I do not think that the analogy with South Africa used by Deputy Garland is appropriate because far from being the adversaries of part-time workers, in my experience whatever limited gains have been made by part-time workers, certainly in organised employment, have been made with the active support of their full-time colleagues. The most recent example of that is probably the case of part-time teachers where it was their full-time colleagues, by and large, who championed their case through the Teachers Union of Ireland and who managed to extract, admittedly over a fairly long period, some concessions regarding employment conditions for the part-time teachers.
The Bill we are debating, which has been proposed by The Workers' Party, concerns workers, and specifically women. There are approximately 90,000 part-time workers in this State, 70 per cent of whom are women and two-thirds are married. There used to be an attitude in this country that women working part-time, and especially married women, were earning pin money. It was seen as a little extra to the stable, and usually male earned, family income. This is no longer the case. For most people now working part-time, male or female, their earnings are essential to the family budget. Part-time work is the essential life raft that prevents many families from drowning in poverty. For 90,000 people and their families it is a big, exploited and largely unorganised area. There are more people in this employment than in the commercial semi-State sector and three times the number of civil servants and twice the number of teachers. This is a body which is growing. The number of part-time workers has doubled in the past decade.
The study carried out by John Blackwell shows that the proportion of part-time workers in Ireland is about half The EC average. As the process of EC monetary and economic union continues we can expect the number of part-time workers to increase to EC levels. Soon there will be more part-time workers in this State than there are farmers and if they were organised we would not have to wait so long for legislation to protect their rights.
Every Member has come across cases where part-time workers are exploited. In proposing this Bill my colleague, Deputy Rabbitte, gave several examples of employers paying low wages and deliberately avoiding the 18-hour threshold which would qualify these workers for legal entitlements. The 18-hour rule has an interesting anti-woman history. It first appeared in the 1967 Redundancy Payments Act and was purposely included in that Act so that the married women who were working part-time would not qualify for redundancy payments. Indeed, the Oireachtas debates of that time are very illuminating with regard to the attitude of Members of the Oireachtas towards the status of women in society, particularly in the workplace; as Member after Member explained to this House and the other House how unacceptable it would be if married women in employment were to qualify for redundancy payments and how unreasonable it would be to expect employers to have to pay redundancy payments to women. The 18-hour rule belongs to an age when it was assumed that married women did not work and when women in the public service had to resign from their employment when they married.
Of course, in those days denying married women the right to work was justified by the alleged concern for women, that they had a special and constitutionally guaranteed role in the home. I find it remarkable that we hear so little concern these days for the homemaker who has to go out to work for no more then £49.50 per week — it will be now £54.50 per week — in order to put food on her family's table, a woman who has not had a pay increase in years in case her husband loses social welfare payments, a woman who is denied the right to holiday pay, maternity leave, sick pay, minimum notice in terms of employment and protection against unfair dismissal, etc. The 18-hour rule, introduced in 1967 to satisfy employers that they would not have to pay redundancy to a married woman, has become the threshold in more modern and progressive legislation. It is time for it to go and for all workers to enjoy the same basic rights in proportion to the time they work. The need for part-time workers to be protected by law is well recognised. It is enshrined in the Programme for National Recovery. The Minister says he wants to do it, but he behaves like the sinner contemplating death: “Not yet, Lord, not yet”.
Why do the Government not accept this Bill? In his reply on 27 March the Minister for Labour gave a number of reasons and I would now like to deal with them to show how shallow they are and to expose the Minister for Labour, who likes to be considered the worker's friend but who is siding with employers in the exploitation of part-time workers.
First, the Minister says he will bring in his own Bill on part-time workers. Where is it? Last week the Government's legislative programme for this session was published. It lists 19 Bills the Government hope to have debated this session; it lists a further 12 Bills which are described as being at an advanced stage of drafting, but a Government Bill on part-time workers is not listed. The weekend before The Workers' Party's Bill was proposed the Minister made a public announcement that he intended to introduce his own Bill. Is it now clear that this was nothing more than a shabby attempt at political one-upmanship. Considering the rate at which legislation crawls through the Oireachtas, it will be at least two years before a Government Bill on part-time workers is enacted, even if it were No. 32 on the legislation chart.
