Deputy O'Malley gave notice of his intention to raise on the Adjournment a matter of urgent importance.
Committee on Finance. - Adjournment Debate: Shannon Airport Security Strike.
At about 11.30 a.m. I put down a Private Notice Question to ask the Minister for Labour if he would intervene at once with a view to settling the dispute between Aer Rianta and the airport security force at Shannon in view of the enormous losses being incurred by the continued closure of the airport. Unfortunately there was error, apparently made by the General Office, and the question was filed as an ordinary one rather than a Private Notice Question and by the time it was realised that it was a Private Notice Question the Department of Labour did not have time to prepare a reply. For that reason I gave notice of my intention to raise the matter tonight and I am obliged to you for allowing a debate on it because unfortunately the matter is extremely serious.
We now have a situation in which Shannon Airport has been closed since last Friday. The latest I heard of the matter tonight was that there did not seem to be any further developments in regard to settling the dispute which has closed the airport, other than an agreement earlier today to allow planes bringing a pilgrimage from Limerick to Lourdes and back to use the airport. Of course, I am glad that has happened but that involves only a few planes and the airport is closed to all other traffic and, if things remain as they are, may continue closed indefinitely.
We are now towards the end of June at the peak of the eastbound traffic across the Atlantic and the number of flights which would normally be expected at Shannon at this time could be as many as 12 a day, all of which, one might expect, would be full or nearly full. The number of passengers, therefore, unable to land at Shannon at present is considerable.
This is no ordinary strike with the normal consequences of a normal strike; this closes down the most important economic unit in the West of Ireland. The consequences of allowing this situation to continue would be disastrous not only for the 7,000 people working at Shannon but for the whole mid-West region and the West of Ireland. That is why I am so concerned about it that I have asked the Minister for Labour if he can intervene. I do not mean that he should intervene personally but through the various channels and officials at his disposal to see if anything can be done to bring this most unhappy situation to a speedy conclusion.
I know it is not customary for the Minister for Labour, or Ministers generally, to intervene in a dispute but I think the Minister for Labour and the Government in general should, because of the appalling consequences of this dispute, use every means open to them to try to have the dispute concluded at a very early date. I do not mean the next few days: this matter is so important that even hours count significantly.
I do not intend to go into the merits or demerits of the dispute or into the details of it. I am not fully familiar with these details and do not want to make any judgment in regard to it. Deputy Barrett who will follow is more conversant with the details of the matter and will deal with them but I want to avail of the opportunity to point out to the Minister for Transport and Power, who is here, the need to ask his colleague the Minister for Labour who is not here, and the Government in general, to take without any delay any possible steps to resolve this situation. The Government would be in error if they regarded this as an ordinary strike. It is not: the consequences of it are enormous. In one of today's newspapers I read that the loss to Aer Rianta alone is calculated at £19,000 a day, being £3,000 in landing fees and £16,000 in the duty free shop. I am sure these figures are accurate but, great as they are, they represent only a small fraction of the losses being daily incurred at Shannon now.
Everybody there is, in fact, out of work; there is really no work to be done there. I presume most of the workers are still being paid but if this dispute goes on longer than another day or two I cannot see them being paid any further. Presumably they will all get protective notice very shortly. The workers at the airport itself are not the only ones affected; the many thousands working in the industrial estate at Shannon must inevitably be involved because the figures given by the Shannon Free Airport Development Company regarding the amount of air freight which is generated by the industrial estate show that a very high proportion of both incoming and outgoing goods are carried by air. This being now no longer feasible it is only a matter of a few days until the factories are in the position that many of them will be in danger of closing. The effect of the dispute goes far beyond the confines of the airport and its industrial estate. The tourist industry is clearly the one which is hit most severely. This industry, as we all know, has not had an easy time in the past couple of years. Everybody is very hopeful particularly in the west of Ireland that there will be an improvement this year. Unfortunately, this dispute had hit them probably harder than any other single thing could hit them and hit them at the worst possible time when the greatest influx of visitors from the US begins. Also, there are numerous other firms and businesses dependent to a very large extent for their economic viability on tourists coming into Shannon from the US in June and July, the principal months for eastbound traffic.
