I wish to share my time with Deputy Crawford.
Adjournment Debate. - Industrial Disputes.
An Leas-Cheann Comhairle
Is that agreed? Agreed.
This is my second occasion to revisit the serious strike between the members of the CPSU and the Department of Agriculture and Food in Counties Galway, Mayo, Kerry, Cork and Limerick. No progress whatsoever has been made over the past five weeks since the Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture and Food dealt with this matter in the House. Unbelievable financial hardship has been visited on farmers in these five counties and, in reality, they are the meat in the sandwich. The farmers have nothing whatever to do with the rights and wrongs of this dispute.
A doomsday scenario is now beginning to emerge for farmers who had been restricted because of TB and brucellosis and who, after being cleared of both diseases, were about to sell off stock which had been stockpiled all winter at huge cost, only to find that cattle identity cards would not be released because of the strike. The degree of financial hardship suffered by the farming community is unreal. Farmers who did not sell an animal for 12 months and who have gone through a nightmare winter feeding cattle they should not have are being robbed because of the costs involved.
Farmers with young stock contracted to fill overseas markets for cattle under one year old are financially crippled because permits are not being issued. One man with 30 such cattle had a valuation of 98 cent per pound on Tuesday but by Wednesday morning, because the cattle were one day over one year old, the value was slashed to 84 cent. I know a farm where a brucellosis storm erupted several months ago but now, while the herd is to be depopulated, nobody seems able to do anything about getting the cattle killed to remove the source of infection.
I know farms where reactor TB animals are walking around in fields. They have been identified as reactors but nobody came to collect them and get them out of the way. I cannot understand why the Minister for Agriculture and Food is not at the centre of this matter. I have not heard a peep out of him over the past five weeks. Where is the Minister for Finance? While I realise that the union also has a responsibility in this matter, as long as the union and the Ministers for Finance and Agriculture and Food stay apart, farmers will suffer.
I am long enough in this House, as is the Minister, to know that this dispute will be settled. It all depends on how long the Minister is prepared to allow the farmers in the counties concerned to suffer. If this matter was nationwide and all 26 counties were involved, it would be solved today. The matter is serious and I hope that tomorrow will not pass without the Government, particularly the Ministers for Agriculture and Food and Finance, and the union knocking heads together to see what can be done. Whatever is done, by tomorrow evening the Minister should ensure that, in regard to genuine hardship cases, farmers are allowed to sell before they are crippled with costs. The Minister knows all about this as that is his job, and I make a plea to him to address this problem. I hope he understands that the farmers concerned could not be more seriously affected by this situation.
I thank Deputy Connaughton for sharing his time with me on this important issue. It should be raised in the House at every opportunity because it has extremely serious consequences for farmers, not just in regard to the areas mentioned but also in regard to the entire union sector.
One of the few young farmers committed to staying in farming in my constituency of Cavan-Monaghan rang me on my way to the House today and that is why I have asked for the opportunity to put his problem on the record. That young farmer put in his REPS forms in February. He has been advised by his local office that it cannot get anyone to deal with those forms because of the slow-down. This young man wants and deserves his REPS money. My area suffered greatly due to weather conditions last year. I ask the Minister to make every effort to have this dispute settled and to make available the personnel involved, or even if they are not directly involved in this dispute, to put payments through.
Last but by no means least, in an area such as Monaghan where there is an office which has had available space offered to it, the Minister should ensure that such space is put to use. Extra staff should be allowed and, in that context, promotions should be available.
The Civil and Public Services Union dispute with the Department of Agriculture and Food is now entering its sixth week. I wish to raise the background to the dispute. Two years ago, in the aftermath of the successful outcome to the foot and mouth crisis, the union raised with management the long-standing claim to improved promotional opportunities for members in the Department's local offices throughout the country. The union had long held the view that there was inadequate scrutiny of payments made to local offices and that an unfair burden rests with the clerical officers maintaining the payments system.
I understand that the Department indicated support for the position and proposed 35 additional staff officer posts, which fell far short of the union's requirement. There are 27 local offices of the Department of Agriculture and Food around the country but only 70 staff officer posts for a total of 900 clerical officers. This is a ratio of 13:1 which compares to a national ratio of 9:1 for the Civil Service as a whole, and a ratio of 5:1 in the Department of Social and Family Affairs, a Department of comparable spread to the Department of Agriculture and Food.
In regard to promotions for staff officers and executive officers, the ratio in the Department of Agriculture and Food is 6.5:1 as opposed to 2.2:1 for the Civil Service as a whole. This means that staff in Department of Agriculture and Food local offices are three times less likely to be promoted than their Civil Service colleagues.
The union spent two years negotiating with the Department to try to put in place an acceptable promotion structure. It was only at the end of these discussions, with the original offer no longer on the table, that the union reluctantly resorted to limited industrial action. This industrial action took the form of a limited restriction on counter and telephone duties. It rotated between four different regions so that not all the Department was affected at any one time. It was, by any stretch of the imagination, limited protest action which, while inconveniencing the public, was not causing serious disruption.
At the end of week two of the dispute it was agreed between the union and management to hold a meeting to discuss a resolution to the issues in dispute on Wednesday, 2 April 2003. The union was committed to getting substantive discussions going to resolve the dispute and in such circumstances would not have resorted to an escalation of the industrial action. At 4.30 p.m. on Tuesday, 1 April, the day before the meeting was due to take place, management removed all the CPSU members from the payroll in counties Mayo, Galway, Limerick and Kerry. This effectively locked them out of their employment for daring to resort to limited industrial action.
