Committee on Finance. - Industrial Relations Bill, 1966: Committee Stage. – Dáil Éireann (18th Dáil) – Thursday, 24 Apr 1969

Committee on Finance. - Industrial Relations Bill, 1966: Committee Stage.

Section 1 agreed to.

SECTION 2.

Question proposed: "That section 2 stand part of the Bill."

Mr. James Tully

Section 2 as it stands reads:

The Court shall consist of a chairman (in this Act referred to as the chairman) and, either, as the Minister may from time to time in his discretion determine, four or six ordinary members (in this Act referred to as the ordinary members) of whom (if there are four ordinary members) two shall be workers' members and two shall be employers' members and (if there are six ordinary members) three shall be workers' members and three shall be employers' members.

Does the Minister not consider that he should give himself authority to further extend the court? We have from time to time found ourselves in the position that for no reason except that too much business was being put before too few people, the courts have been held up and cases which may appear to be unimportant to the court but are important to the people concerned have been held up for a considerable length of time. I am not blaming the court. They could do nothing about it. I feel the Minister should have left himself a bit more scope there so that he could extend the court further if he thought it was necessary.

Minister for Labour (Dr. Hillery)

Six is based on the experience to date and it is an assessment of what will be required in view of the experience of the court to date. The court is not always that busy.

Mr. James Tully

Not always but the Minister does appreciate that from time to time over a period of months when wage rounds are being negotiated there can be a whole clutter of cases one after another. One of the annoying things is that cases can be heard and it can be literally weeks, in some cases longer, before the court gets an opportunity of considering the evidence and giving a recommendation.

As the Minister knows there are proposals in the Bill, and particularly in some of the amendments, to widen the scope of the court considerably. This will mean additional work. The Minister seems to be happy that three courts will be sufficient to deal with the volume of business. I agree with him that there are times when there is practically nothing to be done as far as ordinary court hearings are concerned but there are times when double the number proposed here would not be able to deal properly with all the matters that come before the court. Let the Minister not tell me that it is a question of cost because in a case like this the cost to the country often is very great because of the fact that the court is not available to hear a case.

There was a school of thought in the Labour Court a few years ago, which appears to have disappeared now, that a dispute should be allowed to mature, as if it were a boil and you were waiting for it to come to a head, as they used to do in the country long ago before it could be treated. Some of those boils were left too long and they caused considerable upset to everybody including the workers in the industries concerned and the industries themselves. For that reason I would ask the Minister to consider whether or not he is sure that he is doing the right thing by limiting the number to three rather than saying that the Minister may add courts if he considers it necessary.

Dr. Hillery

This has been considered in consultation with the people using the court, with the people concerned, and from the experience to date the suggestion that arises is as embodied in the proposals, that there be provision for three sections to the court. I would leave it to the discretion of the experienced officers of the court to decide the question of whether it is comparable to a boil maturing or not but I understand that lack of sufficient staff is not as big a problem as the Deputy considers it to be. This provision does cover what are thought to be the needs of our circumstances.

Yesterday during the discussion on the Criminal Justice Bill I was here and I was rather at a loss because all those debating that Bill, with the exception of myself, were practising lawyers. There were points which perhaps I was not able to appreciate for that reason. In this case the shoe is on the other foot. I have been a practising trade union official for 22 years. I grant that Deputy Belton on his side of the fence has experience of wage negotiations.

What the Minister says is correct, All of us would love if disputes could be settled at conciliation level because usually there is a better spirit there and eventually it is a matter of cooperation between different groups. The big trouble is that the Labour Court of itself has done what I consider to be an amount of harm, because it has been insisting on disputes which have no hope whatever of being settled at conciliation level being referred to a conciliation officer, and this is simply a matter of stalling.

It seems ridiculous if I have a dispute with an employer in Cork or Kerry that, after I have gone half a dozen times and discussed the items concerned and found we cannot reach agreement, I must go down there and go over the same ground again with an officer sitting there who will admit that there is no hope of reaching agreement at that level. He will say: "I think it is a matter that should be referred to the full court", or: "I will make a recommendation to the full court." This is one of the problems. People concerned with disputes should be the judges of whether or not conciliation is the answer to the problem. If they are satisfied that conciliation will not produce a result, then there should not be any necessity to have conciliation. It is expensive; it is timewasting; and it is terribly frustrating when one has to go over the same ground again and again.

