The Bill can scarcely be said to satisfy everybody on every point but it is necessary to keep in mind that there are conflicting interests to be satisfied in the matter of holidays and conditions for agricultural workers. We must keep very much in mind the diverse pattern of our farms and our farming.
Senator Murphy asked why there should be two Bills, one following the other, one on the industrial side and the other on the agricultural side. I think the diversity of the pattern of farming is one of the reasons why it is felt a separate Bill is more likely to benefit that situation than to try to weld the entire working community of the State, regardless of their occupation, into one measure.
In regard to industrial workers, office workers, and so on, some factories and offices designate a particular two weeks in the year or a fixed and known period during which all of their workers are allowed on holiday at the one time and the entire premises or works are closed down. Our farms cannot be switched on and off, nor can there be any close-down at any time of the year. It is a difficult and complex problem and one which could not be covered by an umbrella measure such as is possible in the industrial sphere. With the traditional good relationships, despite what some might think, between our farm workers and our farmers, the position is not on a par with the employer-employee relationship. It is not so clearly distinguished as it is in other walks of life.
The farm worker, in the great majority of cases, is one of the household and one of the family. There may be instances where he is not quite that, but, by and large, the relationship is of a co-operative kind and, of necessity, it is so. That we should deal with this matter of holidays in not too strict a manner is in keeping with the tradition that exists between farm workers and farmers. The pattern of our farming, the needs of our farmers and the diversity of the work on our farms dictate that there should be looseness in these things so that the co-operation of the workers and the farmers can be used to the benefit both of the worker and the employer.
By and large, the answer to the Senator, who raised the point of the two separate measures dealing with the two groups of workers, is that it is better all round that we should have this separate approach to our agricultural workers in respect of their holiday conditions because of the dissimilarity between their pattern of life, their work and, indeed, their relationship with their employers, which is much more personal, than the pattern in the industrial field. That we should have a separate measure is all to the good and in fact serves the intention better than if we tried to lump them all together as would seem at first glance to be the appropriate thing to do.
It was said that there seems to be no improvement in this Bill as against the 1950 Act. I think the plain fact of the matter is that there is the improvement in regard to the number of holidays and the length of holidays which is double, under this measure, what was designated in the 1950 Act. I know of quite a number of cases myself where it was said that over-all the bringing in of the right to 12 holidays may not be an improvement but it is an improvement on the law. It may not be an improvement in practice. I know that the loose co-operative, friendly, personal terms on which our agricultural workers get on with their employers ensure that in very many cases compulsion or right has never been raised as to the number of holidays that an employee may get or has been getting by tradition over a long number of years.
On the strict interpretation of the Bill as proposed and the Act as it has been in operation since 1950, there is the net improvement of six days over the six that were already there. In other words, there are 12 days now as against six. That is superimposed on the conditions applying otherwise in regard to Church holidays, public holidays and half-holidays and such like. There is no worsening in that regard. The 12 days are an addition to whatever was there already and to what has been enjoyed. That is to be compared with the six days granted under the 1950 Act. There is that net improvement when this Bill becomes law.
It has been suggested that the absence of a new definition of agricultural employee, agricultural worker, or agricultural employer gives a legal let-out for certain employers to evade their responsibilities to their workers. The definition which is in existence at the moment is fairly wide. In Section 2, paragraph (1) of the Agricultural Wages Act, 1936, it is stated:
In this Act—
the expression "agricultural worker" means a person employed under a contract of service or apprenticeship whose work under such contract is or includes work in agriculture, but does not include a person whose work under any such contract is mainly domestic service:
the expression "agricultural employer" means a person who carries on the trade or business of agriculture and who employs other persons as agricultural workers for the purposes of such trade or business.
(3) In this section the word "agriculture" includes dairy-farming and the use of land as grazing, meadow, or pasture land or orchard or osier land or woodland or for market gardens or nursery grounds.
I think that definition is pretty all-embracing in so far as those who work on and derive any substance from the soil are concerned.
Over and above that, I cannot understand this idea of there being a let-out to avoid the responsibilities of employers to employees because if they can be said to get a let-out and if they get themselves out of the expression "agricultural employer," then their employees must fall into the category of industrial workers under the Industrial Acts we have been discussing. I cannot see where the let-out is. If the person is not caught under the one, he is caught under the other and in that sense there is no real let-out.
It is only right that the expression of opinion and the conviction of some of the members here should be commented upon. The bringing up of the conditions of our agricultural workers to compare not unfavourably with their counterparts in other walks of life, and in the industrial field in particular, is something to be desired. I am fully and emphatically in agreement with that belief and that expression.
Our agricultural workers, possibly without knowledge, are regarded as unskilled but they should not be regarded as such. Indeed, it is becoming obvious throughout the country that the knowledge of these agricultural workers, even though they may not have had any specific academic training as such, and may not hold any diplomas or come from any particular university or school, nevertheless, is something which has been acquired down through the generations and the centuries. That is something that places them in a category apart. Far from being of an inferior status, in my opinion, they are the superior group without whom our agricultural community cannot hope to survive, not to mention progress, in the future. Anything we do to level up or even put these people ahead in the matter of their conditions of employment is in the very best interests, not only of the workers and the farmers but of the community in general. This Bill does bring us in that direction and I think for that reason, if for no other, this is a measure which has been rightly and justly welcomed by all who spoke on it.
The question of Church holidays was raised. They are not to be reckoned for the purpose of this Bill as holidays. No change has taken place as against the manner in which they are dealt with under the 1950 Act. It will be for the farmers and the workers to make their own arrangements as heretofore in regard to these Church holidays. The worker and the farmer can arrange to have a Church holiday off and they can arrange to be paid or it can be so arranged that the worker may take the Church holiday off and will not get paid. That is not being changed or altered in any way.
