being obliged to take out negotiating licences and simultaneously to find that the Minister may be granting an increasing number of general exemptions. This could create a difficult situation in the future and I would ask the Minister if he could give us some information about the extent of exemptions in recent years. I am not entirely familiar with the current situation but I have an impression the Minister has been giving an increasing number of exemptions and this could be self-defeating from the point of view of a rational trade union movement.

On the broad scope of the Bill, I support the public intent of this measure. In 1970 there were 95 trades unions operating in the Republic with an aggregate membership of 386,000. Three or four years ago there was the same number of unions. About 56 per cent of the members are in the six general unions, approximately 216,000 people. The six unions are: the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union; the Workers' Union of Ireland; the Amalgamated Transport and General Workers' Union; the Federation of Rural Workers; the Marine Port and General Workers' Union; and the Irish Women Workers' Union. Those six unions claim more than half the membership and to that extent the position is better than one might think at first glance. Nevertheless, there are some alarming indications. For example, there are some 23 different trade unions with fewer than 250 members; there are 11 unions with between 250-500 members; there are 15 unions with between 500-1,000 members. One of the besetting problems that faced me as a trade union official was how to administer effectively many of the organisation and provide an efficient service to members, having regard to the large number of fragmented unions and the lack of official service for the membership of the unions. About half of the total number of unions have less than 1,000 members. If a large undertaking closes down or if there is a major technological change in an industry, and if a certain group are redundant, the future of the union concerned can be called into question. The aggregate membership of 49 unions was only 17,000 people or approximately 4½ per cent of the total trade union membership in the Republic.

It can be agreed, I think, that with 95 trade unions in the country we have more than enough. This is not acting in any repressive sense but in the sense that the trade union movement has grown up over the past half century in a haphazard manner responding to the growth of industry and trade union organisation in different categories and inevitably has had a rather piecemeal development.

The efforts of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions to bring about a more rational structure internally in the movement and to encourage and develop mergers, amalgamations and federations and more cohesive arrangements have not proved very successful. It is the best part of ten years now since the Committee on Trade Union Organisation was set up. Its terms of reference were to consider and report on the organisation of the Irish trade union movement, its structures and the relationship between unions and to make recommendations concerning future policy with reference to the improvement of the organisation of the movement, its structure and relationships between unions. This has proved an extremely intractable problem which has caused a great deal of anxiety among the responsible persons involved. We hope to see a growing number of amalgamations and general fusions. A number of welcome amalgamations have occurred in recent years: the Union of Insurance Staffs for example amalgamated with the Association of Scientific, Technical and Managerial Staffs. The pace of trade union amalgamation in Britain is far greater than here. We had the Irish Union of Hairdressers joining with the Amalgamated Transport Union and now we have the NUVB joining with the Amalgamated Transport Union and we have the Draftsmen and Allied Technicians Association amalgamating with the Amalgamated Union of Engineering and Foundry Workers. There have been some developments but for every amalgamation another new body seems to spring up. Therefore, as the Minister says, the brakes—I hope constitutional brakes; I do not want to raise that here—which the Minister has put into this legislation are very welcome.

Anybody with experience in the trade union movement would deplore the disruptive influence of break-away organisations within the movement generally. There have not been so many. This may come as a surprise to many people who are hypercritical of trade unions and whose ignorance, I suppose, and public comments on the movement tend to grow the farther they are away from the movement. Generally speaking, the trade union movement is reasonably effective, and highly responsive to the legitimate demands of its membership. It is generally a responsible organisation and the incidence of break-aways has not been very high. The Congress of Trade Unions have made it clearly understood that there can never be any question of recognising or accepting into affiliation break-away organisations. That is general policy which is strongly supported by the Labour Party. The formation of such organisations is generally unnecessary, generally disruptive and in the long term directly harmful to the interests of the workers concerned and most injurious to the overall solidarity of the movement. The introduction of such organisations weakens that solidarity and trade union unity generally.

That is not to say that there does not exist—it certainly does exist— within the trade union movement and within the democratic structure of the unions, machinery whereby membership can elect their own executive, determine their own policies, control their own organisations and run their own ballots in an effective manner generally free from undue interference by the State. A great deal of machinery has been established to ensure that within Congress and the trade union movement generally this type of machinery is developed with ever-increasing sophistication and responsiveness to the demands of trade union members.

In my opinion this Bill will act as a major incentive towards rationalising the existing situation. I have always deplored—one finds it frequently in major industrial dispute situations —attempts to create dissident groups and break-away organisations instead of using established trade union machinery for dealing with complaints. The disruptive setting-up of break-away organisations is not very often inspired by any great concern for the workers but rather for individual notoriety in a particular dispute or the settling of old scores in a particular dispute, generally to the detriment of the workers concerned. Workers should resist strongly through their own organisations the setting up of any disruptive elements.

This legislation will be of major benefit in that regard. It does not stop trade unions being set up but in practice it is designed to prevent maverick organisations developing or panic action being taken by trade unions or trade unionists in a dispute and as a result setting up fragmentary, divisive organisations within a particular industry, trade group or category. The legislation is certainly constructive.

I want to deal with another aspect of this matter. If trade unionists feel they are being badly treated, they have ample opportunity within well-established trade union procedure to deal with their complaints without setting up another trade union. Presumably I shall be able to deal with that after Question Time.

Debate adjourned.