A typical example of this is local authority disputes. Suppose we have a dispute over differentials for supervisory grades with a local authority and the county manager says: "Well, I cannot agree. This should be settled at national level." You go to the next local authority and it is the same. You refer those cases to the Labour Court and the Labour Court will arrange conciliation conferences with each local authority from Donegal to Cork, and we must go around to each one of them and do exactly the same as we have done before. We have already been told they will not agree and that it must be settled at national level. We must go to the trouble and expense of doing the same thing again. We are wasting the time of the Labour Court as well. The proceedings could be shortened if the advice of the employers and workers were taken on whether it was likely to be settled at conciliation.

The Minister says many of these matters could be settled at conciliation. That may be so, but I still think it is not the answer. I am not going to press the point but the Minister should leave himself the right to appoint two or three more courts if a volume of work builds up and the only way of settling it is either to have court cases and have them cleared quickly, or have strikes scattered all over the country.

Dr. Hillery

The very existence of the Labour Court has tempted a big number of employers not even to negotiate. While Deputy Tully has deep experience in his field, my own experience over the wide field of trade union consultations is that many of them think they are dragged to the Labour Court as a substitute for meaningful negotiations. This is a fault they find in the employers' attitude to negotiations. I am certain that the Labour Court is not over-taxed with cases at that level of court sittings. I am satisfied that to provide more than we have provided in the proposal would be going beyond the estimate of those who are equipped to say what is wanted, and would be moving away from the idea of getting people to negotiate meaningfully in their own area. If they need the help of a conciliation officer or an industrial relations officer his services will be available. I think the whole movement should be towards negotiation.

Mr. James Tully

I appreciate that the Minister has experience in his Department. I am quite sure he knows that quite a number of people who negotiate on behalf of firms represent the firms on whose behalf they are negotiating. If that representative makes an agreement which he thinks is reasonable there is always a chance that he will be turned down by his principals who will say: "It is not reasonable. You should have been able to get a better settlement." The temptation in that case is to go to the Labour Court and have a recommendation made by someone outside. The firm will probably accept it if it is made by an outside body, and may not accept it if it is made by one of the employees or colleagues. I do not think there is anything wrong in that case in having the matter dealt with by the court rather than having it dragged over a long period, and if this prevents an industrial dispute I think the Minister will agree with me.

Dr. Hillery

I still think that three sections of the court will meet the need.

Mr. P. Belton

What is wrong with having the power to have four without using it?

Dr. Hillery

You would be always under pressure to appoint more and more.

Question put and agreed to.

Sections 3 and 4 agreed to.

SECTION 5.

Dr. Hillery

I move amendment No. 1:

In page 3, line 31, to delete " prepare" and substitute "make".

The Parliamentary Draftsman considered that the word "make" would be better than the word "prepare".

Mr. James Tully

I agree this is a good amendment, because as it reads the Minister could prepare something and do nothing about it.

Dr. Hillery

I think Deputy Tully is drawing from a long, melancholy experience not applicable to this scheme.

Amendment agreed to.

Dr. Hillery

I move amendment No. 2:

In page 3, after subsection (5), to insert the following subsections:

"(6) The Minister shall grant and pay to Cathal O'Shannon, upon his retirement without reappointment from membership of the Labour Court, a pension for his life of one thousand, one hundred and twenty-five pounds per annum and a gratuity of one thousand six hundred and eighty-eight pounds.

The Minister is talking about employers.

Dr. Hillery

They are to be found on both sides. They can create a lot of damage when they come out scream-ing that the proper machinery is not there—as happened last week. There can be posturing. In private, people behave more like human beings. It is not pressure from either side——

Mr. P. Belton

This has come from the officers of the Labour Court on recommendations of the unions or employers.

Dr. Hillery

It is not one side or the other.

Mr. James Tully

You will have the representatives of the people concerned in the court and they will carry back their version. Therefore, if they posture in public, there will be posturing in private also. Maybe it is more necessary in order to make one's case stronger because the newspapers are represented there to report what was said or what happened. Deputy O'Leary is perfectly correct, in my opinion, because subsection (2) looks to me very much as if one went to the pictures to see a thriller only to find that the bit where the murder occurred is left out and therefore one has only the two ends of it.

At any rate, it means that a request has been made that it be held in public. Therefore, there is disagreement obviously amongst one of the parties at least. If the court decides that some aspect of the case should be held in private so that——

Section 8, as amended, agreed to.

