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Seanad Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 20 Mar 1991

Vol. 128 No. 4

Worker Protection (Regular Part-Time Employees) Bill, 1990: Second Stage.

Question proposed: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

This Bill is about change. We are living in a time of a profound rhythm and complexity of change and this is manifest everywhere, not least in the workplace. One of the many features of workplace change has been the alteration in working time and working relationships.

It has been apparent for some time that a growing number of people in the workforce are employed in some alternative to the traditional full-time job. This has called into question the adequacy of current protective legislation, which to a large extent is aimed at meeting the needs of full-time employees. As the law stands, many part-time workers could have many years service with the same employer and yet have no entitlement to holidays, maternity leave, minimum notice or redundancy payments and have no redress in the event of unfair dismissal. This Bill is designed to rectify that situation.

The purpose of the Bill is to ensure that part-time workers who are normally expected to work for at least eight hours a week for an employer and have completed 13 weeks continuous service with the employer, will enjoy the same protection under labour legislation as full-time workers. By "labour legislation" I mean the Redundancy Payments Acts, 1967 to 1990, the Holidays (Employees) Act, 1973, the Minimum Notice and Terms of Employment Acts, 1973 and 1984, the Worker Participation (State Enterprises) Acts, 1977 and 1988, the Unfair Dismissals Act, 1977, the Maternity Protection of Employees Act, 1981 and the Protection of Employees (Employers Insolvency) Acts, 1984 and 1990. What I am doing, therefore, in this short Bill is amending seven separate sets of enactments, some of which date back almost a quarter of a century.

There are two points which I want to emphasise at the outset. One is that all workers including part-time workers are already covered by some of the labour legislation in force. I would like to underline this. No distinction is drawn between full-time and part-time workers in the laws which deal with such matters as occupational safety and health, employment equality, the protection of young persons, the protection of employment or the payment of wages. Their exclusion from the Acts which I mention stems from provisions in those Acts which specify weekly hours threshold of 18 hours or, in the case of the Holidays Act, a threshold of 120 hours a month or 1,400 hours a year.

The second point I want to underscore is that this Bill is about part-time employees as defined in the various Acts being amended. It is not about contract workers or agency workers. Nor does it introduce rights or entitlements which are not available to full-time workers. It is my intention — and this is a commitment in the Programme for Economic and Social Progress— to examine several issues which have arisen for agency workers, both full-time and part-time and similarly to explore in somewhat greater depth questions posed by the spread of contract work. This Bill is not the place and this is not the time to tackle these issues and it is as well for me to clarify that at this early stage.

By way of introduction I would like to focus on five main themes: why the State should consider action in respect of part-time workers; the extent and the nature of the growth of part-time work in Ireland; the characteristics of part-time workers, including the important gender dimension; the present situation of part-time workers under labour legislation and the need to strike a balance between, on the one hand, the real needs of firms which require greater flexibility in the organisation of production and, on the other, workers needs for stability and society's concern that particular categories of workers should not be discriminated against.

There are four good reasons why the State should consider action in respect of part-time workers. First, there seems on the face of it to be no good reason to discriminate in the matter of, say, protection from arbitrary dismissal between a person who regularly works full-time and one who regularly works part-time. In other words, the question is not so much "why statutory protection of part-time work", as "why not".

Second, much part-time work in Ireland is female-dominated and disproportionately concentrated in the services sector, typically occurring at low levels of skill, poor pay and prospects, with a low likelihood of union protection. It is difficult to imagine a group more likely to be exploited and, for that reason, more deserving of State support in terms of statutory standards.

Third, with the exception of Britain and Ireland, most member states of the European Community and many western countries have adopted action to promote part-time work and to protect the rights of part-time workers. Thus, in many European countries basic terms and conditions apply equally to full and part-time workers with both categories enjoying the same rights.

Finally, experience suggests that companies ought to adopt progressive policies in their own enlightened self-interest. Where they have not, or where they will not, the State will have to do it for them.

It is my judgment that developments in relation to the recent growth and changing composition of part-time work requires that State action in relation to this category cannot be delayed further.

The labour force survey of 1975 provides the first set of data on part-time work in Ireland. Between that year and 1989, the most recent year for which we have data, the number of part-time workers increased from 71,500 to 82,000. Although this represents an increase of 10,500 part-time jobs over 14 years, or 15 per cent over the 1975 level, the proportion of persons working part-time in Ireland has remained relatively unchanged. In 1975 part-time workers represented about 6.7 per cent of those with an occupation and the share in 1989 was only slightly larger at 7.5 per cent. Moreover, research carried out by Dr. Eileen Drew of TCD demonstrates that it has not been a steady growth but a fluctuating one with part-time workers accounting for 7.3 per cent of persons with an occupation in 1977, 5.1 per cent in 1979, regaining in 1983 the 1975 level of 6.7 per cent and peaking in 1988 at 7.8 per cent before declining slightly in 1989.

There are, however, a number of important changes over that period. One of the most important is the distinction made in the labour force between "regular" and "occasional" part-time workers. Regular part-time employment has increased very significantly since 1975 when it stood at 42,500. In 1989 that figure was 70,000. The lesson we can draw from this is that part-time work is becoming a more permanent feature of the labour market.

There are two further points of note concerning the composition of the part-time labour force. One is the change over time in the sectoral composition. In 1975 one in three part-time jobs was in agriculture, forestry and fishing. That figure has now declined to one in seven. Commerce — which includes retail distribution, banking and business services — and professional services increased their share largely at the expense of agriculture.

It is in the services sector that the most significant change in part-time work has taken place. In 1975 part-time workers in the service sector made up half of the total part-time labour force. By 1989 this figure had risen to about three quarters. This increase has been particularly rapid in the 1980s and hence it has been in services that the real growth in part-time employment has occurred which has tended to be camouflaged by the static levels of part-time work in manufacturing industry or the falling levels in agriculture.

The second point relates to the gender dimension of the part-time labour force. Relative to other EC countries, a higher proportion of men work part-time in Ireland. While an examination of part-time work between 1975 and 1989 demonstrates that it is a predominantly female option there is still a substantial number of men working part-time, even if for different reasons than women. Men account for about 30 per cent of all part-time workers and are more likely to work part-time either upon entry to the labour force, possibly to facilitate study or multiple job-holding or at an age close to or following retirement. In contrast, women account for more than three quarters of all part-time workers in the 25-44 age-bands which are associated with child rearing. Over 70 per cent of female part-time workers are married; about 60 per cent of the males are single; about one third of the part-time males were under 25, with a further third aged 25-44. In the case of females, less than one sixth were under 25, more than half were aged 25-44 and about 30 per cent in the 45-64 age group.

To sum up the scale and trends: part-time work and particularly regular part-time work has increased in the last 15 years; while it is a predominantly female option, there is still a substantial number of men working part-time in Ireland, but for different reasons than women. The part-time worker is best described as female, aged 25-44 and married with dependent children. Nearly three quarters of part-time workers are employed in the service sector.

I have already referred to the extent to which Ireland departs from the EC norm in regard to the gender of part-time workers. That is not the only important difference. In 1988 the percentage share of part-time employees in relation to all employees in the Community overall was 13.6 per cent. This ranged from 4 per cent in Greece to 29.4 per cent in The Netherlands. Other big users of part-time workers were Denmark, 25.5 per cent, and the UK, 22.8 per cent. Ireland, at 8.2 per cent ranked seventh among the EC member states, at slightly above half the European average. In other words, we have a very low level of part-time work by international standards.

A major issue associated with part-time work in many countries is that of the divergent treatment of part-time workers compared to their full-time counterparts. Part-time work is widely condemned as a threat to full-time jobs, a precarious form of employment and a source of unequal treatment of women workers. It is also defended as a regular well-protected way to reconcile the needs and preferences of workers with the operational requirements of enterprises; to create jobs; and to benefit workers with family responsibilities, workers approaching retirement and other special groups.

It may thus be argued that both the detractors and proponents of part-time work are often correct, depending on the country and the enterprise concerned. While empirical evidence on the working conditions and work history of part-time workers is thin on the ground, the perception of many is that part-time workers are unfairly treated, that their pay is low, that they lack fringe benefits and provisions and that most of them are working in job ghettos with little chance of training or promotion. There is certainly some empirical evidence in Ireland that the hourly earnings of part-time workers tend to be below that of their full-time equivalents. Research by the ESRI disclosed that the low paid part-time workers are predominantly women.

In general, existing data have not been able to answer key questions about the work history of part-time workers. Limited evidence on these issues is provided by the reasons given for working part-time in answers to the labour force survey. These show that most women work part-time because of family responsibilities or did not want a full-time job. Only 25 per cent of part-time women workers cited inability to find a full-time job as the main reason they were working part-time. These figures imply that the negative connotations associated with part-time work are not sufficient to overcome preferences and family responsibilities which at present result in women choosing to work part-time rather than full-time.

If it is the case, as some researchers have speculated, that part-time workers tend to be limited to moving frequently between low status, low skilled jobs with few fringe benefits, the increased protection of part-time workers under the law and measures to assist them to break into the wider labour market need to be placed high on the agenda. The major area of concern, as I have already noted from the contributions of Members in earlier debates, relates to part-time employees who are heavily dependent on this form of employment and who are employed permanently or semi-permanently on a part-time basis. I am concerned that regular part-time workers who are employed on a long term basis are denied entitlements to the most basic protections which are afforded under labour law. This is the inequity I am seeking to redress.

As I have explained already, some of our labour legislation, for example in the areas of occupational safety and health, employment equality and payment of wages, makes no distinction between full-time and part-time employees. However, some laws do not apply to workers who do not work at least 18 hours per week. The idea was to exclude persons whose employment was of a subsidiary nature or of inconsiderable extent. This also was a requirement of social security legislation but is being removed by my colleague the Minister for Social Welfare by regulations which will come into force on 6 April 1991. The primary protective employment Acts which currently exclude workers who are not employed for a minimum of 18 hours per week are the Unfair Dismissals Act, the Minimum Notice and Terms of Employment Acts, the Maternity (Protection of Employees) Act, the Worker Participation (State Enterprises) Acts, the Redundancy Payments Acts, and to some extent the Protection of Employees (Employers' Insolvency) Acts. Based on labour force survey figures, the 18 hours threshold has the effect of excluding approximately 20,000 employees, of whom at least three quarters are women, from the benefit of the legislation which incorporates that threshold.

The Holiday (Employees) Act, 1973, does not apply an 18 hours eligibility threshold. Instead, it excludes from annual leave entitlement those who do not work at least 120 hours per month or 1,400 hours in the leave year; and in order for a part-timer to gain entitlement to a public holiday, he must work for at least 120 hours in the preceding five weeks. The higher hours thresholds which apply under the Holidays Act have the effect of excluding approximately 45,000 part-timers, of whom 76 per cent are women, from annual leave entitlement, and an estimated 38,000, 78 per cent women from public holiday entitlement.

It is clear that part-time work meets real needs of firms and that there are many workers, too, who want to work on a part-time basis. The FIE have made clear to me why employers want more part-time work. Their reasons relate to changing market conditions and extended hours of opening particularly in services which cannot be undertaken within the standard working day or week. The major benfit of part-time work in businesses is that it provides flexibility, allowing the employer to respond to increased competition and the changing demands of customers.