Almost six months ago we had a similar response from the Government on the Fine Gael Environment Protection Agency Bill. We were then promised Government legislation. We are still waiting for the Bill to be circulated. The Minister has the opportunity now to do something to protect part-time workers. He can withdraw his opposition to this Bill, allow it to go through Second Stage and amend it as he sees fit on Commimtte Stage. Indeed, the Government would obviously have sufficient numbers to carry any such amendments.
The Minister's second stated reason for opposing this Bill is that he wants to have more consultation. What for? He knows the extent and nature of the problem. John Blackwell's paper spells it out. He knows the views of the social partners. They were articulated at a seminar held months ago which the Minister himself organised "to speed up my efforts to reconcile divergent views on the matter". He knows that in many respects the approaches being taken by employers and trade unions on this issue are fundamentally different.
At the seminar 12 months ago Peter Cassells of the ICTU said legislation was needed urgently and listed five reasons why this was so. While Mr. John Dunne of the FIE did not explicitly state that he was opposed to legislation, that conclusion can clearly be drawn from his presentation in which he denied that part-time employment was uncontrolled and argued that employers already had to cope with too much legislation and he suggested that further legislation could lead to what he called some unpleasant results.
The Minister has to make up his own mind on this. Is he for legislative protection for part-time workers or not? By continuing to delay bringing in legislation he is coming down firmly on the side of employer organisations who expect that some day there will be legislation but whose strategy is to postpone the day for as long as possible. Therefore, by taking the side of the employer organisations on this, the Minister is wrecking the spirit of partnership enshrined in the Programme for National Recovery. That does not argur well for the prospect for a new programme for national recovery.
The Minister's third stated reason is that the EC Commission will publish a draft directive on atypical work in May-June of this year. I share his hope, but an EC Draft Directive, far from promoting legislation in Ireland, may in fact delay it. In 1982 the Commission published a draft directive on voluntary part-time work, but the British Government objected to it and it was never agreed. Nothing has changed, not yet anyway, to suggest that a new directive will meet with more enthusiasm from the princess of deregulation.
Even if the Welshman succeeds to Downing Street in the next couple of years, it could take years for the draft directive to get through the European legislative labyrinth and then it could be another few years before an Irish Government comply with it. When the Minister says he is waiting for the EC Directive, I hear the message — there will be no legislation on part-time workers until the EC forces the Government to do it, and we could be approaching the end of the century before that occurs.
Of course, the Minister will say it is prudent to await the EC position before moving on legislation, but surely he can anticipate it. He is the President of the Council of Ministers. He knows the objectives set out in the Social Charter. The Government have declared themselves in support of the Charter.
I recently attended a meeting of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on EC Secondary Legislation to which a delegation from the ICTU were making a presentation and when asked to identify the area of the Social Charter which they felt should be given first priority for legislation here they answered, without hesitation, legislation to protect the rights of atypical workers. We do not need to wait for the EC. We can anticipate indeed from the 1982 Draft Directive what will be contained in the new directive and we can give a lead for a change. The Government's rejection of this Bill is flying in the face of the Social Charter.
The Minister's fourth excuse is that the workforce must be flexible. Of course, it must. There is no argument about that. The Workers' Party understand the economic, commercial and, indeed, social reasons for the growth in atypical working. Indeed, many workers themselves want more flexible working arrangements. I had experience as a trade union official, before I was elected to this House, of workers in full-time employment seeking a reduction in their hours and more flexible working hours to help them meet their family commitments. Far from hindering flexibility, The Workers' Party would wish to see it encouraged but what we are opposed to, and what our Bill is directed at, is exploitation.