SECTION 9.

Question proposed: "That section 9 stand part of the Bill".

Dr. Hillery

This is an entirely new provision which I mentioned on the Second Reading. It relates to the conciliation and arbitration schemes throughout the public sector. There are different arbitrators for these claims and they always act in isolation from each other. They apply varying considerations, I think, to cases brought before them. The result has been discontent produced among different groups of workers because of different findings by different arbitrators. There has been an element of what has been called "leap-frog" introduced into the settling of wage and salary levels. I thought that both from the point of view of discontented people who came out less well-off than groups in other arbitration schemes and also from the point of view of the economy generally the arbitration part of any scheme should be done by the Labour Court. That was my original proposal.

I had intended that the Labour Court in acting in that sphere would be suitably augmented by people with all the necessary qualifications, economic and otherwise, and, if something was not resolved at conciliation, it would go to this extended Labour Court. This was not acceptable to the staff associations and unions dealing with the public sector. They objected strongly to having the arbitrator replaced by the Labour Court and what is here proposed now is a compromise which is as near as I can get to having some relationship between the decisions made in the different arbitration bodies and that is to have members of the court sit on each arbitration board. When I was introducing the Second Stage I said that I hoped those concerned would come around to my original way of thinking but I have no evidence of that as yet.

Mr. James Tully

This is rather wide. I did not study the section until now. When I first looked at section 9 (b) I felt that "the staff of" might be taken out and it would save a lot of trouble at a later stage. The section reads:

The membership of any board established either before or after the commencement of this section to report on claims in relation to the pay and conditions of service and matters relating thereto of any person——

it does not say "officer," but "person"— who—

(a) holds a position in the Civil Service of the Government or the Civil Service of the State,

(b) is a member of the staff of the Houses of the Oireachtas,

(d) is a sub-postmaster,

(e) is employed by a county committee of agriculture, a vocational education committee or a local authority for the purposes of the Local Government Act, 1941,——

I do not know exactly what this Act is concerned with—perhaps the Minister would say. This qualification means that the Local Government Act, 1941, must have a certain limitation as otherwise everybody who already has the right to go to the Labour Court would be included in this. The section continues:

(f) is employed as a teacher in a national, secondary, vocational or comprehensive school or in any similar school, or

(g) is employed by any such body established by or under statute and financed wholly or partly by means of grants or loans made by a Minister of State or the issue of shares taken up by a Minister of State as may be designated from time to time by the Minister for Finance,

"( ) In Part III of the Principal Act `worker' shall include—

(a) an agricultural worker,

(b) a servant of a local authority,

This is the first of a series of amendments that we have put down. The amendment to section 10 suggests the addition to the section of a new subsection. Section 10 reads:

(1) If an employer or a trade union representative of employers affected by a registered employment agreement complains to the Court that an employer affected by the agreement has failed or neglected to comply with the agreement, the following provisions shall have effect—

(a) the Court shall consider the complaint, and shall hear all persons appearing to the Court to be interested and desiring to be heard,

(b) if, after such consideration, the Court is satisfied that the complaint is well founded, the Court may by order direct the said employer to do such things as will in the opinion of the Court result in the said agreement being complied with by the said employer.

(2) If, where an order is made by the Court under subsection (1) of this section, the direction contained in the order is not carried out, the person to whom the direction is given shall be guilty of an offence under this section and shall be liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding one hundred pounds, and, in the case of a continuing offence, a further fine not exceeding ten pounds for every day during which the offence is continued.

(3) If a person affected by a registered employment agreement fails or neglects to comply with the agreement, the person shall be guilty of an offence and shall be liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding one hundred pounds and, in the case of a continuing offence, shall be liable on conviction on indictment to a fine of one hundred pounds and a further fine not exceeding ten pounds for every day during which the offence is continued.

We put down the amendment because we seem to try to differentiate between different types of workers in this country and one such type of worker who, on every occasion that I know of, to put it mildly, has been treated as a second-class citizen is the agricultural worker. He has not been included in the Employees Holiday Act. There is an Agricultural Workers (Holidays and Wages) Bill before the House which proposes to give these people four extra days' holidays. We were to get that Bill before Easter but it has not been introduced because agricultural workers, according to the present Government, do not count.