Further information on the reasons which motivate Irish employers to use part-time work emerge from a survey in course of completion in the Dublin-based European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions. This survey indicates that in Ireland the introduction of part-time work is more a result of economic considerations — cost advantages to the employers — than a response to employees' wishes.

I have no intention of calling into question the need for part-time work. The fact is that employment relationships in this country, as elsewhere, are diversifying considerably in response to international competitiveness and to radical changes in the organisation of production, often stimulated by technological change. These developments, it has to be said, have helped to maintain competitiveness and to maintain and create jobs.

Very often these changes on the demand side of the labour market are accompanied by supply-side changes in the matter of workers aspirations and individuals' needs. Part-time work seems to satisfy better the aspirations and individual and family needs of a number of workers.

Part-time work can offer a valid and useful entry point to the labour market for people who are excluded from it, although, so far in Ireland, there is little evidence to support that. Part-time work will, for some, be a valid and long term employment form, providing them with the flexibility to fulfil the varied demands which they face.

My objective, therefore, in approaching the thresholds which kept some 20,000 workers beyond the pale of labour legislation, was to ensure that safeguards such as exist for their full-time colleagues also exist to protect part-time workers. At the same time I needed to avoid the danger of over-regulation which would jeopardise flexibility, hinder employment growth, and drive some of those jobs into the black economy.

The result is the simple Bill before you which extends labour legislation to those who normally work eight hours or more a week and have completed 13 weeks with the same employer. These regular part-time workers will be treated similarly to full-time workers in relation to all the various statutory rights. They will have to fulfil the same service and other conditions as full-time workers to become eligible for those rights.

Some have called for the elimination of all thresholds. In choosing to retain a threshold and to set it at eight hours a week, I was influenced by two considerations. One was the decision of Vasso Papandreou, Social Affairs Commissioner, to provide for an eight-hour threshold in her proposed directives on non-standard forms of employment, including part-time work in order to rule out any disproportionate administrative costs which could run counter to the objectives sought. Moreover, only in the past few days she has included an eight-hour threshold in her proposals for a directive on a form of proof of an employment relationship. The other consideration which influenced my selection of an eight-hour threshold was that such a low level limited the possibility of employers deliberately adjusting their working hours to bring them below the new hours threshold. I will return in a few moments to this issue of preventing the evasion of obligations under the proposed new law.

Let me explain, now, the terms of the Bill in some detail. As I have already said, this Bill, although relatively short, attempts the complicated task of amending seven separate sets of Acts. Because of this, the Bill may seem relatively obscure and inaccessible to the casual reader. This has been recognised by one eminent lawyer in the Lower House as being unfortunate but necessary in the interests of legal precision. I would like to assure the Seanad that every attempt has been made to simplify the Bill while still ensuring that it achieves its objectives without having other unintended effects on the body of legislation it seeks to amend. In passing, I would mention that adequate explanatory literature will be prepared and disseminated when these proposals have been enacted.

The Bill is structured so as to define "regular part-time" employees in section 1 and to then apply the various Acts to that group of employees in the subsequent sections. The complexity which arose when attempting this task, was that the specific provisions which currently exclude regular part-timers from each of the enactments vary. The particular group of individuals who would be categorised as "regular part-time" employees under one Act would not be identical to the group currently excluded under another Act. For example, employees are excluded from the Unfair Dismissals Act by virtue of an 18-hour per week requirement but are excluded from the Holiday Act by a 120 hour per month requirement. Because of this fact, I set out in section 1 each of the "excluding provisions" which at present prevent "regular part-time" employees from coming within the scope of each particular Act or set of Acts which it is intended to amend.

The concept of an "excluding provision" is the key to understanding the Bill and to avert any confusion I want to clarify it. What I mean by an "excluding provision" in section 1 is the provision or provisions which exclude certain workers at present from the seven sets of acts I am going to amend. If workers are excluded from those Acts by virtue of those provisions and meet the minimum criteria in this Bill they are regular part-time employees. "Regular part-time" employees, the target group of this Bill are, therefore, defined as those who have at least 13 weeks service, are normally expected to work at least eight hours per week and who are not at present covered by the relevant enactment because of an excluding provision.

As I have already argued I felt that the minimum qualifications of eight hours per week and 13 weeks service were the appropriate thresholds to define the group of regular part-timers who could and should benefit from the protection of labour law.

In introducing a 13-week threshold in the Bill it was the intention that this would ensure that students and other short term temporary part-time employees would not be covered by the Bill and that the Bill would not create a disincentive to such short periods of employment. The 13 week period ensures on the one hand an element of commitment or permanence on the part of the regular part-time employee and, on the other hand, that casual or occasional workers will still be largely excluded from the provisions of the protective legislation involved.

I decided, as set out in section 2 (1), to calculate the 13 weeks in accordance with the First Schedule to the Minimum Notice and Terms of Employment Act, 1973. This is the mechanism used to calculate continuous service the full-time employees and, since its inception in the early 1970s, has proven to be an effective and satisfactory method of determining continuity. Where any disputes arise in this respect, the employees will be able to put the case to the Employment Appeals Tribunal for determination.

Concern has been expressed that unscrupulous employers might try to evade resposibilities imposed by this Bill by (a) using fixed term contracts of less than 13 weeks duration followed by a break in employment and then reemployment on the same basis; or (b) reducing employees' working hours below the new threshold of eight per week.

I have considered this matter is some depth and, although I am satisfied that the number of employers who might try to evade their responsibilities in this way would be very small, I have concluded that it would be best to give the Employment Appeals Tribunal express powers to deal with the perceived problem. This is done in section 2(2). I would stress that this anti-evasion provision is not intended to penalise employers who use fixed term contracts or have to reduce an employee's working hours for genuine reasons unconnected with this Bill.

Section 2(3) of the Bill specifies that where a service qualification of 13 weeks or longer already applies in an Act which this Bill seeks to extend to regular part-time employees, then the original 13 weeks which is required under this Bill, to qualify as a regular part-time employee, will count towards the longer service period. An example of this arises under, the Unfair Dismissals Act, 1977, where an employee must have one year's service to be fully covered by the Act. Under this Bill the regular part-timers first 13 weeks will count towards the one year requirement. This provision in the Bill is justifiable on equity grounds but, in any event was considered necessary to avoid confusion and to reduce administrative difficulties which might arise if the 13 week qualifying period were not to be incorporated in the longer service requirement. I think the provision is justified on equity grounds.

While the first 13 weeks of employment will count towards longer service periods it will not confer any other benefits or rights under the various Acts. Section 2 (4) of the Bill, for instance, ensures that no entitlement to holidays will be built up in the initial 13 weeks period. If this were not provided for, a real cost barrier to employment beyond 13 weeks would be created, leading to a reduction in regular part-time employment opportunities. Some employers who would on the beginning of the 14th week of employment become liable for a backdated holiday entitlement might be tempted not to retain people beyond that time and section 2 (4) is intended to prevent this disincentive to regular part-time employment.

Section 3 of the Bill is a key provision. This provides for the application of all the relevant Acts to regular part-time employees, with the exception of the Holidays (Employees) Act, 1973. In other words, section 3 of the Bill extends to regular part-time employees the benefits of the Redundancy Payments Acts, 1967 to 1990, the Minimum Notice and Terms of Employment Acts, 1973 and 1984, the Worker Participation (State Enterprises) Acts, 1977 and 1988, the Unfair Dismissals Act, 1977, the Maternity Protection of Employees Act, 1981 and the Protection of Employees (Employers Insolvency) Acts, 1984 and 1990. Because of the definition of regular part-time employee which has been used in section 1 of the Act, it is possible for me to extend in this clear and simple provision all of these Acts to the target group on essentially the same basis as they are applied to full-time employees.

The provisions of section 3 are very important as they give regular part-time employees the protection of basic labour laws which have been built up in the State over the last 25 years and which are relied upon by most other workers to regulate and protect their employment. Regular part-time employees have been very vulnerable to exploitation and when this has arisen they have not been able to call on the basic legal protection that exists for other workers. For example, a regular part-time employee could be employed for ten or 15 years with the same employer, giving sterling service and could then be let go at the whim of the employer. Those workers could not in the past rely on the Unfair Dismissals Act to protect them, they could not appeal their dismissal to the Employment Appeals Tribunal and they had no entitlement to a redundancy payment after their 15 years service. It is this type of vulnerability which the provisions of the Bill seek to redress.

Another area of vulnerability arose in relation to female part-time employees who became pregnant. Women constitute almost three quarters of the part-time labour force and when these women became pregnant they were not protected from arbitrary dismissal due to their pregnancy as they were not covered by the Unfair Dismissals Act. Neither were they covered by the Maternity Protection of Employees Act, 1981, and hence they had no entitlement to take maternity leave and have their job protected until their return. These women either had to give up their job when their baby was born or else hope that the employer would hold the job open for a couple of weeks by which time they might be able to return to work. This, again, was a highly inequitable situation as the same period of maternity leave is clearly required by all women workers. The provisions of section 3 of the Bill will now provide that all women regular part-time employees will be entitled to that minimum period of 14 weeks maternity leave enjoyed by other female employees and they will be entitled to have their job held open for that period with full protection from dismissal during the period of maternity leave. I am sure the extension of these entitlements will be welcomed by the many thousands of women who are working part-time on a permanent basis.

Section 4 of the Bill deals with the extension of holiday entitlements to regular part-time employees. Basically, the Bill provides for the application of the provisions of the Holidays (Employees) Act, 1973, to regular part-time employees in the same way as they are applied to full-time employees, with the broad exception of the way in which annual leave entitlements are calculated.

Under the 1973 Act, employees who work at least 120 hours per month or 1,400 hours per year are entitled to three weeks annual leave. There is no obvious equivalent to the 120 hour requirement for regular part-time employees as defined in this Bill. Therefore, the Bill attempts to provide an alternative mechanism which will give regular part-time employees an approximately equivalent level of entitlement to annual leave as full-time employees. Section 4 (3) (a) provides that regular part-time employees, as defined in the Bill, will be entitled to annual leave at the rate of six hours for every 100 hours worked.

Other important provisions of the Holiday (Employees) Act, 1973, such as the public holiday entitlement and the method of determining times and pay for annual leave, are being extended, under section 4 of the Bill, to all regular part-time employees. I regard this section as one of great importance as, in the past, a regular part-time employee could be working year in, year out, without getting any annual holidays or any time off or compensation for public holidays. I believe this was an intolerable position and that it was not correct that people who are permanent members of the labour force should be left open to this form of exploitation. Accordingly, I feel that the provisions in section 4 of the Bill will also be welcomed by all in the House and will safeguard the rights of these employees to an annual holiday and to the public holidays which are at present enjoyed by the vast majority of the labour force.

Because the Holidays (Employees) Act, 1973 is a relatively complex Act drafted primarily with the intention of providing entitlements to full-time employees, a number of the provisions of that Act have had to be amended to make them applicable to regular part-time employees. I would like to explain the purpose of some of these provisions as they may seem somewhat obscure to some Members of the House.

Section 4 (2) is intended to ensure that provisions in the 1973 Act which are not appropriate to "regular part-time employees" are not applied to them.

Section 4 (3) (b) provides that time spent by regular part-time employees on annual leave shall count as time worked for the purposes of earning annual leave entitlement. The subsection replaces an equivalent section in the 1973 Act, part of the wording of which is not appropriate in the context of regular part-time employees.

