Deputy P.J. Morley has sought and been granted permission to raise on the Adjournment the threatened imminent closure of Claremorris bacon factory with the loss of 120 jobs in the town. He has ten minutes and the Minister five minutes to reply.
Adjournment Debate. - Claremorris Bacon Factory.
I am very grateful for having been given this opportunity to raise this very important matter. With your permission, I should like to give half of my time to my colleague, Deputy Flynn.
In raising this matter, I am merely reflecting the anxiety felt in my local community because of the impasse which industrial relations have reached in this factory and the widespread concern that everything possible should be done by all who have responsibility in this field to bring the parties together and to avert the possibility of the factory closing. This is not the usual run of the mill closure where a company gets into financial difficulty, is no longer viable and must put up the shutters. On the contrary, this is a potentially viable plant and the company have plans to make it so.
These plans do not involve compulsory redundancies among the 120 people at present employed there. They do, however, involve slight redeployment of staff and rearrangement of work procedures. A first stage development was carried out some time ago and a second stage awaits implementation. For almost a year now, this company have had close on £1 million worth of new machinery under wraps which they are waiting to put into operation following the satisfactory resolution of the present difficulties. There is no economic reason for the factory to close now and both sides agree that it should remain open, but management and union leadership at local level have become entrenched in their respective attitudes towards each other and positions have hardened to the point of stalemate with the result that jobs are in jeopardy.
Management say that they will close the plant by the end of the month unless the union nominates somebody other than the present local leadership to negotiate with them. Already 35 people have been let go since last Friday evening. The local chamber of commerce have tried to mediate but appear to have reached the end of their tether. It is here that the Minister could use the prestige of his office to get talks going. Because of the sensitivity and delicacy of the situation, fraught with so many far reaching consequences, he should not hesitate to do so. As well as the prestige of his office, he has other machinery available to him which I am sure he could usefully employ to break the logjam.
I hope he will be able to give a positive indication of his intention in this regard. Until now, this company have had a very happy history in Claremorris. They were founded in 1930 and have operated continuously and successfully since, giving employment to a large number of people over the years. The present workforce is in the region of 120, mostly male. The closure of this factory will not just mean the loss of those jobs and the £25,000 approximately in the weekly pay packets to the local community, but will have adverse repercussions leading to the loss of other jobs in the service side of industry and the greater impoverishment of the community as a whole. Who can say that if this factory closes the company's two other plants in Letterkenny and Limerick will not also be in danger?
For all those reasons, I hope the Minister will outline the interest he has taken in this dispute so far, the steps, if any, he has taken to have the crisis resolved and the action he proposes to take now to ensure that my county does not lose one of its traditional and valuable industries because of this unfortunate dispute.
I should like to join with Deputy Morley in asking the Minister to come to the aid of this industry which is about to close. In this connection I think I am speaking on behalf of Deputies from all sides of the political divide in County Mayo. The reason I speak is that a considerable percentage of the workforce comes from west Mayo despite the fact that the industry is located in east Mayo. The bacon industry has had a difficult time in the recent past but it is an indigenous industry. Every effort should be made to ensure that industries based on the raw materials of our own country are protected and preserved. We want the Minister to use his good offices to do this for us.
The Bacon Company of Ireland is a good company. It is not a loss maker. It has made money consistently during the years. It made a profit of £750,000 in 1981 and it only slipped into the red in 1984. However, the management decided to do something about it and they have a reorganisation programme they want to implement. The plant is on site and they want the workforce to be employed there. They do not want the factory to close.
Deputy Morley was quite right in what he said. Let me put the matter beyond doubt. The whole group will close and die if the flag leader in Claremorris is allowed to close. We believe the company wants to get involved in the expenditure of more money to revitalise the business. It has a very good record in industrial relations. It was founded in 1930 and only once, in 1948, was there a closure of two months when unions were introduced. The factory has an admirable record in industrial relations.
It appears to me that a personality clash of some kind between management and unions has crept in. That is unfortunate. Management and unions have a responsibility in the matter. Neither side is entitled to do anything that will put in jeopardy the livelihood of so many breadwinners.
We are asking the Minister to take an exceptional step here. We are asking him to use his good offices and the agencies available to him to avert this closure. It is difficult to attract foreign investment to County Mayo because we are inaccessible in many ways. We have suffered through the closure of Travenol and many other industries in the past few years. There are 8,000 people unemployed in the county. An indigenous industry based on raw materials available in the locality is vital to the local economy. Both sides have a heavy responsibility in the matter.
A solution can be found but it is necessary for some person to step into the middle and bring the two sides together in an effort to work out a satisfactory solution. The Minister, representing the people of Ireland in his office as Minister for Labour, is the person to do this job initially. We are satisfied that if he takes this step there will be a satisfactory solution.
I wish to thank the Deputies for raising this matter in such a constructive way. Their concern is shared by all the Deputies from Mayo, some of whom are present in this House. The company concerned is producing added value to natural product and, thus, this dispute is all the more unwelcome because clearly it is damaging not just the workers and management but those who produce the raw material for the factory.
Given the time available to me I will not go into the background to this dispute other than to say that the company has displayed in recent times with the union involved considerable skill in negotiating agreements relating to a package of redundancies that were agreed. They were implemented in the three plants concerned, namely, at Claremorris, Letterkenny and Limerick. For example, there have been 35 redundancies in Letterkenny, 22 in Limerick and 12 in Claremorris. I give those figures to show that the company and the union involved possess negotiating skills in that they have arrived at a settlement that was not the subject of a major dispute.
The request of the Deputies in this debate that the Department of Labour should intervene is one I can respond to in the following way. I and previous office holders have made this point before. It is our responsibility to ensure that the machinery of industrial relations negotiation should operate to maximum efficiency. In this instance the major machinery is the Labour Court. I say to the House that the Labour Court have become involved already in this dispute in a very responsible way, an indication of the active way the court operate. The chief conciliation officer, Mr. Paddy Lynch, has had extensive discussions with both sides in relation to this matter.
Deputy Flynn spoke about some personality clash. The future of this industry and the jobs of the 35 people who have been laid off temporarily as well as the remaining jobs are too important to allow any personality dispute on either side. There are Members in this House who would find it totally unacceptable that workers should be able to nominate which person in management should negotiate with them. Equally, in a free and open democratic society workers have the right to decide whom they wish to negotiate on their behalf. I presume that in selecting that person they do so on the basis that he or she is the best person capable of advancing and improving their interests. Clearly all the Members who represent the area have a concern in the matter. With Mr. Jerry Flynn of the Chamber of Commerce, they consider that it is in the best interests of all the workers in Mayo that the factory should not only survive but that it should thrive and develop. I do not think that the best interests of all concerned should be at the mercy of a personality clash between any parties.
While I understand the points made here and elsewhere, I am not prepared to dictate who should negotiate on behalf of any group of workers. That will always be their free and democratic choice. They must exercise that choice with full responsibility, having regard to all the circumstances.
Deputy Morley asked what action I propose to take. I give this undertaking to the House. I will formally contact the Labour Court to ensure that all the machinery of that court is made fully available to help to settle the dispute. I will bring to the attention of the Labour Court that this matter was raised on the Adjournment, that the elected Members for Mayo expressed considerable concern and asked me to convey that concern to the court with a view to finding a satisfactory solution as soon as possible.
The Dáil adjourned at 9 p.m. until 10.30 a.m. on Thursday, 7 November 1985.