Shannon Airport suffered a severe blow as we know in the past few weeks through the new agreement regarding rights for American carriers. This is the very time when everybody concerned with Shannon Airport and with the prosperity and progress of the mid-western region should do all in their power to ensure that no further avoidable damage is done. It is tragic that this should have happened at this particular time and in my submission there is a clear duty on the Minister for Labour in particular, and on the Government in general to take every step reasonably open to them, even steps that might not be appropriate in the ordinary trade dispute with limited consequences, to bring about a settlement. The consequences in this dispute are virtually infinite for the mid-West region. Therefore, I urgently request the Minister for Labour and the Government to take every step open to them to resolve the situation.
Like Deputy O'Malley, I should also like to stress the serious effects this strike is now having in our region. I should first like to say that the Minister for Industry and Commerce and afterwards the Minister for Transport and Power were responsible for running this airport for 25 years. During those 25 years we did not have any strike there. Strangely enough, even in the past two weeks we have had two strikes, two stoppages. I am not saying that Aer Rianta are at fault but it is an extraordinary situation which has arisen so quickly after the take over by Aer Rianta.
For people who are not living in this region it may be difficult to realise what is happening. Sales and catering are very badly hit. They are definitely very badly hit. They are hit to the extent that on Saturday alone they had to dump 1,000 meals which were prepared for passengers by the flight kitchen. In one hour the duty free shop had to hand back £1,100 to passengers who had made purchases. When they realised that they would not be permitted to fly out of Shannon Airport they had no option but to return the money and take back the goods. All the other ancillary services are hit: the bars, the self-drive car people, all the commercial interests, the taxi-men, not to talk about what is happening to the local hotels and guesthouses.
Up to now in this tourist season we were showing a reasonable improvement in my constituency, and I am sure the same applies to the other constituencies involved in this region. Coming at this moment, at the peak of the trade, this has undone what good was being done and, worse than that, it has brought tourism to a complete standstill. As well as all these losses there is the loss of landing fees. Aer Rianta may say that the landing fees are being collected in Dublin Airport instead of Shannon Airport. This is of no interest to us down there, or to the people down there. We are concerned only about Shannon Airport at this time and about getting it back to work. There are also the re-fuellers and all the other workers connected with the running of the airport. This strike has caused a very serious chain reaction throughout the entire area.
Having said that, the question arises as to how the whole thing started. The security people claim that they have many grievances. About two weeks ago there was a one day stoppage. They were prevailed on to return to work, which they did under an interim arrangement. In due course the Labour Court sent down a conciliation officer who heard their grievances and decided that he was not in a position to help them. The next step, as I understand it, would be to send down an arbitration officer, but it appears that the conciliation officer was of the opinion that the grievances were so many and so complex that an arbitration officer was not the proper person to deal with them. He recommended that a works study officer should come down and do a complete study of all the problems involved.
This was agreed to by the people on strike and I understand it was also agreed to by the management in Shannon Airport. If the Minister wants to get these people back to work and get the airport running again all that is required is to appoint this works study officer as quickly as possible. These people will return to work in the morning, I am told, if Aer Rianta will agree to the interim arrangement which worked reasonably well from 13th June to 21st June, and without any tremendous cost to Aer Rianta for extra overtime and so on.
The interim arrangement is not very complicated or costly. At Shannon Airport there is a day shift, an evening shift, and a night shift. The workers want the company to permit 21 people to work the day shift instead of 18, 16 people to work the evening shift instead of 14, and 16 people to work the night shift instead of 14. That is the interim arrangement. If this is allowed to stand until the works study officer makes his report, they will be back to work within an hour. There seems to be a failure in communications in the past few days at Shannon. While I appreciate that it is an unofficial strike, something must be done about it. The workers say they would be far happier if they were dealing with the airport management at local level instead of with management at Dublin Airport. They feel, wrongly or rightly, that the people at head office are not as interested in getting work restarted as are management at Shannon Airport.