Section 4 (3) (c) modifies further provisions in the Act of 1973, the wording of which is not appropriate in relation to regular part-time employees. Under the Act of 1973 a qualifying employee with eight months service is generally entitled to an unbroken period of leave of two weeks. Section 4 (3) (c) provides an equivalent entitlement for regular part-time employees. Because the annual leave entitlement of regular part-time employees is to be reckoned in terms of hours rather than weeks, it is necessary to provide an alternative to the full-timer's two week entitlement. The alternative provided in the Bill in section 4 (3) (c) is a choice between the leave entitlement earned over the eight months period concerned or of two-thirds of the total leave entitlement earned in the year concerned. Either way, regular part-time workers will be entitled to an unbroken period away from the workplace as their full-time colleagues are at present.

Section 4 (3) (d) of the Bill also modifies a provision of the 1973 Act part of the wording of which is not appropriate in relation to regular part-time employees. Section 5 (1) of the 1973 Act provides for payment of compensation for annual leave due on termination of employment. However, the method of determining compensation in the 1973 Act is based on the concept of the employee having a "qualifying month of service". This is not applicable in relation to regular part-time employees as under this Bill they will receive entitlement on the basis of six hours for every 100 hours worked. Accordingly, section 4 (3) (d) provides for compensation on a basis which is proportionate to the normal weekly rate of pay.

Section 4 (3) (e) modifies a further provision of the Holidays (Employees) Act, 1973 the wording of which is not appropriate in relation to regular part-time employees. Section 5 (3) of the 1973 Act provides that where employment ceases in the five week period ending before a public holiday and the employee has worked for the employer for at least 120 hours in the part of the period prior to the cessation of employment, the employer must pay an extra day's pay in respect of the public holiday. There is no obvious equivalent to the 120 hour requirement for regular part-time employees. Instead, the Bill provides that they must have worked during at least four of the five weeks prior to the cessation of employment in order to qualify. This four week requirement for regular part-time employees imposes a similar obligation to the 120 hour requirement in the 1973 Act.

Section 4 (3) (f) also changes a provision in the 1973 Act part of the wording of which is not appropriate in relation to regular part-time employees. Section 6 (3) (b) of the 1973 Act provides that payment for annual leave should be "at the normal weekly rate of remuneration". However, as regular part-time employees are to be granted annual leave at the rate of six hours per 100 hours worked, this Bill provides that they be remunerated "at a rate which is proportionate to the normal weekly rate of remuneration". The concept of the "normal weekly rate of remuneration" is well established in the 1973 Act and was, therefore, retained as the general basis on which payment will be determined for regular part-time employees in this Bill.

Section 4 (4) provides that nothing in this Bill shall have the effect of granting retrospective entitlement to annual leave or public holidays prior to the commencement date of the Bill in relation to the holidays provisions. The reason for introducing this provision is to prevent part-time employees claiming on the commencement date a retrospective entitlement for holidays. Such a retrospective entitlement would impose a severe cost burden on certain employers.

Section 5 of the Bill provides for referral to the Employment Appeals Tribunal of any dispute relating to the 13 weeks continuous service and the eight hours a week required to qualify as a regular part-time employee. This is something entirely separate from disputes relating to periods of service required under, for example, the Unfair Dismissals Act or the Redundancy Payments Acts, which, as far as concerns regular part-time workers, will continue to be resolved under the mechanisms which are already used to resolve these disputes for employees qualified under the individual Acts. This is a fair and equitable way of dealing with disputes in relation to the service of part-timers and it will allow the Employment Appeals Tribunal to examine the specific circumstances of any particular dispute as to whether the employee was a regular part-time employee for the purposes of this Bill.

Section 6 simply deals with the regulations which will control how these disputes are referred to and considered by the tribunal. The remaining sections of the Bill are standard.

The Bill represents a major social advancement through the extension of the whole body of protective labour law and individual employment rights to a substantial category of employees who, heretofore, were vulnerable and increasingly subject to exploitation by unscrupulous employers. The good employer has nothing to fear from this legislation. It simply extends the rights already enjoyed by the vast majority of employees to this rather marginalised group. As a well balanced and progressive response to the needs of these employees, I commend the Bill to this House.

My approach to the question of part-time workers is coloured by my experience as a teacher. I worked as a teacher for 11 years — and I hope to return to full-time teaching at some stage — at both secondary and primary level in Dublin and Cavan. As a professional in the area of education, the luring of young people into the supermarket chains and major corporations to work in a part-time capacity for a short term buck was a major problem for us as educators. The job in the supermarket down the road was the greatest, most real and cogent counter-attraction to the classroom for young people. A number of young people had part-time work and missed out on examinations and study. They lacked motivation and were physically exhausted. They became victims in the sense that their examination prospects and educational opportunity was dwarfed and stunted by the experience of part-time working.

Worse still, when these young people reached the age of 18 they were thrown out of the institutions where they were working part-time and sent back on the unemployment register. They were sent back into a lifelong poverty trap and into a situation that was very difficult for them and their families to cope with, and with little opportunity for second chance education. That remains the frightening reality of part-time work for many young people and it colours my attitude to the question. It affects the way I look at it. It is for that reason, as labour spokesperson for Fine Gael, that I support the legislation in essence and welcome it. Any advance on the conditions of part-time workers should, in my book, be supported. I will suggest ways in which the legislation could have been improved. I will look at missed opportunities in the legislation on both Second and Committee Stages of the Bill. I hope the Minister will be forthcoming in his reply on Second Stage.

Many of our young people working part-time have been misguided and are exploited. It is very difficult for teachers, parents and youth groups to deal with this question. It is a fundamental problem for young people. Of course, there are related difficulties in that they may come from homes where there is poverty or unemployment. The more vulnerable young people come from the poorer sectors of the community and that is a double tragedy.

It should also be said that when many of the large supermarket chains — I feel very strongly about this — succeed in closing down or impoverishing a number of small businesses and grocery stores, particularly in rural areas, they do so on the backs of the exploited part-time workers in their employment. That is a sinister aspect we often miss when we look at the very attractive prices in a number of our supermarket chains. The human cost behind those prices can be an exploited part-time workforce of students and women. An exploited part-time workforce allows the supermarket chain to engage in all kinds of sales tactics and cost-cutting. The social implications of this for the small neighbourhood retail outlet are immense.

I make this point in passing but I am very concerned about it. Something that must be the concern of the Government, Opposition and all institutions of this State is that the fabric of rural life as a consequence of emigration and so on is dying and that is manifested primarily in the depopulation of rural areas. A major cause of the depopulation and debilitation of rural areas is the fall-off in the neighbourhood shop and grocery store which is so much part of the social and economic infrastructure of a rural community. Major corporations, institutions, major supermarket chains and mega-stores have successfully hoodwinked the general public with prices which they could not offer were it not for their exploitative practices in relation to their workforce. I make no apologies for drawing that to the attention of the House.

Hear, hear.

The purpose of the Bill, as outlined by the Minister, is to ensure that part-time workers who are normally expected to work at least eight hours for an employer and have completed 13 continuous weeks service will enjoy the same protection under labour legislation as full-time workers. At the moment that is 18 hours. That proposal is welcomed by my party and we consider it to be a correct response. The proposal regarding eight hours and bringing part-time workers with over eight hours under labour legislation is welcomed.

There are 20,000 people in the workforce known to be part-time. I would say that in addition to that 20,000, there are many more because there are a number of workers in the black economy who are not in the official part-time figures. The tax system can act as a disincentive in that there can often be a conspiracy between employer and employee not to declare the fact that the person is a part-time worker because were they to do so, particularly in the case of a spouse, they would be liable for a punitive rate of taxation.

I accept and would be the first to admit that rectification of our tax system is fraught with difficulty. We must use our intelligence to readjust our tax system in a way that will not interfere with our scant social services. The PAYE system is creating a black economy where a number of people are hiding the fact that they are part-time workers because they are afraid of the tax implications. That must be considered and I ask the Minister to address that question. It is not something that can be incorporated into the legislation but it presents a challenge to the Government to produce a taxation code which will be equitable, will raise sufficient revenue and, at the same time, avoid creating a black economy where there are all sorts of conspiracies to hide people's working status.

When we discussed part-time workers I made the point that it was very much a young person's issue, a student's issue. I repeat the point at the risk of being laborious that the lure of part-time work in its present form has been massively destructive to the education, social, cultural and personal opportunities of young people.

If it is a young person's issue, it is also very much a woman's issue. A matter that is of immediate concern is that 70 per cent of the part-time workforce are women. The supermarket chains are only one source, albeit a major source, of part-time work. Many women have part-time work in this area and they are very often caught up in the trap of poverty and exploitation. Many of these women will come from homes where unemployment already exists, where their spouse may be unemployed. Some women come from homes where the spouse is on a low income; some will be single women.

A breakdown of the part-time labour force indicates that a large number of the women are married and have children but many of them receive a paltry sum of money for their work. They have no security. In addition, they are in the dreadful position of having to run a home. Officially they are part-time workers in the sense that in their workplace they are part-time but the reality is that they return from that workplace to engage in a whole range of household duties, child rearing etc., that turns them into round-the-clock workers. Not only are they round-the-clock workers but they are a poor, impoverished and disadvantaged sector. The poverty trap and the system of part-time work has been one of the greatest sources of exploitation and of lack of equality of opportunity for women. It is horrendous to think that a woman who was 15 years with a firm, working less than 18 hours, would not be entitled to maternity leave. That is most unacceptable.

It would be wrong of a responsible elected representative not to welcome constructive initiatives and I welcome the fact that maternity leave will now be the right of a woman in established part-time work. It is regrettable that the Minister did not take this opportunity to introduce paternity leave. The concept of paternity leave is only now becoming fashionable on the Continent of Europe. We could be trend setters in this regard. It is now accepted that men play a major role in parenting and that is how it should be. It would be a wonderful initiative if the Minister recognised that developing social reality by introducing paternity leave. I accept that such an initiative would have economic implications but I ask the Minister to take a courageous stand on this and, with due consideration to the economic realities, to consider the introduction of paternity leave. The Minister would gain public respect for taking such an initiative. It would complement the maternity leave provision of the Act.

It is also regrettable that we have not extended the maternity leave provisions to adoptive parents. At the moment we are very conscious of adoptive parents because of the recent media interest in the Romanian babies. A considerable number of Irish families went to Romania and adopted babies there and that was a welcome development. It is because we have become much more conscious of adoption recently that I say to the Minister the provisions of this Bill should apply to a parent or a family who have adopted a child.

It is to be welcomed that access to the Unfair Dismissals Tribunal will now be extended to part-time workers. It is a pity the Bill fails to recognise one of the most important features of part-time employment and that is the prevalence of contract and agency work. Congress recommends that the Bill be amended to incorporate their definition of employer and employee. Congress suggests that such an amendment should provide that an "employer" means the person by whom the employee is employed under a contract of employment or the person who secures the services of an employee through a contract with an employment agency, or otherwise that an employee should be defined as a person insurable for occupational injuries.

I would be interested to hear the Minister's response on Second Stage to the proposition by Congress that the Bill should be so amended. If such an amendment would improve the Bill it would be wrong if we failed to do that simply because the complete initiative did not come from this House.

