The Rights Commissioner would only be entitled to give an opinion when there is agreement on both sides. Naturally, this field is one where one would seek to get agreement and, in the absence of agreement by both parties, a conciliation officer or anybody else would have very little business offering his opinion. There are times when one side or the other believe that the forces are in their favour and they will not accept a third party in those circumstances. It is only when they believe they are losing that certain people will look for help from outside.
The main idea put forward on the last day on which the Seanad discussed this was the extension of the divisions of the Labour Court. In this Bill, I was seeking powers to have three sections in the Labour Court. Senators Dooge and, I think, Crowley also spoke of decentralising the court and asked the question if three sections were enough.
I will say again that a number of people in the Dáil made strong pleas for an increased number of sections of the court. If the court was an accepted arbitrator, and if by its actions it was immediately accepted and solved problems, then I would see the point in having as many courts as we could have available in as many places as possible, but the experience to date— and this is a view of most people who have experience of industrial relations —is that they will agree, privately at any rate, that disputes take on a life of their own. I will not go all the way with what the Deputy said in the Dáil that it was like a boil coming to a head and suppurating and needed time to be fit for incision.
Those experienced know that early offers of recommendations to settle disputes are rejected out of hand. They do not fit in with the emotions of the situation or the thinking of the two parties. It takes a little bit of time, of muscle-flexing if you like, or even the use of force, negotiation and argument, before people will accept they have gone on long enough and that perhaps an outside third party could help them then. You could be criticised for saying a dispute must mature, but the saying of it is only to identify what is fact. The existence of adequate sections of the Labour Court is not a problem. I am convinced, from discussions with the people who are intimately concerned, that having three sections available will be quite adequate for the pressure period and will mean that for long periods of the year we will have the courts worthy of their white gloves, or whatever courts get when they do not have any business.
My whole thinking about the Labour Court, after the experience I have had in this field, has been that the court should become less thought of as a court and more as a servant from the conciliation aspect. We who have dealt with it here in the Seanad, in the Dáil, in the law, and those who have dealt with it in practice in the court realise it is not, in fact, a court as a court of law handing down decisions. Much of the public feeling about the failures of the court and much of the public demoralisation in this field is due to the fact it is called a court and the people expect it to hand down decisions which would be accepted as they would be accepted in the ordinary courts of law.
Our experience has shown that the court is there in the hope that the parties will be sensible enough to see that a decision handed down by an independent body representative of both sides may solve the problem— that neither side can win and in a situation in which both sides are continuing to lose. The people who say you should put teeth into the Labour Court are those impatient people who feel it is a bad way of doing business. It is a bad way, from the point of view of efficiency, of doing business, waiting for recommendations that are not necessarily accepted, but from the point of view of a free society it is a better way than having a court which has its recommendation enforced by some outside service—as some Deputy said, "calling in the troops, the tanks."
The only way the Labour Court can work and the only way we should want it to work is by agreement of the parties going before the court. For that reason I hoped to get away from the habit of going quickly to the court, getting a decision and making that a basis for further discussion or going to the court at the request of the other side and then afterwards rejecting it and saying that we did not want to go anyway.
I hope we will put the accent on direct negotiation between the employer and the representatives of the employees and that this negotiation will be as meaningful as possible— negotiation for the purpose of finding a solution and of being fair to everybody concerned. I know a great deal of posturing goes on and we all have experience of people crying havoc, that the plant will shut down and the country will break up, but those near the scene have become familiar with the various cries of anguish which have been ignored. I think that with all the noise they are making they are still coming out about even in their battles and nobody has taken too much out of the situation except in regard to the general economic waves of rounds which some day are going to cost us out of many markets.
In this situation here, as I said in the Dáil, they should try to put their noses into this. It is their problem: it is management's business to negotiate properly with the trade unions and it is the trade union's business to so structure themselves that they can work efficiently for their members and that they can negotiate on behalf of their members with full authority to make agreements and decisions. We should get them to work at this in a free democracy and be very certain they have failed to do this before the State takes over or tries to take over. I do not think it is possible for the State to take over altogether.