The seriousness of the situation has been emphasised and dealt with very well by Deputy O'Malley. It cannot be over-emphasised. We are not discussing a problem to which there is no solution. I have put forward a solution. Surely in the interests of reaching a compromise it is not too much to ask the management to allow seven extra men to work the three shifts. This will not break Aer Rianta. The workers have undertaken to abide by the findings of the work study officer whatever they may be. The Minister now has the solution to the problem of how to get them back to work.
On a point of order, is it not a fact that five points were in dispute in this issue? Four of them have been settled amicably. It is an unofficial strike. The men who are talking here tonight know nothing about trade unionism.
Could we have a ruling on that point of order?
It is hardly a point of order.
I want to clarify the situation. I know more about this than the people who are talking here tonight.
I have to advise the Deputy that the time is exhausted and I am obliged to call on the Minister.
It is an unofficial strike.
The Minister.
I should like to thank Deputy O'Malley for the temperate way in which he put his case. I do not think that any hot words or aggravated claims would alleviate the situation in Shannon Airport. I am very conscious of the harm this strike is causing to the Shannon region. As Deputy Coughlan said, this is an unofficial strike. I also agree with Deputy O'Malley that we should thank the men for coming back tonight, unpaid, to allow the three flights to go out to Lourdes. As Deputy O'Malley says, this is no ordinary strike. I suppose there is no such thing really as an ordinary strike. Every strike has its own little nuances and differences of opinion.
We had no strike when Fianna Fáil were there.
We cannot have interruptions in a limited debate of this kind.
From my information there were five points at issue in the strike at Shannon. All of them were settled amicably except the point about the number of men who should be employed. The workers want 100 men and the company say that 90 men should be rostered in a different way at different times of the day. When the stoppage took place on the 12th or 13th of June the company did agree to an interim arrangement pending the arrival of a conciliation officer. The conciliation officer said he could not comment until after the weekend. The company made it quite clear in a letter to the secretary of the union that this interim arrangement could only last until the conciliation officer heard the case and that it could not be extended beyond this.
The conciliation officer arrived, heard the case and managed to clear up many of the small points that were troubling the workers down there, but this one point of the number of people to be employed in security at Shannon Airport could not be cleared up to the satisfaction of the workers. Last Thursday they gave notice of requiring a meeting at which they would put forward a number of points. They agreed, as Deputy Barrett said, to two officers, one representing the company and one representing the trade union, and the company said they would agree to whatever their findings were. However, pending this hearing the workers said that their assessment of how many men should be employed at Shannon Airport should hold.
From the trade union point of view and from the company point of view this would have been an impossible situation, and the company had to refuse this. The men then gave strike notice and withdrew their services on Thursday night at 7.30. Since then the airport has been closed. It is causing a very grievous situation in the west. Until the men return to work the company could not agree, nor would the Minister for Labour agree——
This is normal practice.
The Minister has but ten minutes to reply and he must be allowed to reply without interruption of any kind. I must ask Deputy Coughlan to desist from interrupting.
This is a political strike.
I am not going to agree with Deputy Coughlan because I do not know anything about that. What I am agreeing to is that the men must go back to work, and this is what their trade union want. The company assure me that, when the men go back to work, they will abide by the findings of the arbitration officer in regard to employment there, but they cannot agree to any interim arrangement that would tie their hands before the case is heard at arbitration, and I think that is the position as it must be.
There is just one other point. Deputy Barrett said there was no strike before Aer Rianta took over. This is not true. There was a dispute that lasted three to four weeks in 1965 or 1966.
The Minister for Labour agrees with me on this, and I am sorry he is not here tonight to take this debate. However, he cannot intervene nor can the Labour Court intervene until the men return to work, and this is the attitude adopted by their trade union and by the company.
The Dáil adjourned at 10.55 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Wednesday, 27th June, 1973.