Congress also raises the point with regard to redundancy payments, whether exempting employers from making a contribution to the redundancy fund on behalf of regular part-time workers would interfere with the employees' statutory requirements. I would be interested to hear the Minister's reply to this.

It is a frightening concept that all part-time workers — I think this will not be questioned — are effectively in low pay posts. In essence, they must be, by virtue of the number of hours they work and because of their situation. It is frightening that two-thirds of those are women. It is an indictment of society and it raises fundamental questions that should be addressed by any Parliament interested in achieving equality between the sexes and equality of opportunity for all citizens. It is a matter that must be addressed urgently.

We will have to address with great rapidity and in a more meaningful way the matter of the income level of part-time workers. I made the point that I welcomed the extension of the rights of part-time workers to bring them under the umbrella of all existing labour legislation. I favour that, with a couple of reservations which I drew attention to and which, I presume, will be answered on Second Stage and later on Committee Stage. To give meaning and worth to this legislation, I would have thought it would be necessary to do more than we are doing about prescribing an income level for part-time workers. In that area we should be more prescriptive.

The point should be made that there are a number of benign and good employers of part-time workers. That is unquestionable and that is not at issue. That is what should exist and it is in the best interests of employers to intelligently put their own houses in order in terms of income and conditions for their workers because it has a lot of implications. Apart from the fact that it is the right thing to do, I think it creates a much more beneficial situation for the industry or business if that be the case. We have to take account of the fact that no more than in Charles Dickens's days, we still have today a number of exploitative employers. We have to accept that reality and we have to address it. It is on that account that I am concerned that aspect of the legislation is deficient. I urge the Minister to be more prescriptive about the level of income that part-time workers can, of right, earn. I believe we should prescribe a minimum rate and I put forward the view that in this country generally there should in law be a minimum income. The laws of the land should be amended to provide by right for the citizens of this country a minimum income.

The argument could be made, and it is often trotted out, that, if we are overly prescriptive or overly legalistic it can act as a disincentive to an employer. I do not accept that. I believe that in proper circumstances a reasonable level of income can and would be paid out by employers if that was prescribed, and you would find that in many cases it is already happening. It is also the case that in America where a minimum wage for part-time workers exists there is no evidence that job creation has in any way suffered as a result. I urge the Minister to think about that matter.

I am fundamentally of the view that any amending legislation of the existing situation is to be welcomed. I am very conscious that we must strive in this legislation and in other measures to give dignity to our part-time workers, to give dignity to the person who works very odd and difficult hours for low pay and with no job security. I welcome any dignity that is bestowed on such persons as a result of this measure.

I ask the Minister to respond to the issues raised by Congress which I brought before the House and to respond to the matter of a minimum income for part-time workers by law to get over problems of exploitation. If we can do that, it will be most helpful.

I welcome the Minister to the House. On the basis of his performance as Minister for Labour and in relation to the legislation he has introduced he is accepted on all sides of the House as one of the best Ministers for Labour this country has ever had. It is a tremendous compliment to him. It is also a tremendous compliment to his ability and his expertise that no less a critic than Senator O'Reilly with some few exceptions that I probably would not agree with myself, has accepted the terms of this legislation. The Minister is again to be complimented on the very progressive legislation before us today.

The purpose of the Bill is to ensure that part-time workers who are normally expected to work for at least eight hours a week for an employer who have completed 13 weeks continuous service with that employer will enjoy the same protection under labour legislation as full-time workers. That legislation will include very important measures which would include the Redundancy Payments Acts, 1967 to 1990; the Minimum Notice and Terms of Employment Acts 1973 and 1984, the Worker Participation (State Enterprises) Acts 1977 and 1988, the Unfair Dismissals Act, 1977, the Maternity Protection of Employees, Act 1981, the Protection of Employers, Insolvency Acts 1984 and 1990 and the Holidays (Employees) Act 1973. The Bill covers a wide range of legislation for part-time workers which is already available to the full-time employee. It is most welcome legislation.

I know the Minister and the Government have been concerned for some time that there are people in regular, part-time employment who find themselves outside the legal arena of legislation designed to protect the worker. This Bill will do just that. As the Minister said, somewhere in the region of 20,000 part-time employees will have a range of statutory entitlements for the first time. The fact that the threshold of 18 hours will now be reduced to eight hours is extremely progressive and ahead of many other European countries. That is extremely important when at times we are being decried for not moving with the times and for not being as progressive as other countries. The Minister has taken the initiative in this instance and we are now ahead of many other countries in Europe in relation to this type of legislation.

Women, in particular, will benefit greatly from this Bill. Three-quarters of the 70,000 regular part-time workers are women and as 20,000 of them work fewer than 18 hours they will now benefit from this legislation. The country has an increasing number of part-time workers and the growth of part-time work is actually providing job opportunities for women. Part-time work suits many women. It is important that we appreciate that. They would not be in a position to hold down a full-time job because of their responsibilities in relation to the rearing of children and other responsibilities in the home.

The situation is that the woman still remains the main worker in the home and has the greatest responsibilities within the home. That situation and attitude is changing, but is changing rather slowly. I have no idea when both the husband and wife will become equal partners in relation to the running of the home and the responsibilities therein, but at present the woman bears most of the responsibilities in relation to the home. For that and other reasons quite a number of women have to work to supplement the family budget. They make a fantastic contribution and I would have to agree with Senator O'Reilly in regard to the enormous contribution women play in relation to the whole family structure. The old adage that a women's work is never done is true. If there ever was a truism that is one. It probably goes back to our upbringing or our background. We expect to work for the day and then expect the dinner to be ready and everything laid on for us. The lady who may also be working is expected to carry out all the extra-curricular activities outside her actual workplace. I am speaking in terms of full-time women employees as well as part-time employees. There is an expectation by many men that once they have their day's work done that is it, and the lady of the house should do all that is needed after that.

In relation to adding to the family budget, there are many women, for various reasons, who would not be able to work full-time but who find it very convenient to engage in part-time work mainly for the addition to the family budget but also for the psychological reason that they are getting out of the home and into a different environment, into the work environment. In many cases women take on low status and lowly paid jobs for the benefit of getting away from the home environment. From that viewpoint, they may be victimised in terms of very low income because they are prepared to accept the low income in return for the opportunity to get out into a different environment. In many ways it relates to psychological difficulties.

It is extremely important to recognise their contribution to the labour force and to the family budget; this is exactly what the Minister is doing in this legislation. He is recognising that contribution. It is important to understand that in all developing countries there is a shift from employment in manufacturing industry into services. That is a standard progression with developing countries: the more developed a country becomes the more services will be available and the emphasis in relation to the labour force transfers from the manufacturing into the services industries.

As the Minister pointed out, in many of the services industries it suits a lot of those areas to have part-time employment because flexibility is extremely important in relation to services. On the one hand, it suits the services industries and, on the other, many people who would not be in a position to avail of full-time employment but who are very happy to be able to avail of part-time employment.

There is no doubt that there has been exploitation of part-time workers and the Bill sets out to tackle that type of exploitation. The whole area of part-time work is very sensitive and it is to the Minister's credit that he has taken such care and has had such exhaustive discussions, as always, with the various union-employer organisations to arrive at a consensus in this very delicate area. His patience in negotiating skill and his ability to reassure the various interests has marked him as an outstanding Minister for Labour. This legislation is no different from what has come through this House and the other House in the past. We have to recognise that part-time work is here to stay, there is no question about that. It will play an ever-growing part in the labour force in the future.

I am also pleased that the Minister for Social Welfare, Deputy Woods, has introduced legislation which also gives part-time workers the benefit of social security. Under that legislation, any part-time worker who earns over £40 a week will now be able to apply for social welfare payments. Along with this legislation it goes a long way in protecting the long term part-time employee. It is a tremendous and progressive step. I agree with the Minister when he stated that industry in general should adopt a progressive approach and progressive policies in their own enlightened self-interest. It would be in the interest of all organisations and companies that they would give a fair day's wage for a fair day's work. That is extremely important.

In the long term any company which adopts a progressive attitude towards its employees, be they part-time or full-time, will gain substantially from the commitment, work and enthusiasm the workers in general will return to the employer where they recognise that the employer is a fair-minded individual and is interested in their welfare. That is the attitude that employers in general should adopt because, as the Minister has said, it is in their own self-interest to do that. That there is a need for part-time work is without question. The Minister went into detail about flexibility in relation to services and so on. It is appropriate that we have this legislation before us at this time.

I am delighted with the Minister's decision to use the Employment Appeals Tribunal to deal with unscrupulous employers who try to evade the continuous 13-week working duration and the eight-hour week threshold. This is further evidence of the type of protection the part-time worker will be able to use. As Senator O'Reilly said, it is appalling that employers who have regular part-time workers working for them for ten or 15 years could, at a whim, dismiss them out of hand and they would have no way of getting any compensation or getting anyone to represent them. Equally, a female part-time employee could have continuous service over a period of time and if she became pregnant she would have absolutely no entitlement to retain her employment except for the goodwill of the employer who might say he would hold on to the job for her for a week or two or so on.

The normal statutory requirement for full-time employees is a relatively longer period which is recognised as being the time that women who have children are entitled to, and require, in order to give them the opportunity to recover sufficiently and to get back into the workplace in a healthy frame of mind and in a healthy condition. The fact that a woman is a part-time employee does not mean her physical and psychological make-up is any different from a full-time worker. Both are human beings, both go through exactly the same experience in childbearing and one should be as entitled to the same protection, regulations and legislation as the other. It is a tremendous achievement that we are now dealing with this legislation.

With regard to annual holidays, again it is very important that the regular part-time employee should be entitled to some holidays. It is crazy to think a regular part-time employees has not been entitled to an ordinary public holiday. This legislation provides for this.

The Minister's idea is to strike a balance between greater flexibility for industry and a need for stability in relation to employees. I reiterate what the Minister said, that the good employer has nothing to fear from this legislation. It simply extends the rights already enjoyed by the vast majority of employees to a rather marginalised group. It is a well balanced and progressive response to the needs of these employees.

Again, I compliment the Minister on an excellent speech. It is one of the most detail exposés of legislation I have had the good fortune to hear in this House. I congratulate the Minister on this very progressive legislation and the excellent way in which it was presented.

Tá mé ar chomh aigne leis na Seanadóirí a labhair romhamsa faoin méid atá sa Bhille seo agus chomh tábhachtach is atá sé. Aontaím leis an Seanadóir a chuaigh romham gur fiúntach an méid a dúirt an tAire agus go raibh na figiúirí a luaigh sé an-suimiúil, go mór mhór faoin méid oibrithe páirt aimseartha atá sa bhfórsa oibre.

Looking at legislation like this where you are dealing with something that is called — I use the phrase with considerable resentment — the labour market, it is as well to get some of the old myths out of the way. One of the great myths is that Irish workers are exceedingly well paid. This, of course, is not true. They are well paid in the sectors of the economy that can more than afford to pay them well. The profitable multinational sector, particularly in fine chemicals and pharmaceuticals, electronics and a few areas like that, pay people extremely well. They do it because they are enormously profitable. It is worth remembering that the relative share of profits as against employees' incomes in terms of their proportion of the national income has shifted by a considerable extent in recent years towards profits and away from wages, reflecting the extraordinary restraint in terms of wage claims of the greater part of the Irish workforce. We have yet to see the expected benefits from that shift.