Looking at section 10 of this Bill we see that agricultural workers are being left out. There is an Agricultural Wages Board and their job is to fix minimum rates but they have fixed minimum rates so low that even the Government themselves have stated that the rates of pay of lower paid workers are far too low. They pontificate on the necessity to have these rates increased. If the Government wanted that, they could go to the Agricultural Wages Board and tell them that they are not doing their job; that the rates are far too low and that they will find another way of fixing rates and that would be the same way as industrial workers' wages are fixed.

It is necessary that agricultural workers' wages should be included in a Bill such as this. There is no reason why agricultural workers should not be included. One may say that servants of local authorities should not be included but we have, in local authorities as, indeed, in some State employment, productivity agreements. Is there anything wrong with asking the Minister to include in this Bill the servants of local authorities so that productivity agreements could be made legally binding and so that we could ensure that they would apply all round and that the local authority employee would be treated in the same way as anybody else?

Dr. Hillery

I am not quite sure why the Deputy came in on section 10 but I will, with your permission, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle, deal with the amendments tabled by Deputies Tully and Corish in a general way. Their amendments seem generally designed, if they are taken together, to bring some provisions of the 1946 Act to bear on agricultural workers and certain workers in State and local authority employment.

Even one amendment would dissolve the Agricultural Wages Board in favour of a joint labour committee. I suppose I should mention that a joint labour committee cannot be set up merely by stating that the Labour Court can set it up. It has to come together.

Mr. James Tully

I know.

Dr. Hillery

The implications of amendments to deal with this matter would call for a great deal of thought and of consultation with other Ministers. In fact, I do not think it could adequately be dealt with by way of amendment to this Bill at all. I intend having discussed the matter with Deputy Tully in private session in the Department of Labour, to consider this departmentally and to have consultations with my colleagues about it.

As I said, when I was introducing the Second Reading of the other Bill, I would see this Bill as one of a series of measures designed to improve industrial relations stage by stage. As we reach the various stages, we can make certain proposals. The provisions in the Bill represent, after two years of consideration and discussion, the distance which I am willing to go at this particular time. It does not in any way represent a limit to the statutory improvements which could be and will be effected.

The amendments, if I may deal with them all together, to abolish the Agricultural Wages Board in its entirety and to provide for joint labour committees would be a fundamental change after years and years. We just could not consider this in a very short time like this.

Mr. James Tully

Two years?

Dr. Hillery

At this time, having raised it now. I think it may be that close examination would indicate that there should be some changes in the method of determining the wages of agricultural workers. The House will appreciate my colleague, the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries, will be very much involved in this consideration, and I could not lightly make the changes proposed by incorporating the amendments. This is why I asked if I could deal with them in general. They represent a fundamental, substantial change and warrant special examination. I would undertake to have this special examination carried out fairly quickly. As I said, I would regard it as one step only. I do not see anything wrong with a series of Bills to deal with specific situations according as they are teased out, examined and some measure of agreement is arrived at.

At the same time, I would ask Deputies to recognise that the Bill is a product of long consultations and slow progress. Anything new added to it would have to go through the same procedure of consultation and examination. In asking the Deputies to withdraw those amendments I am only asking them to go back to what we have before the House now. If they want it, machinery can be set up quickly to examine the proposals. I would ask them to wait for another time to bring in those proposals as the product of our consultation and thinking on the matter.

I have the same feeling about the other amendments, which are designed to extend the whole of the 1946 Act to local authority employees. At the moment they only come under the part relating to access to the Labour Court. This is something new. I could not come to a conclusion on it without full consultation with everybody concerned. Those involved would be the Minister for Health, the Minister for Local Government, hospital authorities, health authorities and county managers. I am not rejecting out of hand the principle involved in the amendments. I am just saying I could not accept them without giving full weight to the views of the people involved. Again, I am prepared to do what I have done up to now—to find agreement on proposals. I am prepared to enter into consultations with the parties involved at once if the Deputies will accept that anything arising out of those consultations will be the subject of legislation at a later date.

Mr. James Tully

There are a couple of things I would like to go back on. First of all, when we were dealing with the additions to bodies in section 9, one of the bodies to which it is not proposed to add a member on the Labour Court is the Agricultural Wages Board. It would seem to be a natural thing to put one of their members on the Labour Court but there is a very good reason why it is not done. It is because of the low wages and the hours of work. When we come to talk about the establishment of the 40-hour week, we find people in agriculture with a 50-hour week for eight months of the year. Therefore, the Minister conveniently leaves the Agricultural Wages Board out of the list of bodies whose members he proposes should sit on the court.