The Minister suggests that over-regulation will hinder job creation. There is no evidence to support this. I should like to quote what Mr. Peter Cassells said at the seminar last year.
I do not accept that extending labour legislation and social insurance to cover part-time workers will inhibit job creation. Employers themselves do not believe this. In the Department of Labour's survey in August 1986 on employers perceptions of the effect of labour legislation, the following difficulties were listed by companies: uncertainty of demand and the general recession, 46 per cent; VAT, 28 per cent; competitive pricing and cheap imports, 25 per cent; cashflow and bad debts, 24 per cent; banking facilities, 19 per cent, and general overhead costs, 18 per cent.
Only a tiny proportion of firms, under 1 per cent, raised any issue related to the area of labour legislation and unfair dismissal. Also, if you look at countries in Europe with the best track record in job creation they are also the countries most heavily regulated with regard to workers legislation. For example West Germany and Sweden.
Mr. Cassells' view on this has not been challenged. Flexibility is not a problem. What is the problem? What are employers nervous about? The answer is to be found in John Blackwell's paper: it is money. John Blackwell, in his explanation as to why there has been a growth in part-time working, said:
The unit cost to the employer of employing a part-time worker can be lower than the unit cost or employing a full-time worker. There are a number of aspects to this and one is that the hourly wage for part-time work tends to be less than that for full-time work, even leaving aside the question of overtime rates and shift premiums.
He went on to talk about non-wage labour costs, that is employers' contributions to social insurance and to private pensions. Employers do not have to pay them and, therefore, that is another saving to them. John Blackwell went on to state that if employers have to pay little or nothing in the form of sick leave and are able to pay less than in the case of full-time workers for holiday pay, there can be an incentive to hire part-time workers. He said that whenever fringe benefits decline in proportion to the decline in the work week there can be an incentive to hire part-time workers. Many part-time workers have less access to fringe benefits, including occupational pensions, than their full-time colleagues. He went on to deal with the question of flexibility and said:
It has been argued that some of the increase in part-time working in Europe as a whole reflects an increased desire for flexibility on the part of the employer. However, a survey of employers' perceptions of the effects of labour legislation — the Department of Labour 1986 — indicates that the latter possible explanation has hardly been a major influence.
For "flexibility" we can read, "cheap labour". Legislation to protect part-time workers means an end to the free market in cheap, and mostly female, labour that is growing here. That is why there is resistance from employers and that is why, if the Minister persists in his opposition, he will yet come to be known as "the Minister for cheap labour".
The Minister's fifth and final reason is that, he says, the Bill is a wide brush, that it is too general and, as the Minister for Social Welfare said this evening, too simplistic. The Bill is based on the 1982 EC Draft Directive. The definitions in it, the terms of it, the sections in it are lifted from that draft directive. Successive Irish Governments have made it clear that they have not been opposed to that draft directive; indeed, successive Ministers for Labour have assured the ICTU that they support the directive and were working for agreement on it.
Has there been a change in Government policy? How can the Government on the one hand say they are in favour of the draft directive and then come into the House and oppose a Bill which is based on it? The Bill is essentially the same as that sought by the ICTU. Therefore, in opposing the Bill the Government are directly opposing the position of congress. What will the Minister for Labour say to congress if they ask him why he opposed The Workers' Party Bill on part-time workers?
What are we looking for in the Bill? We are looking for a number of basic provisions; we are looking for pro rata payment and conditions for workers; we know there is an emergence of a new structure in the workforce, the emergence of a small corps of highly paid people — this is the wish of employers and employer organisations — around whom a whole range of part-time workers will be based; we know that contract workers who enjoy no security of employment are paid far less, even on an hourly basis, than their full-time colleagues; we know these workers can be employed and dismissed at will and they do not enjoy legal protection; we want the conditions of part-time workers to be protected by law; we want part-time workers to be able to avail of the same statutory entitlements as their full-time colleagues. The women who need part-time employment for family reasons should qualify for maternity leave, which is not the case at present.
