asked the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs if he will make a statement concerning the interruption of postal, telegraph and telephone services.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Interruption of Post Office Services.
16.
The interruptions of postal, telegraph and telephone services last week arose, in part, from a strike by members of the Irish Post Office Officials Association, and, in part, from sympathetic action taken by the Sub-Postmasters Union. Because of the inconvenience caused to the public, and in view of the reported threats by the association to take further strike action, I should like to inform the House in some detail about the matter.
As Deputies know, the Department employs a large staff of approximately 16,000. That figure does not include some 2,000 sub-postmasters who are contractors to the Minister, employing their own staffs. The Departmental staff are mainly organised in two large unions. The Post Office Workers Union caters for the postman, postal sorter, telephonist, clerk and related grades, and the Post Office Engineering Union caters for technicians, installers and so on. There is a number of smaller associations for the supervisory grades. In addition, headquarters staff are organised in various General Civil Service organisations. These unions and associations are all long-established.
Pay and conditions of civil servants, including Post Office employees, are the statutory responsibility of the Minister for Finance. That Minister, in agreement with the various unions and associations in the Civil Service, representing some 25,000 workers, has operated since 1951 a scheme of conciliation and arbitration. That scheme has apparently worked satisfactorily so far as the staff are concerned and a proposal by the Minister for Labour to agree to substitute an augumented Labour Court for the arbitrator was not accepted by the staff representatives. In the Post Office, since 1961, improvements in pay and conditions costing some £5 millions have been secured by Post Office staff through it. The sub-postmasters, being contractors, have a separate scheme of conciliation and arbitration.
A new organisation was formed during the last two years, apparently by some Post Office clerks. There has been a persistent minority of clerks who object to belonging to the same union as postmen and this is at least the third attempt to organise them separately. The two earlier organisations—the last one was in the early 1950's—each disappeared after some years.
The new organisation, to mark the distinction between it and the Post Office Workers Union, calls itself the Post Office Officials Association. It proposes to organise clerks and telephonists in opposition to the Post Office Workers Union, supervising officers in opposition to the Controlling Officers Association, and postmasters in opposition to the Postmasters Association. Last week's strike indicates that it has, at most, the support of about one in four of the total numbers in these grades. The activities of this breakaway group have been condemned by the other unions and associations in the Department and by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. The larger Post Office organisations are affiliated to the Congress, and its procedures are available to dissatisfied members.
The Post Office Officials Association applied last year for a negotiating licence from the Minister for Labour, and as they complied with the statutory requirements, effectively, a membership of eight and the payment of a deposit, they secured it. Civil Service staff organisations are not in fact required to have a licence. The licence authorises the association to carry on negotiations but it does not impose any obligation on anyone to negotiate with the association or prescribe any basis or procedure for negotiation. Nevertheless, the executive of the association has used the licence to demand that negotiations should be on their terms. Spokesmen for the association claimed that the licence will give the association access to the Labour Court where its members will do better than under the conciliation and arbitration scheme. This claim is in fact invalid. The Labour Court is precluded under the legislation establishing it from dealing with disputes in the Civil Service.
When the Post Office Officials Association demanded negotiations, the position about the negotiating machinery in the Civil Service was explained to its executive. They were informed of the procedure for joining in the conciliation and arbitration scheme and asked to give particulars of membership in the grades it claimed to represent. They refused to apply or to give the information sought. Instead, they threatened to take strike action. The Department had no alternative but to resist the threat and the subsequent action. Or rather, the alternative was to let a minority of around 1,000, composed of minorities in every group it claimed to represent, wreck the negotiating machinery which some 25,000 of their fellow workers wished to maintain. Furthermore, the representatives of the other unions and associations in the Post Office have informed me that if the breakaway association were dealt with outside the normal negotiating machinery of the Civil Service, they would have to take protective action.
As Deputies know, the association staged a series of two-day strikes throughout the country last week. The strike was not supported by any of the other unions or associations. Despite pickets, some intimidation, and appeals for solidarity by the striking association, the overwhelming majority of the staff, practically all of whom are trade unionists, reported for work in the normal way. About 1,300 of all grades stayed out, 15,000 came in. In the grades catered for by the association, only about one in four stayed out. If the expression of a majority opinion were of importance to the association, it was clearly expressed.
The association, however, is reported to be pleased at the result. It says that "services were seriously disrupted in every county"—a rather smug boast, if I may say so, for public servants engaged in a vital service. In fact, postal, telegraph and telephone services were not gravely disrupted by the strike itself. In the larger towns and cities, it was the counter services catering mainly for the payment of social welfare benefits, savings bank and remittance business which were those most affected. In Dublin, apart from the night telephone service, the effect was negligible, as it was in many other areas.
The Sub-Postmasters Union, which is, in effect, an organisation of employers, was not in dispute with the Department. But it advised members to treat mails as "black" as requested by the strikers. Accordingly large numbers of sub-postmasters refused to accept mails when delivered to them. The result was that large areas were without mails and large numbers of postmen who were available to deliver the mails were, in effect, locked out. This was done in areas where few, or even none of the Head Office staff were on strike. It has been pointed out to the Sub-Postmasters Union that their action was in breach of contract.
There is one other very difficult feature of the situation. Postmasters, superintending officers and overseers are managerial and supervisory staff. The postmaster in particular is the Department's local representative, responsible for the staff and services in his district, the custody of official cash, the safeguarding of official property etc.
One postmaster and four overseers who took part last year in strike action were warned at the time that if they did so again they would be dismissed. All five took part in last week's strike. In accordance with the warning given, they were given a week to put forward anything they may wish to say on their own behalf. Other postmasters and supervisors who took part in strike action for the first time were warned against a repetition.
These postmasters and supervisors took part in a strike which was, in fact, directed against the other unions and associations in the Post Office. They did so not as a gesture of sympathy with their staffs but as members of the breakaway organisation and in support of its aims. In at least one office only the postmaster went on strike. The strike was opposed by the great majority of the staff in the grades which these officers supervise. Now these officers are returning to supervise that staff. I regret to say that many of these officers behaved with much indiscretion when out, both in relation to Departmental staff and to sub-postmasters. As a result, their capacity for exercising fair and acceptable supervision over Departmental staff or sub-postmasters has been seriously reduced.
Last week's strike was a pointless one. It caused quite unnecessary inconvenience and loss to the public. The executive of the association was warned before it began that it would achieve nothing by such strong-arm methods. The great majority of their fellow workers refused to support the strike, and I hope that the members of the association will have the wisdom to accept that verdict, if they will not accept anything else. The Post Office provides essential services for the community at large, and a strike aimed at disrupting those services is a blow, not against the Department, but against the whole community. There are, at least, two peaceful courses open to the association and its members. They can seek to join in the conciliation and arbitration scheme with the rest of the civil service, or they can consider the recent public offer of the services of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions made by its secretary.
Arising out of the Parliamentary Secretary's reply, which nobody could claim was inadequate, I would just like to ask him what he proposes to do to protect the public from this situation. That is what we are all interested in. We on this side of the House know it is a very complex situation but it is something which it is the responsibility of the Parliamentary Secretary and the Government to deal with. What is going to be done?
I think I have made it pretty clear in, as the Deputy says, the comprehensive reply that we cannot stand for this type of action and that we have suggested either of two courses to the Post Office Officials Association. Certainly it would be far better at this stage to await the outcome of this suggestion.
If the Post Office Officials Association do not want conciliation and arbitration at any cost, what will happen? Will we have another disruption of the postal and telephone services?
You will get a leather medal for that question, and that is all you will get.