If the Minister was really interested in doing something for low paid workers here was the best opportunity he could get. If he was not prepared to go the whole way with us, at least he could take this step of putting a workers' and employers' representative from the Agricultural Wages Board on the Labour Court. We might get somewhere with hours and have some comparison with industrial wages then. The Minister says he is prepared to set up some type of body to discuss these matters. He says the amendments introduced by us should get the same attention and scrutiny as the other matters in the Bill. I agree with him, but he seems to forget that about two years ago he was kind enough to meet the president of my union and myself. I think the Minister cannot complain about the information and details which we gave to him and his private secretary. It is doubtful if any other union would go to the trouble we did to give him the facts of life so far as lower paid workers are concerned— local authority employees, agricultural workers and State and semi-State employees. Not alone did we give this to him verbally but we gave him as much detail in writing as we could and we have been keeping him up to date in regard to what is happening and what is not happening.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Section 10 agreed to.

SECTION 11.

Dr. Hillery

I move amendment No. 5:

In page 5, to delete subsection (1) and to substitute the following subsection:

"(1) The Court may, after consultation with organisations which, in the opinion of the Court, are representative of any class, type or group of workers and of their employers—

(a) make rules which apply to, and which, in the opinion of the Court, provide for fair employment conditions for, that class, type or group of workers and are approved of by organisations representing a substantial number of the workers of that class, type or group and organisations representing a substantial number of those employers,

(b) make rules which amend any such rules and which apply to and, in the opinion of the Court, provide for fair employment conditions for that class, type or group of workers and are approved of by organisations representing a substantial number of the workers of that class, type or group and organisations representing a substantial number of those employers, and

May I ask the Minister how the fair employment rules here work? What relationship do they have to the old minimum legislation involved in the old Joint Labour Committee and may I ask whether this is an extension in theory of the Joint Labour Committee idea or whether in fact the Minister hopes to see fair employment rules embodying far more than the old minimum rules? Could the Minister give us any idea of what he expects to get from the fair employment rules so far as wages, hours and general conditions and incomes are concerned? In other words, will they try to set up better standards in industry? Obviously the overall concern of this section is for workers who are not members of trade unions. As we know, in many parts of the country there are industries which the trade unions have found difficult to organise, possibly because of the small scale of many of the units making up the industry. In Dublin there are many backstreet textile and hosiery factories. We know ourselves of very inadequate work places for juveniles and girls in the city of Dublin which trade unions have been unable to reach and organise. They can only be called sweat shops because they do not, so far as one can see, live up to standards that should be in vogue in 1969. Mainly they employ young people, girls and juveniles, and while they may comply with the actual minimum conditions under the Factories Act we suggest that the Factories Act should be updated to take into account what we expect of conditions today. I would like to ask the Minister if this fair employment rule means something more far-reaching than what we have had up to now under minimum conditions. Of course, if he wishes it to be a far more extensive thing than the old minimum regulations, then obviously it will call for a very wide increase of his factory inspectorate. The Minister can come in here with the figures but we are convinced that the actual work situation in this country is insufficiently investigated, insufficiently known. We all know of back street factories in which people are working in very bad conditions and are not organised by the trade unions. There are also hotel workers who are not organised by trade unions and it is no exaggeration to say that in some hotels that are not organised by trade unions there are employees working a sixteen-hour day. This is occurring.

The type of employee who is exploited in this situation is very often a juvenile just left school. This is one of the biggest problems I want to bring to the Minister's attention. The most exploited section of Irish labour is the juvenile section. The section between 14 and 17 years of age are now the most sweated and exploited section in the Irish work force. The fact is that as a result of our low school-leaving age we are giving an open invitation to employers to exploit this section of our society which very often, not being involved in a trade union, is unable to answer back or in fact does not know its rights. It works very long hours at very low wages in very poor conditions. I would ask the Minister to enlarge his inspectorate and to begin a pretty thorough examination or inventory of these newer industrial establishments which emerge in city areas especially and where young people work in very poor conditions at a period in their lives when healthwise it cannot do them any good for their future adult lives.

Another section which must be looked at is juvenile employment in garages throughout the country; we notice a tendency to employ young people nowadays in dead-end jobs, attending petrol pumps, and so on. This must be looked at. The overall idea of the fair employment rule should be to root this out.

