The purpose of this Bill is to establish a system of insuring workers in the building trade against loss of employment due to inclement weather. The problem of loss of employment, due to inclement weather, has exercised the minds of people interested in the building trade for a considerable time and, in other countries, individual employers and groups of employers have attempted to devise ways and means of minimising the effect upon workers in the industry. In this country, we have decided to endeavour to deal with that problem by way of a national insurance scheme.
The origin of this attempt is to be found in the building strike which took place in 1937 and which lasted for a long time, as Senators will remember. One of the demands made by the workers' side in that dispute was for payment in respect of time lost due to bad weather. That demand was resisted by the employers and, during the course of the negotiations which led to the settlement of the dispute, the proposal emerged that a scheme of insurance should be devised along the lines of the State insurance scheme against unemployment for the purpose of creating a fund, from contributions to be paid by workers and employers, from which benefits would be payable to workers during loss of employment due to bad weather. This Bill was prepared in consultation with the representatives of the associations of employers and the associations of workers connected with the building industry. It is very largely their Bill. It took a long time to prepare and to get the statistical information upon which the provisions of the Bill could be based but, eventually, an agreed measure resulted from these discussions.
The Bill, as some Senators may remember, was introduced in the Dáil in July, 1939, but during the period of the adjournment of the Dáil the present war began and, owing to the circumstances then existing, the Second Reading of the Bill was not proceeded with. Some time ago I again called into consultation the representatives of the organisations which had been responsible for framing the Bill and discussed with them the desirability of proceeding with the measure. They were of opinion that the measure should be proceeded with and, consequently, the Second Reading of the Bill was taken in the Dáil and the Bill passed by that House with some minor amendments. It is not usual, I think, to have a Bill of this kind which can be presented to the Oireachtas as an agreed measure. This is in every sense an agreed measure. As I have already stated, it is very largely the product of the industry itself, of both parties involved in the industry, and the State came in only for the purpose of ensuring that the administrative scheme of the Bill would be workable. In fact, we decided to model the Bill upon the Unemployment Insurance Acts and to use for the purpose of this insurance scheme the machinery already in existence for the purpose of the Unemployment Insurance Acts.
The Bill proposes that a fund will be established. Into that fund will be paid contributions in respect of each worker employed in the building industry for each week in which he is so employed. The contributions will be paid equally by employers and by workers. The State does not propose to make a contribution to this intermittent unemployment fund in the same way as it makes contribution to the Unemployment Insurance Fund. Instead, it is proposed that the entire amount of the fund will be available for the payment of benefits and that the State will undertake the cost of administering the scheme. It is estimated that the cost of administering the scheme will be about £10,000 per year.
The Bill provides that a worker who loses his employment solely because of the fact that it is not possible to carry it on owing to weather conditions— rain, snow, frost or other inclement weather conditions—which make outdoor work impracticable, will receive benefits at the rates set out in the Schedule of the Bill from his employer. His employer will be entitled to recover the amount so paid from the fund. Apart from that variation, the general scheme of the Bill is in all respects similar to the scheme in the Unemployment Insurance Acts.
It is recognised, of course, that difficulty will be experienced, at any rate, during the period in which the scheme is being brought into operation, in defining precisely workers in the building trade. It is obvious that the building trade covers a variety of subsidiary industries and there will be many border-line cases in which it will be a matter of some difficulty to say whether the individual worker should or should not be within the scheme. It is proposed that the Minister for Industry and Commerce will have power to decide questions of demarcation, subject to an appeal to the High Court or, alternatively, that he may submit the question for decision to the High Court. I expect that in the course of time there will be a number of decisions made which will gradually clarify the whole position and ensure that there will be amongst those interested a clear understanding of the classes of workers that are entitled to insure under this measure and entitled to receive benefit under this measure and those who are not. I think, in fact, that the provisions of the Bill dealing with that most difficult problem of demarcation are as effective as they can be made. No doubt. some Senators have received representations on behalf of individual sections of workers affected by the circumstances of the building industry but who are not as liable to lose employment during inclement weather as other workers are.
It is, I think, desirable that a scheme of this kind should be spread over as many classes of workers as possible. Clearly, the larger the number of workers that are within the scheme the sounder it will be. While it is true that some classes of building trade workers are more liable to be affected by inclement weather and, consequently, will benefit more by the Bill than others, it is proposed that all workers should pay the contributions. The justification for that is, of course, that all workers are affected in equal degree by the prosperity of the industry and affected by anything that may give rise to disputes in the industry and, consequently, stoppages of work. Every class of worker employed in building was affected by the six months' strike in 1937 and it is in the interests of all of them that anything that tends to promote peace in the industry and to eliminate this most fertile cause of disputes should be proceeded with.
Furthermore, I am in the position of bringing the Bill to the House with the information that the representatives of all classes of workers affected in the building industry and of all classes of employers engaged in that industry have agreed to the measure, and I think that agreement should weigh considerably in the minds of members of the Oireachtas in considering any representations that might be made by small interests against the provisions of the measure. It is proposed, of course, that workers who are in permanent employment, who are paid their full week's wages irrespective of the possibility that they may not be able to work, due to bad weather, can be exempted from the provisions of the Bill by a certificate from the Minister for Industry and Commerce, just as workers similarly circumstanced can at present be and are exempted from the provisions of the Unemployment Insurance Acts.
One other provision of the Bill I should mention and that is the section which gives power to extend this scheme of insurance against loss of employment due to inclement weather to other classes of workers. We propose to limit the scheme for the present to the building trade but, clearly, there are many other classes of workers who are affected by inclement weather and liable to lose employment during inclement weather to the same degree or almost to the same degree as workers in the building trade, and it is contemplated that at some stage this scheme will be extended to include such workers.
