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Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 25 Oct 1978

Vol. 308 No. 7

Adjournment Debate. - Post Office Technicians' Dispute.

Deputy M. O'Leary will have ten minutes and the Minister will have five minutes.

I thought I would have 20 minutes but I will do my best to make a few points in ten minutes. I raised this question because, since the technicians rejected the latest settlement terms, I hoped a discussion would lead to early action. If negotiations do not avert it, we will have a continuation of the kind of disruption we saw earlier in the year and of further dislocation of the country's already ailing telecommunications system.

I am anxious to see negotiations recommenced as early as possible between the Department and the technicians. To the best of my knowledge a request for a resumption of negotiations has come from the executive of the union concerned and I do not know what the reaction of management to that request is. I would recommend that negotiations start as rapidly as possible, beginning by analysing the reasons for the rejection of the recent proposals.

Over the past 12 months the history of the dispute in this area shows that if an impasse is allowed to continue relationships harden between management and employees. That danger exists in this dispute. Probably the basic cause for the continued simmering bad relations between management and staff is, as the technicians will tell anyone who discusses the problem with them, their absolute distrust of management. That is one of the impediments to securing non-interruption of service.

It is a trusim of industrial relations that problems are intensified one thousand-fold once distrust becomes dominant in relationship between management and employees. This distrust comes to the surface as suspicion that any provision will not be interpreted in a normal rational way. They feel the Department will interpret it in a narrow way. The fact that this dispute reached such enormous proportions over the last 12 months—for many months no meetings were held—and that this impasse was tolerated, colours the present feeling of distrust too. Negotiations must be reopened as rapidly as possible and the reasons for the rejection inquired into. The Minister should not delay in issuing a positive response to the request of the men for talks, which should start as soon as possible at departmental council level, if that is the appropriate area.

I am not privy to all the elements that went into the reasons for rejection by the technicians of the latest offer but there is no doubt that the attitude of the employees to the proposed introduction of time clocks should be discussed in these early talks. That practice has not existed up to now and it is felt that more negotiations should have been held before that proposal was put.

The Minister and his officials are left with a situation abetted by themselves when they publicly charged the men's representatives with division during the past year. There is no advantage in an actual dispute situation for the person charged with the ultimate responsibility of a settlement to enter the controversial area of laying the blame on one party or the other. The Minister committed that error earlier in this dispute. I hope he has learned since and does not succumb to that temptation again. The important thing is to start these discussions as quickly as possible.

The Minister's task is simple in objective but difficult in practice. His objective is to get a settlement and the means to achieve it are difficult. In discussing productivity in the Department of Posts and Telegraphs a shortage of stores, through no fault of the technicians, may affect the validity of any measurement scheme that may be finally agreed. That point too should be looked at.

Overshadowing the Department and its effectiveness is a review body set up to inquire into a possible separate organisation for telecommunications. I suggest that that is not the great issue at present. The real issue is: what kind of management structure should govern this Department? There will not be very much salvation for the Department in setting up a new semi-State body under that organisation if the management structure remains unaltered. I suggest that the Minister might consult with his colleague, the Minister for Labour, to see if any element of worker participation might not be suitable for introduction in this area which has been troubled with such bad industrial relations.

It goes without saying that the telecommunications system is vital to our industrial well-being. To some extent the Minister may not have appreciated this in the early months of office—that is the only conclusion one can come to—by virtue of the feeling conveyed by him that relations in the Department should reach their own level, that they needed no particular extra consultations. He may have abandoned that idea now and appreciates the importance of maintaining a good telecommunications system, vital to our industrial well-being. The judgement of outside authorities on the competence of a country is based on the performance of its communications system. Ours has not been performing and the major reason is that it has been starved of capital. That is a matter for which many governments must share some blame—lack of capital investment over the years, though the administration to which I belonged reversed that trend and put solid capital investment into the industry.

The Minister is now committed to a capital bill of something like £350 million up to 1982. I suggest to him that this figure is inadequate. The cost of the equipment in this area needs a far greater investment. Of course it must add to the frustration of qualified technicians that their equipment so rapidly becomes obsolete and that they are faced with an impossible task.

Therefore it is important that this dispute—simmering in the Department for almost 12 months, breaking into open disruption on occasion with pickets on particular sections of the Department —be brought to an end, that these talks should commence as rapidly as possible at departmental council level and that a positive response be given to that request of the union authorities for a meeting as quickly as possible.

Our telephone system is the worst in Europe. The number of telephones per hundred of the population is the lowest in Europe, which is an indicator of our economic under-development. Like a hole in the head, the last thing we want at present is another long dispute in the telecommunications system. I have recommended early discussion with the union to see whether any early resolution can be found for some of the problems that have prevented settlement on this occasion. As the Minister knows, these matters related mainly to productivity and should be discussed as quickly as possible. The question of separate organisation of the Department is not the main issue here. The main issue is a management one and the bad relations that exist between management and staff. That bad relationship must be dispelled. The start is for the Department to initiate these talks so that the community is not faced with further disruption in this important national service.