Perhaps unsatisfactory conditions have not yet been ruled out but certainly totally unjust conditions for certain sections of adult labour have been eliminated. The new problem which is now emerging and which the trade unions as yet have been unable to deal with adequately is the problem of sweated juvenile labour, a problem the full extent of which we do not know but, most certainly, parents and others, who may perhaps belong to trade unions themselves, have a job to bring the attention of their trade unions to this growing problem.

Dr. Hillery

In answer to the quescer tion of safety at work I am not sure whether I have publicly announced or told the Dáil that I have given financial sanction for a greater number of inspectors, for the restructuring of the inspectorate, which is proceeding. Naturally we have to go at the speed at which suitable personnel are available to employ them but we have made all the financial and the administrative arrangements for a muchextended factory inspectorate and therefore more extensive activity on the part of the inspectorate.

The section here is in the nature of an experiment. In the case of registered employment agreements and joint industrial councils and joint labour committees the initiative now comes only from people who are interested. I want to get the Labour Court taking the initiative. Deputy O'Leary asked whether they would do more than the joint labour committees. I think these may have come to the stage of dealing always with the wages and I would like to see the court actively encouraging groups of workers and employers in different employments to work out agreed basic conditions of good employment, that is, in the various matters which would affect both the worker and the employer. This should lead to a work basis where people would have a better understanding of their rights and of course of their obligation in areas outside the area of wages already dealt with, in areas such as discipline, dismissal, complaint procedures, demarcation and so on.

If fair employment procedures are established on a voluntary basis by representative parties in a particular employment and if these are substantially approved by those concerned, they can be converted into statutory fair employment rules by the Labour Court and made legally binding. I think the difference here introduced is that the Labour Court will have the initiative to seek to make clear to every worker his rights in relation to dismissal, discipline, complaint procedures and in general have initiative to improve the position of workers in any type of work.

Mr. M. O'Leary

Suppose a Fair Employment Order were brought in in the case of a particular industry and was agreed by the representative organisations of employers and unions involved, there would still remain a section which would not be organised by unions. What investigation can we make into an area in which there is no check as to what is happening? We draw up the rules and we say: "This is the fair employment rule" but what do we do for the ten, 15 or 20 per cent which accounts for the real injustice and exploitation, the people who are running small industrial units in upper rooms in city streets, in back avenues, mainly employing juvenile labour— girls and boys? It is an especially big problem in the city of Dublin.

The Minister referred to extending the inspectorate. Would it be true to say that he is also considering extending that section of the inspectorate which would deal solely with conditions of young people at work?

The inspectorate, I know, has been overworked already. Many times the Minister has been asked in this House to increase the number of female inspectors to deal with women at work. I would ask the Minister to consider extending the interest of the inspectorate to young people of both sexes between 14 and 17 years of age at work. This is a growing problem in Dublin and one that has not received much attention, as far as I know, so far.

Can the Minister give us any further information? When we draw up the Fair Employment Order and it is agreed upon by the representative organisations of employers and the Court certifies it, what action do we take then to see that it becomes a reality in this ten or 15 per cent of work places which may or may not be living up to the spirit of this legislation?

I should like to ask the Minister whether he is satisfied that, at present, sufficiently close scrutiny is maintained on anonymous workshops where the practices I have referred to are carried out and where Irish youth is being exploited; whether he is satisfied that there is sufficient surveillance. When the Fair Employment Order is issued, can we be satisfied that such workshops will carry out the spirit as well as the letter of the law?

Mr. James Tully

There is another section which should be dealt with under this and I am wondering how the Minister will deal with it. He may remember that some time ago an effort was made by the people engaged in quarrying for road materials to get a registered agreement. Firms employing men, paying them decent wages and giving them good working conditions found themselves in difficulty because a number of other people who could be referred to as pirates were undercutting them and could supply materials at lower rates simply by having men who could not otherwise get a job working for them and working long hours. I know some of them myself who start work at 7.30 or 8 o'clock in the morning and are still working, particularly in the summer time, until 10 or 11 o'clock at night, even on Saturday nights. They are not paid overtime. The employers say: "You are getting £17 a week which is more than a driver gets in a neighbourning firm."

A large volume of employment is given by people like Roadstone who pay reasonably good wages, or at least negotiate on them, and give good conditions of employment. Then there is this swarm of small people who gradually build up. I have in mind two firms, but I will not name them, who have been cutting in. We go to the good employers and, rightly so, they say: "What are you going to do about So-and-So? He has taken this contract off us, and that contract off us and the other contract off us." Check back to find out how he took the contract and you will find he did it because he undercut the firm, and could do so by having men working for him for perhaps a couple of shillings an hour less, and working long hours.