The other thing I have always had difficulty with — and I want to put it on the record again — is this myth of competitiveness. Competitiveness exists. The myth is the attempt to quantify competitiveness entirely in terms of one index, namely, the growth in hourly wage rates, the growth in employee earnings. It is one of these fascinating issues where you could have interest rates shoot up and you do not have a loud shout about competitiveness, but if you have wages creep ahead of the rate of inflation for even 12 months, there is a chorus of protest that our competitiveness is being severely undermined. We had a particularly virulent chorus of this in the first half of the 1980s. We were told we were being priced out of international markets. When statistics became available — of course they are always after the event, by definition — in the first half of the 1980s Irish exports grew faster than virtually every other country in the OECD, grew dramatically faster than those of Japan, for instance, and dramatically outstretched the growth in exports, or indeed as it was in the first half of the 1980s the decline in exports, of a country that is often given to us as an image of how a labour market ought to work, that is the United States.

The evidence that Irish wages rates were ever on a threatening spiral to the extent that they would undermine the structure of industry is patchy to say the least, and in many cases non-existent. I have frequently invited employers' representatives at conferences to name the companies that they know closed down simply because the employees got wage increases representing the going rate of wage increases, where they could say unequivocally that if these workers had been prepared to accept lower increases or no increases, the company would have succeeded and where the company closed only for that reason. I have yet to be given any examples of this. I have had occasional ifs, buts and maybes but no specific examples. I say this not because I believe we can have uncontrolled wage increases but because the common sense of ordinary people will always tell them when they are being had. They will begin to believe they are being had about recent levels of wage restraints if in five years time their children are unable to get jobs in spite of the considerable restraint they have shown and in spite of the evidence available to them that the profits of the company they work for are spiralling.

I find that distasteful because it is the sort of phrase economists will churn out; the overwhelming majority of them will take exception to regulating what they call the labour market. They have a habit of talking about the labour market as if it was not different from the market in oil, potatoes or some other commodity, a commodity to be bought and sold. They seem to object when it does not allow itself to be subjected to the same fluctuations in demand and price as other commodities. They would have us believe that the people who are the units of this market should forget they are people and pretend they are things and accept the right of the market to buy and sell them with the same degree of anonymity that would apply to potatoes. It is a classic example of the inanity that passes as scientific economics and economists try to persuade the rest of us that we must accept it.

Why does it have to be said and sound almost like a heresy in economic terms that the labour market is made up of people, that they make free choices and do not operate on a Pavlovian supply and demand curve of the kind that is much loved by most economists of whatever point on the political spectrum they occupy? It is an interesting comment on economics as a so-called objective science that one has to find out an economist's politics before one can find out what he is really talking about. Imagine if the politics of a chemist or physicist had to be worked out before one could figure out what they were taking about. If one wants to know what an economist means one has to find out what his politics are because his economics are posited on that and not the other way around.

That is where the science element comes into it.

The idea that economics is a science is one of the myths that has been foisted on late 20th century humanity. It is not a science, it has none of the characteristics of a science. It is neither measurable, quantifiable, experimental nor capable of experimental testing; therefore, it is not a science. It is a useful tool that can be of some assistance, particularly to government, when it is treated with a considerable degree of scepticism. That is the only way it is useful.

I agreed with the Senator until now.

The fundamental objections to legislation like this will come from the dismal scientists. They will object categorically and consistently to regulation of the labour market because they like markets; one of the reasons they will object is because they can understand markets but little else.

The truth is that we talk ourselves into contortions of logic on the question of the workforce. For example, everybody believes labour mobility is a very good thing. The economists have convinced us that the more you have of what they call "labour mobility" the greater the chances of efficiency in the allocation of resources in the "labour market". At the same time we will all say we are against emigration, which is a classic example in the large economic unit we are now part of, the EC, of labour mobility. We are in favour of labour mobility in principle as long as it does not apply to ourselves because we know there are many other things that matter to people as much as a certain type of job, one of them being where they work.

With regard to legislation for the rights of workers, the last people to whom we should listen are those who preach the doctrine of the marketplace. Perhaps we have spent too long listening to people who preached other kinds of doctrine but we would be very foolish at this stage, having watched the world liberate itself from one nonsensical and tyrannical ideology, to allow ourselves to walk into the arms of another equally inhuman ideology.

It would be a foolish person who would deny a connection between the amount a person is paid and the persons willingness to look for work. There is an increasing tendency in our society to look at the disincentive to work in terms of the level of welfare payment that people will receive rather than in terms of the level of low wages that will be offered. I am fascinated by the implied criticism in much of what was said about the recent anomalies which suggested that it was more unfair to pay people a generous family income supplement than to excessively tax them; nobody questioned the idea of paying a man who is supporting a spouse and four children £10,000 a year in a job. The truth is that £10,000 a year to support a spouse and four children — as every Member of this House, the other House and the Government knows — is very little. If Members of this House or the other House had to support a spouse and four children on £10,000 they would have a very different view.

I am fascinated, in terms of the ideology behind a lot of the talk about incentive to work, by the farcical campaign for tax reform because there are anomalies in the PAYE system, particularly the application of relatively high rates on relatively low incomes. We have not done anything of any significance about that. We have reduced the top rate which is of no great benefit to people who were not paying it in the first place but is of considerable benefit to the tiny minority of people — the 2 per cent of PAYE — who have assessed incomes in excess of £25,000.

In terms of the issue of why and how people work, a lot of nonsense has been talked. I do not believe a word from those employers who are suggesting that this legislation will significantly reduce job opportunities and the willingness of employers to employ people because there are a couple of things that need to be said about jobs. One of them is so self-evident that it should be said at the beginning of every speech, and that is that the only jobs we want are decent jobs that pay people reasonably well. We do not want a slave labour economy. There is an implied threat by many employers and their spokespersons about the prospects of retaining jobs but our labour protection legislation is not particularly strict by the standards of northern Europe. It is probably better than that existing in our nearest neighbour but that has more to do with the historical disasters of the past ten years they will come to regret in terms of what has been done to the social fabric of that society. We have never gone down that route and I do not think even at this stage that a single political party in the State want to go that route. I had suspicions about Fine Gael for a while but they have recovered their senses.

We have a good Fianna Fáil Government.

We have had a Fianna Fáil Government, but whether the adjective used could ever be applied I am not sure.

I am surprised at Senator Ryan coming from a good Fianna Fáil background.

The most progressive social legislation was introduced under the Fine Gael Coalition.

Given how well Senator O'Keeffe knows me, it is a matter of considerable amazement that he is surprised by anything I say, even if I contradicted myself twice in the one speech.

Before I move from the incentive to work and the simplicities that underlie it, it is worth putting on the record that somebody earning £10,000 a year in Germany actually pays more tax than somebody on the same income in this country, according to the figures published in The Irish Times the day after the budget. The reason for this is that income tax rates are lower but social security contributions are dramatically higher. At the end of it if you subtract all the deductions the net take home pay is less. The only level of income where there is a dramatic difference is somewhere around £75,000 a year. Even up to £25,000 it is about £20 per week. I am not sure — notwithstanding what some people say — that droves of young Irish graduates with high level of qualifications are taking off from Ireland to work in Germany for the sake of £20 per week. Yet again we are being fed myths, we are very fond of mythology in this country; the trouble is we believe them far too easily.

Now that I have relieved myself of a few prejudices, the Bill is, of course, extremely welcome. The Minister mentioned that many part-time workers currently excluded from the legislation would be brought in under the Bill. How many of the 82,000 part-time workers will still not be protected by the legislation? I do not recall a figure in his speech. Of the 82,000, how many are working eight hours a week or less? Will the Minister clarify that in his reply?

I am glad the Minister said the Bill excludes contract workers and that he specifically said he proposes to look at that area because it is an extremely sinister development, particularly in Irish manufacturing industry. It is one that seems to have hit the food processing industry particularly strongly and it has surfaced now in the chemical industry in my home area. The trade unions in some areas have worked extremely hard to educate their members about what is being done to them. It is important to remember that a contract worker, by definition, loses all the protections of the 1906 Industrial Trade Disputes Act. If a contract worker attempts to withdraw his or her labour because of a dispute about the rate of payment he or she can be sued for breach of contract, which entirely changes the nature of the relationship and puts the individual, who is effectively a self-employed person providing a service under contract, in a very vulnerable position. Even if contract workers are organised in a union it is doubtful if the union can do much for them because any kind of collective action would again be a breach of contract. This is an area where fundamental changes in legislation are extremely badly needed. We should not allow a situation to develop where the nature of the contractual relationship between an employer and an employee can be changed simply by redefining the terms of that relationship in terms of contract work. In the interests of working people, reasonable job security, the existence of a large and effective trade union movement and long term good industrial relations, we have to ensure that contract work cannot become a way out of a whole host of areas of worker protection legislation.

This is a matter of extreme importance. I do not believe the problems of flexibility that some industries have, the need for modern, intelligent work practices, the need for the things that most industries need and are entitled to ask for from the workforce in terms of flexibility and so on, have to be solved via contract or, indeed, agency work. There are areas where specialist needs can arise on occasion and in those cases contract and agency work may well be the solution. They have always been a part of work and perhaps there is a need for more of those in certain areas. However, to suggest — as was done in my own adopted county, for fear Senator O'Keeffe will get sensitive again — that a large section of the food industry, one major co-operative, tried to get a large part of their straightforward shop floor workforce to accept a contract relationship has nothing to do with specialisation or the need to have access to specialised services or flexibility. That is an attempt to exclude the employer from most of the responsibilities that employers must take on and it should not be allowed to happen. I hope the Minister will introduce legislation to ensure that it cannot happen. It will not do any good for any part of our society.

The Minister mentioned the application of worker-protection legislation which characterised most European countries except Britain and Ireland. He mentioned the EC directive which had an eight hour minimum. Can he tell us about some of the countries of Europe which have a minimum hourly threshold? I am not trying to trip the Minister up but I am interested because it is important. Do the Scandanavian countries have a minimum hourly threshold or is this eight hours more or less a reasonable figure by European standards generally? Do any of them have a zero threshold? I suspect some of them do and I would like to know because I am afraid I do not have as benign a view of Irish employers as the Minister has. I visualise considerable readjustments; nothing as crude as people being sacked and reemployed but simply as the turnover of the labour force proceeds that one person doing 17 or 18 hours a week will be replaced by two people doing eight hours a week. This will be done gradually and slowly. That is what bothers me. I do not believe there will be a wholesale clearout next week.

I heard one of the assistant general secretaries of the ICTU claim that some employers are moving in that direction already. It is extremely important that the Minister should ensure — and I am glad there will be provisions to do so — that employers cannot do this deliberately. There is at least one major supermarket chain — Dunnes Stores — which has been berated by a succession of reports from the Labour Court about their attitude to part-time workers. I only mention the name, not in any way to abuse the privilege of the House, but because their name has already been used extensively by the Labour Court. I am doing no more than reporting what the Labour Court said. I can see the Chair getting edgy with me but I am simply reporting to this House what the Labour Court has said about a named body; I am not trying to abuse my position at all.

On a point of order, that is not a satisfactory excuse for using the name of someone or some group.

