asked the Minister for Industry and Commerce if he will state if he has made any attempt to bring together the employers and employees of laundries which have been closed for the past ten weeks; and, if so, with what result.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Dublin Laundry Dispute.
I have caused numerous joint conferences to be held in connection with this strike and, in addition, I have had personal conversations with the parties separately; but, so far, it has not been found possible to procure agreement.
I am ready at any time to convene a further conference if it should appear that such a course would help to end the dispute.
Can the Minister not deal with the laundry proprietors and the workers in the laundries without other people stepping in and interfering? Has he met them as a separate body regardless of the employers' federation?
I would have no power to do what the Deputy suggests. I take it that his idea is that the representatives of the Trade Union Congress should be excluded from the workers' delegation and the employers' federation from the employers' delegation.
No, that the representatives of the laundries and the laundry staffs should meet the Minister either separately or together without any outside interference from the federation of employers, which includes big drapery concerns and other industries that have no concern with the laundry strike.
I have no means of compelling the laundry employers to negotiate otherwise than through their trade union, any more than I have power to compel the workers to negotiate otherwise than through their trade union.
Is the Minister aware that the statement made in this House by him in the early part of the year with regard to extended annual holidays is being used by the employers' federation in the laundry dispute as a justification for their refusal to grant even a partial concession until such time as there is a resumption of work? Will he say whether such an application of the statement is fair to the workers?
I am aware that the statement was made use of by some of the workers' representatives to justify a claim that the laundry workers should be considered separately from all other workers in respect of whom similar claims have been lodged. I do not think there was anything in the statement I made which would preclude the giving of separate consideration to the conditions of the laundry workers.
Is the Minister aware that it is quite possible to settle this long-standing strike if he can persuade the employers in 1945 not to insist on those standards of Victorian discipline which take the form of insisting that the workers must resume their employment before the employers will negotiate a settlement and that that is a practice which everybody hoped was buried in 1913?
The Deputy knows as well as I do that my powers of persuasion are not as effective as he would like to suggest.
I am prepared to believe that.
I have no means of compelling the parties to this dispute to accept any particular settlement. I have summoned conferences; I have urged that the public interest required that the strike be settled by agreement as soon as possible; I have endeavoured in every way to facilitate such agreement; but, unfortunately, it has not been found practicable to achieve it. If, at any time, the circumstances should indicate that the prospect of an agreement would be furthered by a further conference, I will call it without any delay.