There is no point in asking why do the men do it. There are still big areas where there is no other employment and the position is either to go to the labour exchange or work for those people. It is the standard of living of the worker and his family that is depressed as a result of the actions of these people. It is criminal, in my opinion. Indeed, I believe the Department of Justice should step in because when a man is driving a lorry from 7 or 8 o'clock in the morning until 11 o'clock at night he cannot be in the best physical condition. I believe the Minister should have this section of the Bill so framed that these people will be caught. I know that the better employers and the trade unions have applied to have an agreement registered.

Dr. Hillery

If they had a registered agreement——

Mr. James Tully

They could not get it registered because there were not enough of them involved. The Labour Court said: "What about Mr. So-and-So who is employing 50?" All over the country there might be 4,000 or 5,000 employees which would be more than there are in the bigger firms who are giving good employment and good wages. Because of this they refused to register the agreement. We had a lot of this in the building trade for a good while and eventually reason seemed to prevail there and it was settled. We have not now got the man we call the house sparrow who carries all his tools on a bicycle and can undercut everyone else. If the Minister can improve this by insisting on this type of people being included he will be doing a good job. It is not a job which cannot be done.

Dr. Hillery

I do not know what can be done.

Mr. James Tully

Deputy O'Leary was talking about these things being done in the back rooms in the cities but there is a new racket. When they found they were not getting youngsters in and around the cities they moved down to the country towns. It is usual for someone like myself to be approached by someone who wants to start an industry. We got very "ikey" about these things and we started looking for the details of the industry. We are told: "We are going to employ 50 people" but eventually after making inquiries we find that the 50 people must be between the ages of 14 and 16 years, and there is no guarantee of employment after the age of 17 years—and they are female. I do not need to go any further. They are simply stitching or something like that.

One employer told me the reason he employed that type of person was: "You know, their fingers are more nimble and their eyes are far more accurate at that age." I said: "The fact that they would be satisfied with a very much smaller wage packet would not have anything to do with it?" I do not think he is a friend of mine any longer. This is the sort of thing which happens not only in the cities but has to be pursued right down the country. Quite a number of inspectors will be needed.

Mr. M. O'Leary

Can the Minister say whether the fines for contravening the fair employment rules have been altered, or are they a continuation of older fines which we had previously for breaking registered agreements?

Dr. Hillery

It is a continuation of the old fines.

Mr. M. O'Leary

The cost of living goes up every year. If you park a car now for 10 minutes in any part of the city of Dublin it is £1 immediately. Those vigilantes who are now clearing streets and avenues have acquired an enviable reputation for efficiency in planking their tickets on the cars of the citizens of Dublin. That is £1 for 10 minutes' contravention of the law. Other matters have been updated but we do not believe we should update our legislation in regard to the penalties being inflicted on an employer who is guilty of anti-social activity. He is guilty of a serious crime against the community in that he ignores rules drawn up by representatives of employees and employers. Would it be correct to say that the fine would be the same as was imposed, say, 20 years ago?

Mr. S.D. Barrett

This is the 1946 fine exactly.

Mr. M. O'Leary

If we have the same fine on an employer who contravenes an order in 1969 as obtained in 1946 we are not being serious about ensuring that the Act is a reality for those employers who wish to ignore it. Subsection (4) says:

A person who contravenes a fair employment rule shall be guilty of an offence and shall be liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding one hundred pounds and, in the case of a continuing offence, a further fine not exceeding ten pounds....

Could the Minister tell us how many employers were brought to book under the old code for contravention of an order? Does the Minister not think that a more realistic figure commensurate with the offence should be imposed? I would suggest that this subsection (4) of section 11 is merely a pious finish-off to this legislation and is never meant to be implemented. Would the Minister not consider that a fine of £500 would be more in line with what is required?

Mr. S.D. Barrett

It seems to be ridiculous that the same fine should be provided for in an Act in 1969 as was provided for in the 1946 Act. The same thing occurs in subsection (3) of section 10. Where there are penalties provided the Minister should look at them generally and upgrade them just to keep in touch with reality and, if necessary, bring in a subsection amending the old section of the 1946 Act.