Given that the Acting Chairman has not even corrected me, I do not know what Senator Conroy is talking about.

I was about to correct you, Senator, and the fact that you admit you are out of order means you should refrain——

I did not think that, given that it was a matter of public knowledge. Nevertheless, a particular supermarket has an unsavoury reputation and I hope a careful watch will be kept on them.

Acting Chairman

Will the Senator stay with the terms of the Bill?

I think I am doing so. We are talking about part-time workers and I am talking about how they are treated. However, I have finished in that regard. I would also like to know the view of the Government to the draft directive out of which came the eight hours. Did they ask that the hours be increased or reduced? I know we have a figure of eight hours but did the Government object to the eight hours? Was there initially a lower or a higher threshold and what was the Government's view on it? The Government's view on the social charter was, to say the least, confusing for those of us who had to observe it from the outside. I got the impression we were enthusiastic about it until we got down to the details and then we wanted a lot of changes to it. I am far from clear on what our position is.

I would like to answer the Senator on that point. Our legislation had been published three months before the Commissioner published her draft but it is highly unlikely that she will get eight hours into her draft. It is a bit like the social charter where at least we were honest and said where we stood. The countries that have followed us since have done nothing. The eight hours is the Commissioner's first draft. I pre-empted that and came to that figure. My German and Italian colleagues changed their minds in the last few years, and are now trying to raise the figures.

There are of course, other areas where part-time workers are affected. The Minister mentioned the whole area of services and the banks in particular. The carry-on of the banks in their schemes to disemploy and re-employ employees — and re-employ some of them on a part-time basis — was no great example to our society. I do not believe there was any overwhelming need for that. None of us has yet found a degree of flexibility in the services provided by the banks in terms of longer opening hours, weekend opening or even lunch-time opening hours that could justify this demand for a much more flexible workforce. Many of us suspect that there is only one reason for the changes that the banks have introduced in terms of their workforce, that is a cheaper workforce. There is, in this, a great difference between what employers said when they explained to the Minister the need for increased part-time work and, on the other hand, why they want part-time work.

There is a difference between what one needs and what one wants and why one needs or wants something. Understandably, one may want something because of changes in work practices, changes in the structure of work, changes in the workforce, changes in the composition of the workforce, or in the part of the workforce, in which one thinks one has the best chance of getting the sort of workforce required. That is one thing, but if one wants part-time work simply because it is cheaper and because one can get around a whole lot of the provisions in good legislation, then one does not deserve the sympathy of either the Minister, the State or society and one should not get it.

I have some queries in relation to Irish employers. The Minister on a couple of occasions last year gave vent to some of the same frustrations. It appears that no matter how well they are provided for in terms of the tax code, wages and every other area, they do not yet seem to be able to provide the jobs which all this is supposed to do, provide jobs. We still have an extraordinarily cruel high level of unemployment. If I hear anybody else in our society suggest that all this is caused simply because our tax on work is somewhat higher than in some other countries, I will lose whatever limited patience I have left; that is not true. If I hear somebody say that the other reason is because employers' PRSI is too high, what is left of my patience at that stage will finally expire. Irish employers pay one of the lowest levels of employers' social insurance in the EC; it is astronomically lower than in some other countries and to suggest that to reduce those would shift the numbers of unemployed is not true.

When we had the PRSI incentives to encourage employers to take people on, we were told the number of people that had been taken on but the real figure is the comparison between the number taken on and the number that would have been taken on if this had not happened. These are worthy subjects of study. There is no point in the State producing incentive after incentive to employers if all the incentives do is make it cheaper and cheaper for them to employ the same number of people. We are inclined to create incentives to get people to work.

There is a serious problem about which the Minister was vocal in his Opposition days. It is true that our workforce is changing; an increasing proportion of the workforce will not be employed in the direct wealth producing area of manufacturing industry. The two important areas in society are the section that produces wealth and the section that draws in wealth from outside; in other words, internationally traded services and manufacturing industry. I am not aware of any other area of activity in our society which can contribute unless it contributes to one or other of those.

An increasing proportion of the workforce will not find work in the manufacturing industry because it is increasingly automated, which is as it should be. The function of manufacturing industry is to produce and, in the process of producing, to create wealth. The problem for this country is the scale of the export of that wealth from here. The level of profit and dividend repatriation in 1990, for instance exceeded the total value of agricultural production in that year by about 25 per cent. It represent £1 in £9 of our entire gross national product being taken out of the country. There is no point in creating wealth if it leaves the country. That scale of profit, if it were retained and reinvested in this country, would eliminate our levels of unemployment in a very short time. That is the problem with our economic policies; we get one-half of the equation which is restraint in wages resulting in high levels of profitability. This would be justifiable if the money was actually being reinvested but when £1 in £9 of our gross national product leaves the country — 11 per cent of GNP in 1989 in repatriated profit and dividends — then there is a serious problem. It could be argued that to reduce the profits of many of those multinationals by allowing their workforce to seek much higher wages would keep a considerably greater proportion of the wealth created in the State.

The Minister talked a great deal about women and the rights of women workers. It was alleged in one of the British newspapers — I think it was The Guardian— that the gap between Irish male and female workers in the manufacturing sector was the greatest in Europe and that women's wages as a proportion of men's in manufacturing industry was greater than in the rest of the EC. I found that a little surprising; I thought we had made more progress than that over the last 15 years. I would be interested to know if that is true. I cannot make up my mind about what the Minister thinks because in his speech he seemed to say that he accepts the part-time workforce, and I quote:

Much part-time work in Ireland is female dominated and disproportionately concentrated in the services sector, typically occurring at low levels of skill, poor pay and prospects with a low likelihood of union protection.

Further on he was much more cautious, he said:

If it is the case, as some researchers have speculated, that part-time workers tend to be limited to moving frequently between low status, low-skilled jobs with few fringe benefits...

I take it the Minister accepts that part-time workers are in that less than happy category. I am only picking up a detail in his speech and, therefore, I need not pursue it. That means, of course, that we have left a large section of working women in a position of enormous vulnerability. Has the Minister some further information on the income background of part-time women workers? What income category do they come from? Is the income background similar to the income background of society at large? What proportion, if married, are single parents and what proportion of those who are married are married to unemployed spouses? That would give us an even better picture of what the Minister was talking about, which is moving frequently between low status, low skill jobs with few fringe benefits. That is the picture of part-time workers and it would be good to know that we are doing something at last about an area of serious workforce exploitation.

I am glad Senator McKenna talked about the assumption underlying the presumption that many women want part-time work because of their domestic responsibilities. He was quite right to point out that that is not necessarily writ on tablets of stone. Surely the longer-term objective ought to be a system of work distribution and a system of work which facilitates and encourages an equal sharing of responsibilities between the two parties. It seems to be a reality that increasingly many women rightly feel the need to work outside the home as well as the traditional work they have done inside the home.

The solution is not to have two people outside working enormously long hours, being enormously high achievers. The solution is a distribution of work in the home and outside the home which enables both parts of people's lives to be satisfied by involvement. It might be good for many men, who are driven to a frenetic level of activity, actually to be both facilitated and encouraged to participate more in the ordinary domestic duties. It might not only be good for their spouses, it might be good for the men themselves. It might slow them down a bit and do them a lot of good. I presume in the longer term we will be talking about the sort of measures that Senator O'Reilly was talking about to facilitate paternity leave and part-time working in a way which can distribute work between the two partners in a marriage. We might even do something about politics, which has probably produced more exploited spouses than in any other area of employment in the State in terms of the presumptions of the sharing of domestic responsibility.

We would want to remember that this is important, but it will not make anybody who is badly paid well paid. It will not change by a penny an hour the wage rates that part-time workers are receiving. It will not change the fact that somewhere around 250,000 people in the Irish workforce are being paid less than £150 per week gross. While it would be comforting for somebody with my politics to be able to attribute all this to exploitative private sector employers, the truth is that a huge proportion of that quarter of a million is actually employed by the State in a variety of areas of work. The State as an employer has a particularly shameful record in terms of the wages it pays to many of its employees. There are many badly paid people in the public sector.

When our friendly economists talks about public sector wages, I wish they would go away from the average and look at the distribution of income and talk about the difference that even a 14 per cent or 20 per cent wage increase would mean to somebody in the public sector on, say, £120 per week, so that they will move from £120 to perhaps £140 per week because of this enormously generous provision for special pay increases. They will still be poor at the end of it and they will still be very badly paid. It is a tragedy that we have this huge number of people employed in the public sector in appallingly badly paid work.

I subscribe to the view that we need a national minimum wage. It was perhaps one of the great disappointments of the Programme for Economic and Social Progress that the trade unions failed to extract a commitment to that. I am not entirely sure why Irish employers objected to it other than attributing even more malign motives than I am inclined to attribute to them from time to time. I cannot see why. It is something that has worked in countries with a much less regulated, God bless the mark, labour market than our own and worked apparently relatively successfully to prevent sweatshop labour. It is something we need. It is something we need also to avoid the ridiculous anomalies that arise when we begin to put together reasonable levels of welfare benefits in certain areas and we then end up with ridiculous anomalies because of the wage rates that people are being paid. I am sceptical about so-called scientific studies which claim to detect some correlation between national minimum wages and the number of jobs that would be lost. I am profoundly sceptical about those correlations. They are to be treated with the same degree of scepticism that most of the products of that science should be treated with.

Perhaps as an afterthought, it needs to be said that one of the things that would do a lot for the rights of part-time workers would be unionisation. There is an extent to which one can criticise the trade union movement for a certain lack of a willingness to get out and recruit part-time workers. My own union, for instance, until relatively recently did not condescend to allow part-time teachers to be full-time voting members. It is relatively recently that my own union got around to recognising that part-time teachers existed and were entitled to union membership. Until recently they were not allowed to be members. They were allowed to be associated non-voting members. My own union is a good progressive union with a good record in many areas. I suspect that many other unions may have a less enthusiastic view. It is a lot of work for a branch secrertary to deal with part-time workers who perhaps are mobile and where perhaps there is a considerable turnover; and, of course, the Irish trade union movement is hopelessly under-resourced.

The Irish Congress of Trade Unions operates on what can only be described as a shoe string. For instance, the Cork Council of Trade Unions, which I have some knowledge of and which is expected to provide representatives for a range of bodies and to be the voice of trade unionism in Cork, the last time I saw it, it was operating on a budget of £1,000 per year. The trade union movement is hopelessly under-resourced and, because it is, it is not in a position to recruit part-time workers.

I hope the extension of the unfair dismissals legislation may make many part-time workers feel freer to join unions. Whatever is said about the trade union movement, and many valid criticisms can be directed at them, the single greatest protection a worker has is to be a member of a union. It at least guarantees minimum standards of wages, minimum conditions, etc. and at least they then have a voice, if nothing else, to use the legal processes to ensure that their rights under the law are made available to them.

Again, let us not get ourselves into knots about the impact of unions on industrial performance. The truth is that Irish industrial productivity, particularly in modern industries which are properly managed, with high levels of investment, is as high as anywhere in the EC. Part of the OECD, the United States, which has the lowest level of worker organisation, has had an appallingly low level of growth in industrial productivity for the past ten years. There is no reason to believe that high levels of union organisations are in any way inimical to high levels of industrial productivity. It is a matter of good management more than anything else. If there is good management and a good union, it is an asset; it is something that helps good management, not the opposite.