In that situation I am aware that an experienced conciliation officer can be a help. If you have people who, as I say, are posturing, making noises, and widely separated, an experienced conciliation officer can go from one room to another and bring them closer together. A certain amount of wrangling and a certain amount of horse trading, which we in this country seem to want to do, looks inefficient but it is in our nature to wrangle and horse trade. If we want to do it that way then an experienced conciliation officer can help. I hope that in the future, while we will have three sections of the Labour Court in order to give decisions where arbitration is accepted or where arbitration on part of a dispute is accepted, that the court will be a bit more remote and that the accent will be on negotiation with the conciliation officers helping the people to negotiate properly.
That is another reason why I think we should take the accent away from the Labour Court being constantly available in many places in many sections. I would say I am quite convinced now that this whole field needs people with a flexible outlook and we should be constantly thinking of new ways to solve this problem, always aware that whatever structures we offer will work only as well as the employees and the unions will let them work.
I intend that new legislation should not be repressive legislation but legislation setting up the procedures which would improve the situation. I think the suggestions made by Senators will be useful because you constantly have to think whether you want more activity or less activity in the Labour Court.
Our experience in the last 20 years with the Labour Court, with conciliation, with mediators, with the total rejection of arbitration, with national agreements and our tendency towards smaller agreements will be an important part of our industrial relations history. As a nation we will have to look at our own little history in this field and, perhaps with a flexible outlook, to devise structures suitable for the time, changed when necessary, and always trying to stress on management and on the unions that it is their function, that it is their country and that their stake is much bigger than ours.
As long as we give them the impression that we will come and solve this problem by some unknown magic that will be acceptable to both of them, then they will not get down to work this field, being a field which requires rational behaviour.
This has been attained in other countries and I have no doubt it will be achieved here, but first we have to go through the experience of rather inefficient messy behaviour. I was always taught when I was a student that good judgment is built on experience and experience is built on bad judgment. We have been through the period of bad judgment and we are gathering experience, unwelcome as it is, which in time must give good judgment and rational attitudes to our management and our trade unions.
I will keep the decentralisation of the Labour Court in mind. I have not made a decision on it yet. I do not think I will make a decision now. The size of the country and the ease of transport and the benefits of having all sections near the court seem to outweigh any theoretical advantage of having sectional or regional Labour Courts as there are in Germany. We will examine the position and see whether a regional set-up of any kind would promote better relations. Some regions might accept more readily than others a particular form of procedure. People in some parts of the country might be willing to make an act of faith and accept arbitration, whereas in other parts it would be completely rejected without consideration. This will form part of a study which will be made with a view to having frequent legislation when we get agreement.
The Labour Court should have some function in relation to non-registered employment agreements. There is not any great difficulty about this. The officials of the Labour Court get information about these agreements. Sometimes the agreements have been drawn up by the conciliation officers themselves. There is a degree of co-operation in supplying information to the Labour Court on current happenings and trends. I am advised it does not need the compulsion of law at the present time. Senator Crowley mentioned the widow of Tom Johnson, an original member of the Labour Court. I spoke to the Minister for Finance on this subject. A way has been found, apart from this legislation, of dealing with the matter. We will not deal with it here—it is not appropriate at this Stage. Perhaps we could deal with it in Committee.
There are sections of this Bill which bring up to date sections of the 1946 Act. They contain penalties for noncompliance with the Act. In one or two sections, the penalty was £100. Members of the Dáil thought that was an inadequate penalty. Since 1946, there has been a great devaluation in the pound and some Deputies felt we should raise the figure on that basis. I agreed to examine the matter. Having thought it over, I feel that all the thinking I have done on this field has been on the basis of not having penalties at all. If we are to make a democracy work we must assume that the majority of people will obey a law which has been properly thought out at the time of enactment. The idea of penalties would be to compel a minority only.