I understand this dispute is not in breach of the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness and that the management action in removing staff from the payroll when talks to seek a resolution to the dispute were about to commence has made the staff more determined than ever to achieve a just solution to the claim.
Both my colleagues have pointed out that the dispute is affecting the farming population as regards REPS payments, farm waste management payments and dairy hygiene grants which currently are not being processed. Livestock farmers have been unable to lodge suckler cow grant applications since 1 April. Those who lodged their applications before 1 April did not get back their cards. Payment of the 20% balance of the suckler cow grant is held up because of the dispute and a small number of farmers have still not been paid 80% of their grant since 2002.
As Deputy Connaughton said, it is very important at this stage that the Minister ensures that negotiations commence immediately to find a resolution to this dispute. It is not only affecting the farming community but also morale in the Department's offices throughout the country. It is very unfair because most of the people currently in dispute are female. It is sad to see so many women walking outside the local office in Tralee. It is not fair to lay such a heavy hand on this sector of the public service.
I am convinced that with the Minister's intervention, in co-operation with the Department of Finance, a resolution can be found to this problem immediately. I agree with Deputy Connaughton that the sooner this dispute is resolved, the better.
With your permission, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle, I will reply to both matters.
I thank Deputies Connaughton, Crawford and Deenihan for raising this matter because I wanted to have an opportunity to update the House on the action being taken by the CPSU and my Department in relation to the difficulties at the local offices. On the background to the dispute, last February CPSU members in the Department's local offices voted in favour of industrial action to secure what they considered improved promotional opportunities. The industrial action commenced in the local offices with effect from Tuesday, 18 March 2003. The union members decided not to perform normal duties arising from telephone calls and faxes. In addition, they refused to perform duties at reception desks. The services provided by our local offices are essential to the farming community and I agree with the Deputies that hardship is being caused to individual farmers, particularly in the context of cattle movements to marts and factories as well as direct payments to farmers.
In an effort to resolve the matter, officials from my Department met CPSU representatives on 2 April but unfortunately there was no basis for settlement. Initially the CPSU had advised the Department that it would regionalise the dispute into four regions but following the meeting on 2 April, the CPSU advised that the officers who were removed from the payroll in Galway, Limerick, Mayo and Kerry would not be returning to work until the dispute was resolved. It also indicated that it would be picketing the offices involved from 3 April. Non-local office CPSU members in the Castlebar office have refused to pass the picket since that date also.
Since 28 April, the CPSU extended its industrial action to the Department's Clonakilty office and it also engaged in limited industrial action on a random basis in other local offices in Sligo, Navan, Portlaoise and Kilkenny.
The Department's decision to remove staff from the payroll was not taken lightly. However, given that the CPSU staff members involved refused to perform core duties, arrangements were made to remove them from the payroll with effect from 2 April. The details of the staff numbers removed from the payroll are as follows: Galway, 75; Kerry, 45; Mayo local office, 51; Mayo headquarters, 37; Limerick, 31 and Clonakilty, 23. I emphasise that normal duties are being carried out by CPSU members in offices other than those in Kerry, Limerick, Mayo, Galway and Clonakilty, County Cork.
I regret the union's action is contrary to the existing Programme for Prosperity and Fairness and the new Sustaining Progress agreement and cannot be condoned. These agreements specifically exclude cost increasing claims over and above the increases provided for under the agreements. The CPSU claim is for more promotion posts and this will obviously involve higher costs for the Department of Agriculture and Food. Moreover, all unions undertook in these agreements not to engage in industrial action in pursuit of claims.
The special provisions, which are set out on page 35 of the PPF, state that no cost-increasing claims by trade unions or employees for improvements in pay or conditions of employment, other than those provided in clauses 3 to 5, will be made or processed during the currency of the agreement; employers, trade unions and employees are committed to promoting industrial harmony; and strikes or other forms of industrial action by trade unions, employees or employers are precluded in respect of any matters covered by the agreement where the employer or trade union concerned is acting in accordance with the provisions of the agreement.
The Sustaining Progress agreement reinforces this commitment. This agreement provides for a 7% pay increase for all civil servants and for the payment of the relevant awards made by the benchmarking body. In the case of the CPSU this involves a further 8.5% increase.
The national implementation body issued a statement on 10 April stating that full compliance with the industrial stability and peace provisions of the above agreements from the date of ratification is essential for the first payments to be made under the general pay terms and benchmarking awards due to be paid on 1 January 2004.
My Department is examining the staffing of local offices. However, any reorganisation involving upgradings will have to be dealt with against a background of the continuing need to control public finances. In any event, as I have said, the industrial action is contrary to the social partnership agreements and I appeal to the union to instruct its members to resume duty.
I state clearly that the scope for agreeing any deal is limited by the terms of the various social partnership agreements, the need to control public expenditure and the implications for other sectors of the public service if a concession is made in this case.
I am fully aware that the actions being taken by the CPSU members are causing unnecessary hardship to the farming community. I regret that the staff in my Department are involved in such actions and I have requested them to return to work.
I am aware that in all these cases a resolution is ultimately concluded and I am satisfied in this case that, with goodwill and a commitment from our side, the structuring and restructuring of local offices can be part of those negotiations and that a resolution can be found. I reiterate that my Department's officials are available to meet the CPSU with a view to an early resolution of this matter. Farmers have enough problems without having difficulties in getting cattle to marts and onwards. Farmers are awaiting the payments due to them and I want to see all these matters resolved, but it is impossible to do that without a degree of goodwill from the union concerned. That has become easier over the past few days. Contact is taking place between the Department and the CPSU. I hope and expect, if there is evidence of goodwill during the contacts concerned, that there will be an early resolution of this matter.
Will the Minister get into the ring?