I have already said in a public statement that I am most disappointed that the settlement proposals on the Irish Post Office Engineering Union's re-organisation productivity claim have been rejected in a ballot of the union membership. The proposals contained the following significant benefits for the staff: increases in pay ranging from £4 to £20 a week, with an average increase of over £9 a week; a lump sum of £400; a commitment that the staff will share in savings arising from future productivity improvements to the extent of 80 per cent of the net savings and the creation of three new higher grades and improved promotion opportunities generally. In return the staff would be asked to co-operate fully in specific productivity measures and to continue to co-operate in other measures which would lead to higher productivity and improved service to the public. The union's claim is still before the Departmental Conciliation Council and I assume the union will be reporting back to the council.

However, I should like to make some comments on the background to the matter for the information of the House. Deputies will remember that, when I assumed office in July last year, I found that the engineering staff were taking industrial action and that they had earlier taken industrial action in each of the two preceding years, 1976 and 1975. The origin of the problem went back to 1972 when a claim for re-organisation of engineering grades in the Department involving higher pay was made. It proved extremely difficult to end the industrial action despite the intervention both of the Employer-Labour Conference and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. However, immediately the industrial action ended in May last, negotiations on the Union's re-organisation claim were resumed at the Departmental Conciliation Council under the chairmanship of an independent mediator nominated by the chairman of the Labour Court. In concentrated negotiations over the following three months proposals for a resolution of the claim were formulated. The Department made a number of offers but, while agreement was reached on many aspects of the proposed productivity scheme, it did not prove possible to reach agreement on the money terms. In the circumstances both sides agreed that the outstanding issues should be referred for recommendation to a third party nominated by the Steering Committee of the Employer-Labour Conference. I accepted the third party recommendations and the draft agreement was put to a ballot of members by the Union Executive with a recommendation for acceptance. I think Deputies will accept that the fact that the Union Executive recommended the proposals to their members is the clearest possible confirmation that those proposals were reasonable and serious and contained benefits for the staff commensurate with what was required of them. This is apart altogether from the fact that the money terms had been independently adjudicated upon. The proposals would have enabled me also to press ahead with the improvement of the telecommunications service, which is so necessary. However the union's claim is still before the Departmental Conciliation Council and, in the circumstances, I do not propose to comment further at this stage.

Is the Minister indicating that those talks should be resumed?

Deputies may be interested also in the various steps I have taken since assuming office to improve staff-management relations in the Department. One of the areas about which discontent was expressed during the industrial troubles was the Department's staff rules and regulations. Therefore I arranged last May to have an examination undertaken of these jointly by the unions and the Department under the chairmanship of a mediator nominated by the chairman of the Labour Court to ensure impartial consideration and to bring in an outside view.

Another stated cause of staff dissatisfaction had been that there was no independent appeals machinery for dealing with staff grievances. To meet this I appointed a mediation committee presided over by a chairman nominated by the chairman of the Labour Court to issue recommendations on grievances which could not be settled in direct discussions. A number of such cases have been dealt with already by the new committee. I met the national executives of the main staff organisations in the Department and had very full and frank discussions with them on problems affecting their members so that these could be taken into account in my consideration of how relationships could be improved further. I arranged also for a substantial strengthening of the staffing provision for personnel work in the Department which I had found, on taking up office, grossly inadequate in a situation in which there were 28,000 workers employed by the Department. I did this at all levels, including district level.

Deputies will be aware also of my recent appointment of a review group chaired by Dr. Michael Dargan to examine the feasibility of giving autonomy to the telecommunications service and how the postal service could be modernised.

In relation both to the immediate issue of the engineering productivity claim and the improvement of staff-management relations generally, therefore, I would ask the House to accept that I, for my part, and my Department have done everything possible to bring about the industrial peace and stable relationships so necessary if the Department are to provide a proper service to the public. Indeed Deputy O'Leary professes to be very concerned about the provision of a solution to this problem. I might say that that contrasts strangely with his inactivity in relation to it during the four years it was in hands while he was Minister for Labour.

It is hopeless to hear a Minister talking like this when we are faced with such disruption.

As the House is aware, I am normally a calm and patient man but this attempt by Deputy O'Leary to make political capital out of the predicament in which the executive of the union concerned find themselves is enough to make even me lose my patience. The spokesman for the executive has been at pains to make it clear that they hope to resolve this matter by further negotiations. Even before they have time to reopen negotiations the Deputy comes in here with a speech designed to make it more difficult for all concerned to reach a solution and to create unnecessary public alarm. Whatever temporary publicity the Deputy may hope to gain from this mischievous effort I have no doubt that the long-term consequences for him will cause him to regret it. I am sure that the House and the country will appreciate that every effort has been made by me to reach a satisfactory solution and that I will continue my efforts.

Will talks commence at departmental level? I still do not know after this discussion here this evening.

The Dáil adjourned at 9 p.m. until 10.30 a.m. Thursday, 26 October 1978.

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