However, I will not remove the penalties. We should leave them in but not increase their amounts. The inspectors of the Labour Court are getting co-operation. When they find a difficult employer they find it more satisfactory to try to bring him round to more enlightened thinking rather than to impose a penalty and leaving him to slip back to his bad habits. It would be imprudent to bring about an attitude of mind by putting on heavier, or even savage, penalties on people in relation to matters which depend on co-operative effort for their success.
I am saying this to the Seanad because I promised in the Dáil to look at the matter. It may be justifiable on the basis of devaluation but if our thinking is to promote a feeling of co-operation and to have the law as something which people will respect and obey, then perhaps we should not put the accent on penalties. We should see what the inspectors can do in the field of co-operation. The figures mentioned are the maximum penalties under the law. One does not know what penalty a district justice would impose. A district justice does not always impose the maximum penalty. It is unrealistic to rise the maximum which has never been imposed anyway.
I have no other notes of questions raised. Senator Dooge said there was uncertainty about my approach to the Bill and to the drafting of the Bill itself. This uncertainty is based on the fact that we have two sides to industry, the employer and the employee. They have disputes about rights and conditions of employment. We are trying to have a third party represented in this area, the public. We set up the Labour Court in 1946. I am satisfied that the thinking behind that legislation was to make it available in the hope that people would use it. In recent years its recommendations have been rejected on many occasions.
One has to make up his mind, if the Labour Court should fail, whether its recommendations must be imposed, and about the question of having penalties attached to it. This is what is called putting teeth into the Labour Court. There can be a great public education policy for coaxing people to co-operate. I was uncertain about this Bill. I thought the existence of the Labour Court was blinding participants in negotiations to the fact that the finding of a solution was their task and that making industry run smoother is their job. The presence of the Labour Court allowed some people to shrug off this responsibility and to pass the matter on to the Labour Court.
In turn, this irked many workers and they rejected recommendations. I have had consultations with both employers and trade unions and they agree that the Labour Court should remain. They all agree that though they understand what is happening they do not expect a court of law. These people see the Labour Court rejected and the employers would wish that it had not been rejected so often. All parties agree that a recommendation of the Labour Court is a help in the disputes. It may look inefficient at times but the recommendations are a basis for settlement. All parties wish it to remain. The Labour Court is there only if the people wish to use it. It cannot be made to work without a change in our system of society and we are not going to do that. I hope that in the years ahead the people in industrial relations, and particularly management, from whom I expect a great deal, should try to make the system work. The Labour Court will then be as good as they want it to be.
So far as the law is concerned, it has a part to play in supplying procedures and machinery. In the two Houses of the Oireachtas we can pass any law we like. There are times during the year, as I said during the maintenance dispute, when powerful repressive laws could be passed. If a law is to fail at its first confrontation it should not have been passed. I do not believe that the law is the solution to problems in this area.
Certainly those who want laws passed to make workers behave to suit them should wake up and find out. If they will not listen they will find out the hard way that you cannot make a law work if sufficient people do not want it to work. Our whole object should be to produce between the Houses of the Oireachtas laws which will be acceptable to the people concerned, which the majority want and will help to work. This is what I have done in the drafting of this Industrial Relations Bill. We could have gone further. There is no system which people cannot impose. People ask: "Why did you not think of this or that?", and my reply is, "We thought of everything". What counts with me is what is reasonable to propose as law; what is liable or likely to be effective, and what will help the workers to get their fair share of what is going and at the same time what will protect the development of industry and of the economy generally so that we will be able to supply employment at home for our people.
We can go into the sections of the Bill on the Committee Stage, but I would say that I should like to do a lot if I knew how to get clearly in the minds of people everywhere that there are only two roads open in the field of industrial relations. One road is to get a solution by force, which I think all workers would resist; and the other road is the road of reason. This method will be abused by some people, because a minority will go against the reasonable way, but as far as I am concerned it is the way I am proposing. In fact, I think it is the only way in a democracy.