I would like the Minister to give us some information about what level of enforcement there is of existing legislation — the joint industrial councils that set the wage rates in certain areas. I get a bit fed up at this stage every year reading about the large numbers of solicitors', for instance, who are found guilty of paying their staff wages well below the legal minimum. Do the Minister's Department have the resources to ensure enforcement in the areas where these joint industrial councils exist? The catering industry, for instance, is another major area of potential exploitation, where many people feel there is large-scale exploitation. Yet, there are minimum binding legal agreements irrespective of whether a place is unionised or not. Is it possible to believe, given the resources, that these regulations can be enforced and will be enforced?

In regard to the constitutional right to join a union, there is a major retail chain which has expanded rapidly in this country and which the General Secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions has accused of requiring all of its employees to sign a commitment not to join a union. Has anything been done about drawing the law of the land, and indeed the Constitution of the land, to the attention of the people who run that business? The critical question for the Minister is: how will these laws be enforced for a vulnerable, less organised and frequently mobile part-time workforce? Would all these people have to take action through the civil courts? They are people who are badly paid, very often in vulnerable positions, in low skill work and, therefore, in many cases poorly educated. Unless there is some workable method of enforcement, the classic one would be through a trade union, but, short of that, does the Minister have any ideas as to how these laws can be made to stick in the area of work where they are most needed, where there is a threatening employer and a vulnerable employee?

My contribution will be brief. I want to use the opportunity to welcome the Minister and to say that every time he is present here we know he is coming with what is progressive policy. I would also like to mention, before Senator Ryan leaves, that I would have preferred him to say "our union" rather than "my union" because Senator McKenna and myself also happen to be members of the Teachers' Union of Ireland. It is quite right to mention the fact that the TUI have recently taken on board part-time teachers on a full-time basis as members of that union. It is also quite right to mention the new deal that part-time teachers in the educational sector have obtained through the Department of Education. We have seen real and meaningful progress with regard to part-time teachers. I remember teachers who, for seven years, had 21 hours a week during the school term and then, when it came to holidays, they were back on the dole again. Thankfully, that has been redressed, and not before its time.

Mention has been made that this is the year of Mná na hÉireann. In that regard, we can refer back to having elected a lady President. Since this Bill has been introduced to protect part-time workers in the labour market, I would like to use the opportunity to congratulate the Minister for having the foresight to bring this Bill forward and also to stress its importance as a piece of social legislation which mainly affects women. In his speech today the Minister told us: "The classic part-time worker is female, age 25 to 44, married with dependent children, and nearly all of those are employed in the services sector." Basically, therefore, this piece of social legislation can be claimed as another blow on behalf of Mná na hÉireann, and the Minister is to be congratulated for that.

We are all very much aware of the cleaning jobs, factory jobs, supermarket jobs, part-time jobs all over this country where employers with mainly women on their books do not allow them to work over 18 hours a week, because to do so would give them certain rights within law. In many cases these workers have had to put up with discrimination from employers out of dire necessity. On the one hand, there are women who have children, homes to run, bills to meet, shopping to do and clothes to buy. More importantly, on the other hand, is the fact that many of these women gain self-esteem from the fact that they have part-time employment. They are proud of the fact that they are contributing in some way to their own home, even though in some instances the pay may be meagre.

At the moment it is generally accepted that most of these people would work more than eight hours per week. While the Bill will not help their rate of pay or the nature of their work, it does extend a protection to all of them who work more than eight hours per week. I would like to ask the Minister, when he is replying to Second Stage, in respect of people working part-time on a consistent basis in excess of eight hours per week, is there anything in the Bill that will bar an employer, where he has somebody working 12 hours a week, taking in extra people and breaking down the number of hours that these people will work in order to keep them below the eight hour threshold? Is there any meaningful way of ensuring that unscrupulous employers do not operate on that basis?

This is the first time that part-time workers will be included in the operation of the redundancy scheme, the Minimum Notice and Terms of Employment Acts, the Worker Participation Act, the Unfair Dismissals Act, the Protection of Employees Act and the Insolvency Act. They will now also be included in the operation of the Holidays Act giving them a pro rata entitlement. All of this is excellent and very welcome.

It must be accepted by all Members on all sides of the House that this Bill is a marvellous and heartening improvement on what went before. In future, as a result of this Bill, we will cease to see these workers as victims — for instance, being punished because they had children. They will now be workers in the same way as full-time workers operating in a regulated and honourable way. Some employers will find fault and make all sorts of excuses as to how this legislation will adversely affect them. I am happy that the Minister in framing the legislation took into account not alone the legitimate claims of part-time workers but also the needs of employers for flexibility. Why would employers be afraid of this type of legislation? Employers spend a lot of money on advertising and on selling themselves by means of public relations exercises. Surely the best public relations exercise of all would be to treat their employees, be they full-time or part-time, in a fair and progressive manner. I hope that with the advent of this Bill we will have a positive approach from such employers.

The dramatic increase in part-time work required new responses. We have only to look at the increase between 1977 and 1988 when that growth went from 39,000 to 72,000. This represents 7.8 per cent of all employees. The statutory protection for part-time work has not had an adverse effect in the general labour market in Europe. The surest way to secure social change is through legislation. When a person has rights and stands in a court then that person has something that cannot be taken away. In framing this Bill, therefore, the Minister has given part-time workers something that can never be taken from them.

The Bill touches on the liberation of women. It has the effect of including the excluded. It moves people towards mutual respect and tolerance. As law, it cannot be ignored or denied. Listening to Senator Ryan denying his Fianna Fáil background, it occurred to me as a member of Fianna Fáil that if the other parties, particularly the parties of the Left, had introduced this Bill, what kudos would they be taking for doing so. I make the point here today — and I think it is worth making — that Fianna Fáil since they came into Government in 1987 have introduced very progressive social legislation and will continue to do it. But the extraordinary thing is that, as a party, we do not really claim any credit for it; we just get on with the work. The Minister for Labour must be congratulated for the quiet way with which he has gone about his business in this area. It just comes naturally to the Minister.

I am very pleased the Minister is having a look at legislation to cover contract work, because contract work is becoming a major source of employment in various industries. Senator Ryan mentioned the chemical industry——

Acting Chairman

The Senator should not refer to a Member not present in the House.

My apologies. Contract work is also a feature of the electronics industry and for that reason it is important that we would have legislation to cater for this section of the market. I would also like to mention the catering industry, because at times I have lectured to students in that industry. I have heard of experiences where these students have been exploited when undertaking a CERT course. They have been exploited when sent out to certain hotels. I suppose that is inevitable. We would need to have tighter control and a better feedback from some of these students who are sent out on a short term basis, be it for the summer or over any other training period, to find out how these young students were treated, how they were paid and to make absolutely certain that they were not exploited.

My final point will be to ask the Minister about the mechanism for making a complaint. These are low skill jobs and many of the persons involved may not be educationally well endowed. It raises the question that, if a trade union does not exist, does the Minister have in mind any particular mechanism by which these people could lodge complaints against unscrupulous employers? That being said, I welcome the Bill and I am very pleased that all sides of the House have seen fit to be supportive of it.

I certainly welcome the Bill on behalf of the Labour Party. It is a great advance in social legislation and it comes to the aid of a very substantial number of part-time workers. It represents great progress, particularly in regard to the present threshold of the 18 hours, which has been the subject of a lot of abuse. This Bill will put many things right.

However, I do not underestimate the ingenuity of a minority of employers in sidestepping their responsibilities under this legislation. I would be very disappointed if a minority group of employers, through their legal advisers, were to look for loopholes, particularly where the continuous service requirement might present them with the best opportunity — for example, having contracts drawn up that would expire before the 13 week period. If this were to happen to any great extent, there is the possibility of our having to face up to the fixed contract concept creeping in. That is not to suggest that the fixed contract concept must never be accepted, but individual employers should not have the opportunity of resorting to the fixed contract concept in isolation to get out of their obligations.

I see the fixed contract in a broader context from the 13 week period; I see it in the European context. If there is a problem about fixed contracts it should be put before both Houses of the Oireachtas where we would have an opportunity of discussing it and dealing with it before any abuses would get too far out of hand. I fear there will be many of the worst type of employer who will use the fixed contract concept to cut people out before the 13 week period has ended.

The question of the fixed contract has many ramifications. If we ever want to get round to that in the European sense, then it would need considerable discussion. For that reason I am a little scared about the ingenuity of some of these people. I know things have improved. It is a long time since I was an official of the union working with employers, but we did run up against this on quite a number of occasions. If we did not encounter this kind of thing there would not be a need for this law. It is reasonable to suggest that there will be a certain amount of ingenuity and that people will try to get around the law by way of their legal advice.

We have to accept that part-time work is here to stay and is playing a very large part in the total labour force not only in Ireland but throughout Europe. Consequently, it is very encouraging to see that the Minister has seen that it is vital to bring in this type of comprehensive legislation. However, I must express some concern at the fact that part-time work is going to increase. There are good arguments to suggest that this increase results from the need for more flexibility, new consumer demands, changes in manufacturing industry, the moving of part-time workers into services, young mothers requiring some time at home with their children, early retired people who need to pick up the extra money and so on.

Having expressed an understanding of some of the reasons for the growth of part-time work, I have to register my concern about its growth in the sense that it makes us complacent and we tend to accept it as a compensating factor, for the lack of full-time job creation. I know that is not at the back of the Minister's mind because he made a commitment to full-time job creation under the national programme but it is of serious concern. There are 221,000 people on the live register which accounts for more than one in six of the total labour force. The character of unemployment has changed regarding the length of time unemployed people are likely to remain on the live register; 100,000 persons have been continuously unemployed for a year or more. Approximately 45 per cent of all unemployed persons have been on the live register for over a year and of that 45 per cent 46,000 have been out of work for a continuous period of over three years. It is always necessary to make the observation when we are talking about part-time work that it is not a balancing factor to complement any job-creating task we might undertake.

While we can part ourselves on the back and praise the Minister — and quite rightly so — for bringing in this legislation to remedy the ills of the part-time workforce, it is sad we do not appear to be able to do anything about creating full-time employment to a greater extent than we have been doing over the years. I have yet to be convinced that jobs will be created in sufficient numbers in the next few years to make any marked impact on the unemployment situation. The employers can hardly cite trade union activity or wage increases as a reason why industry is not competitive and why markets fail to attract orders, etc. These are my concerns when we are talking about the employment situation and it would be remiss of me if I did not draw attention to that aspect of employment in the course of my contribution.

In relation to the Bill, I know the Minister received some observations from the Irish Congress of Trade Unions and I do not know exactly what answers he gave to them. There is concern that while the reduction of the weekly threshold from 18 hours to eight hours represents a substantial improvement in the conditions of employment for people who currently work more than eight hours a week, I am worried that discrimination may arise under this section. The eight hours threshold leaves the legislation open to challenge in the European Court of Justice on the grounds that it indirectly discriminates against women workers because many of them do not work eight hours a week. Secondly, the threshold could give rise to serious abuse by employers who would reduce the normal hours of part-time workers below the eight hour threshold. It is therefore a twofold matter.

The question of discrimination arises because the eight hour requirement would exclude many women workers, who constitute 75 per cent of the part-time workforce. There is a risk involved of doing something that would eventually constitute indirect discrimination. There is nothing in the Bill to indicate that the eight hour requirement can be justified on objective economic grounds. The eight hour threshold may, therefore, be contrary to the EC Directive on Equal Treatment, 76/207 EEC, which applies to legislative requirements as well as employment contracts and collective agreements. The trade union movement considers that this matter should be addressed in the legislation and recommends the inclusion of a section that would give a general commitment to the principle of equal treatment for part-time workers. I am sure the Minister has such a section in mind.

The eight hour threshold gives rise to real concern that employers will reduce their working hours to deliberately exclude workers from the protection of the Bill. I mentioned that in a broad way in my opening remarks. In the past the Labour Court has expressed concern in cases where there was evidence of specific employment policies designed to restrict part-time workers so that they worked for periods below the statutory threshold. Unless this issue is dealt with in the legislation many part-time workers could find themselves worse off following the introduction of this legislation. That is not what the Minister intended and I hope that when he is replying on Second Stage he will be able to reassure us on that and that we will have it on the record. There is a feeling that part-time workers working hours and, consequently, their pay could be reduced. They may not have sufficient power of redress or protection under the Bill.

Congress suggested to the Minister that he insert a new section in the Bill which would place an onus on employers who reduce working hours below the eight hour threshold or pursue a deliberate policy of only employing part-time workers for less than eight hours a week to prove that the shorter working hours can be justified on grounds other than the minimum statutory threshold. Disputes concerning this matter should be dealt with by the employer tribunal. It is very likely that the Minister has been notified of this by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. I do not know what reply he made nor can I get any accurate information on how the Minister reacted to that even though I made inquiries this morning. Perhaps when he is replying on Second Stage he will put the Senators' minds at ease.

In relation to the definition of "employer" and "employee", it is essential that the Bill contain a broad definition which would incorporate the atypical employment relationships which affect many part-time workers. By restricting the definition to one that is covered by the existing legislation which specifically excludes part-time workers, this Bill fails to recognise two of the most important features of part-time employment which are contract work and agency work. I understand that the Irish Congress of Trade Unions sought to have the Bill amended so that it would incorporate its own definition of "employer" and "employee" as distinct from other Bills. They felt an amendment to that effect would deal with the situation.

Section 2 relates to the question of continuous service. The 13 weeks continuous service is to be calculated in accordance with the definition set down in Minimum Notice and Terms of Employment Act, 1973. This section also provides that this 13 week period will count towards the longer service qualifications required under the Unfair Dismissals Act and under the Redundancy Payments Act.

The definition of continuity of service laid down in the First Schedule of the Minimum Notice and Terms of Employment Act, 1973, does not take account of the insecure nature of part-time employment. The trade union movement agrees that the definition contained in the Redundancy Payment Act is more appropriate and should be adopted in this Bill. They believe that this would provide that employment could be taken to be continuous if an employee is dismissed before attaining the qualifying period of service, in this case 13 weeks, but resumes employment with the same employer within 26 weeks.

The trade union movement believes that section 3 extends specific benefits to regular part-time workers. Congress are seeking clarification on two points relating to this section. Does the exemption of employers from the making of regular contributions to a redundancy fund on behalf of regular part-time workers interfere with these workers' statutory entitlements under the Redundancy Acts? Secondly, in the event of protective legislation being introduced, it should be confirmed that the benefits of such legislation would also be extended to regular part-time workers. I will leave that with the Minister.

The section extends the provision of the Holiday (Employees) Act, 1973, on a modified basis to regular part-time workers. The Bill states that the regular part-time worker will earn six hours leave per 100 hours work and proportionately less where fewer hours are worked. Entitlement to public holidays will be on the same basis as for full-time employees.

These provisions give part-time workers practically the same annual leave entitlement as full-time workers. The entitlement is set at the lowest level which does not reflect the substantial gains made through national and local collective agreements since the enactment of the Holidays (Employees) Act, 1973. In the context of the commitment in the Programme for Economic and Social Progress to review the operation of the Holidays (Employees) Act, 1973, the leave entitlement of regular part-time workers should be brought into line with current practice. This is something the Minister will have dealt with and we would like to hear about this in his reply.

It is not clear why sections 5 and 6 refer to disputes relating to continuity of service. There is a belief that this section should clearly state that regular part-time workers would have the same access as full-time workers to the Rights Commission and to the Employment Appeals Tribunal. In relation to their entitlement under the relevant legislation, it seems that it confines itself strictly to the question of the continuity of service. We know that an appeal can be made to the High Court on a point of law only.

These are my observations on the Bill which is a good day's work, although it took more than a day's work to produce it. The Minister has lived up to the promise he made in the Programme for National Recovery. I have no doubt that despite our observations, the Minister has gone as far as he could on the advice available to him. There are some things which give rise for concern and we recognise that the Bill cannot be considered in isolation from developments at Community level. The Minister is being very progressive in the area of industrial legislation and in other areas of social advancement, etc. We appreciate the Bill in toto but we would be glad if the Minister could allay some of the concerns we expressed and put replies on the record. This would be very useful to us when dealing with people who want to know what the Minister meant by this, that and the other in the Bill. I have been trying unsuccessfully to talk to someone about the aspects I have raised here. Perhaps the Minister could save me a lot of running around.

I dtosach báire ba mhaith liom fáilte a chur roimh an Aire anseo.

I consider this a very important Bill. As somebody who has effectively acted as an employer for a long time, I feel that rather than acting as a disincentive to employers, this Bill will allow for greater flexibility and will encourage further co-operation between employers and employees. I have always opposed the drawing of arbitrary lines which tend to distort the natural course of events. As our country and society develops I think we are going to find many varying patterns in employment. We have noted already that, at present, a large number of women make up the part-time labour force. This is not surprising and it is not all due to necessity. My experience is that many women nowadays choose to take part-time employment that allows them to be both homemakers and part of the workforce. I remember an employee, whom I value very much, who started a family. In that situation we were able to draw up an arrangement which suited both the employer and the employee and met the requirements of both in a very positive way. I see this type of development occuring more and more in industry. However, it would be a disincentive to this type of arrangement if basic entitlements which the employee would have enjoyed as a fulltime employee would be lost in becoming a part-time employee. Therefore, this Bill has to be welcomed.

The cost to employers of implementing this legislation will not be very great. As an employer with very limited resources, I have always operated the Holidays Act in line with what has been proposed here. We have always given our regular part-time or temporary employees holidays in proportion to the amount of hours worked in any year. We did not find that this cost very much. We found that the goodwill generated more than compensated for any minimal costs incurred. Generally, employees' performance improved once they believed that the employer was not trying to operate regulations to their disadvantage. On the other hand, I have seen considerable resentment build up in other employments where employees were kept marginally under the rate that would entitle them to holidays. These employees were working year in, year out, for the same employer and were kept under the threshold that exempted the employer from having to give paid leave. Those employers were the losers because in losing the goodwill of the employees over a very small amount of money, they lost production and work output they would otherwise have got.

I do not see this Bill as being aimed at the average employer who in respect of many of the provisions of the Bill has been acting properly, particularly with regard to holidays but at those employers who are purposely exploiting the existing legislation to take rights away from people. Similarly, for employees who have long term relationships of employment with one employer, I welcome the extension of the Redundancy Act to these people.

The statutory provisions of the Redundancy Act are minimal. What is involved is a half week's wages for those under 41 years of age, one week's wages for those over 41 and one week's wages on top of that. Even for a full-time employee made redundant after many years, the cost of the Redundancy Payments Act when taking the rebate into account is not great. We hope that redundancy is not occuring in most employments every day of the week. The extension of this safety net for workers to part-time employees is not a burden of any great significance on employers and gives some compensation for loss of employment to people who have been working over a long period of time. The Redundancy Payments Act only applies to employees who have been working for more than two years. I also welcome the protection of the Minimum Notice and Terms of Employment Act because I cannot see the difference between somebody working 20 hours a week continuously and somebody working 40 hours a week continuously. It is a false distinction.

The provision regarding the maternity protection of employees is very reasonable because somebody working continuously on a long term part-time basis should be entitled to that type of maternity leave. The Minister mentioned in his speech that the social welfare legislation to come before us next week will improve the social welfare provisions for part-time employment. That was another anomaly that needed to be addressed. The protection of workers is very important. The elimination of possible problems for 91 per cent of part-time employees is a fantastic step forward. It will force recalcitrant employers into line on some very basic worker rights. It will not cause any problems for employers who are concerned about their employees and who believe that employer-employee relationships and profitability are best achieved in a spirit of co-operation rather than in the adversarial type pattern which some people think is the best type of industrial relations. I have always found that where the basic rights of workers are protected and where there is a happy workforce, if sacrifices are needed and if workers are asked to do things over and above their obligations that they are more than willing to do so; they do not see work as a "them" and "us" situation but as a partnership in which everybody shares the fruits and has their basic rights protected.

I welcome this Bill as a very important part of social legislation. It is a Bill for the future because, as our economy develops, there will be a huge increase in the number of people who will re-enter the workforce on a part-time basis and in the number of people who now work on a full-time basis and who would opt to continue working part-time. It will allow for greater flexibility and adaptability between employers and employees to suit the working week, day and year to the requirements of each. In that flexibility I foresee better employment opportunities for employees and, in turn, the employers will be able to make more flexible arrangements with the employees to suit their requirements.

Ba mhaith liom an-mholadh a thabhairt don Bhille cuimsitheach seo. Sílim gur iontach an rud é go bhfuil an beart seo á dhéanamh. Tá go leor míreanna difriúla i gceist anseo agus go leor Achtanna an Oireachtais a chaithfear a leasú leis an mBille seo a thabhairt i gcrích. Creidim nuair a bheidh sé curtha i gcrích go mbeidh cuid den éagóir a bhí á dhéanamh ag roinnt bheag fostaithe curtha ina cheart, agus tá súil agam go bhfaighidh an tAire agus an Rialtas an t-aitheantas cuí as an obair iontach atá déanta acu sa reachtaíocht seo.

I accept that the function of the Opposition is to deal with inadequacies in legislation; rarely is it their function to bestow outstanding compliments on the Minister. There is a general acceptance for this Bill which is recognised as being progressive and which is being brought in by a Minister who is regarded as progressive. I do not quibble with either of these assessments.

I support the Bill which will extend the protection enjoyed by full time workers to a number of part-time workers. A number of interesting figures have been mentioned in the course of the debate. The Minister mentioned them in his speech and they highlight the growth in part-time work over the period 1975-89. While they highlight the growth, they also show that there has been a change in the type of work available to part-time workers. There has been a substantial decline in part-time work available in agriculture, forestry and fishing. The Minister pointed out that the drop in that sector over the 14 or 15 year period has been from one in three to one in seven. That has been offset by a growth in part-time work in the services industry.

I was impressed recently by an article by Patricia O'Donovan, Assistant General Secretary of the ICTU, which appeared in the July issue of a magazine called Newsline and I will quote briefly from it because it has a relationship with the issue we are dealing with this evening. It states:

...Women and young people predominate among low paid workers. The results show that nearly half of our women workers, that is, 140,000 out of 300,000, are in low paid work.

Debate adjourned.
Sitting suspended at 6 p.m. and resumed at 6.30 p.m.
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