Dr. Hillery

I shall examine that. I have not the information Deputy O'Leary sought about the number of convictions. I shall have a look at that, too.

Amendment agreed to.

Mr. James Tully

I move amendment No. 6:

In page 5, to add to the section a new subsection as follows:

"( ) In this section `worker' shall include—

(a) an agricultural worker,

(b) a servant of a local authority,

(d) each class of officer of a local authority specified in the Second Schedule to this Act."

SECTION 12.

Question proposed: "That section 12 stand part of the Bill."

Mr. S.D. Barrett

I should like the Minister to have another look at subsection (1) (c). The Minister will tell me this was in the 1946 Act but the fact that it appeared in the 1946 Act should not make us complacent about it and accept that it is right. First of all, there is a different personnel here in this House today. There is different thinking on these matters. There are, in fact, different conditions. The inspector can walk in at what he considers to be a reasonable time to almost any place and examine any person whom an inspector has reasonable grounds for believing to be or have been a person affected by a registered employment agreement and require such person to answer such questions, other than questions tending to incriminate himself, as the inspector may see fit to put to him. It was iniquitous to incorporate this into the 1946 Act.

Speaking from memory, I think that Act created only summary offences. This Bill creates, in addition, indictable offences. We are now in the position of telling a citizen that he is under an obligation to answer any questions put to him by another citizen, dignified by the name of inspector and fortified with a certificate to that effect. That is contrary to natural justice. It is all very well for the Minister to say the person questioned need not answer questions tending to incriminate him, but who will judge what questions would incriminate? If an inspector asks another person questions and the other person says that the answers to the questions would incriminate him, will the inspector be satisfied or will the man who refuses to answer find himself in the position of committing an offence under this Bill when it becomes an Act? The average person questioned by an inspector is not in a position there and then to decide whether the answer to a question is likely to incriminate him. If the Minister is not prepared to alter the subsection drastically, he should at least alter it to the extent of adding that the person need not answer the questions put until such time as he has had the benefit of legal advice. It is highly desirable that the citizen questioned should be able to say, when the inspector tells him that he must answer certain questions and, if he does not do so, he will be committing an offence: "Go to hell. I will not answer until I have had legal advice." At least give the citizen the freedom of being able to say he will not answer until such time as he has had legal advice. By modern standards this is an oppressive section and we should not be oppressive where any of our citizens are concerned, whether they be employers or employees. I appeal to the Minister to have another look at this.

Mr. M. O'Leary

I do not think it could be taken as a refusal to answer questions if one insisted on not answering until one had seen one's legal adviser.

Mr. S.D. Barrett

As the section stands, the inspector would be within his rights in saying: "I went to the house. I produced the certificate and the citizen refused to answer."

Dr. Hillery

The Deputy is saying that a man, whose job it is to protect the interests of both workers and employers, will act like a bullying drunk.

Mr. S.D. Barrett

Would the Minister not agree that one must always presume one is dealing with the lowest type of inspector? He may be up to his tonsils in drink. He is the fellow against whom the citizen must be protected. Ninety per cent of them may be the finest fellows in the world but, for the purposes of this legislation, one must legislate against the oppressive fellow, the bully, the drunk, the objectionable fellow and say: "I shall look after the citizen and I shall protect the citizen against that sort of fellow."

Mr. M. O'Leary

You must remember that we are dealing with a citizen and that the inspector goes to some place where he has reasonable grounds for believing that a person affected by a registered employment agreement or fair employment rules works. He is going somewhere where he has grounds for believing that the employer concerned has flouted an order by the Labour Court in regard to some matter as between employer and employee. My sympathy would not be with such a person. If our penalties mean anything the inspector must have the right to call on that man who is more than a private citizen. By flouting the rules that have been drawn up by his fellow employers and employees, he is depriving his employees of their just rights in the situation.

Mr. S.D. Barrett

He is suspected of it.

Mr. M. O'Leary

Right—he is suspected of it. It seems to me that to base the whole case almost in the style of the Soviet invasion of Prague is to overstate the position. We are dealing with a very small number of employers, namely, those who are living in the atmosphere of 1913. I am sure such employers are scarce in the country. I am sure, likewise, the inspectors conjured up who may be going out drunk to call on such employers are non-existent. Some of my best friends are inspectors. I therefore think the Deputy is exaggerating the case here.

I am more worried about the fact that we are dealing with a very small number of employers, we would hope, who do not live in our age or in our world, who cause a great deal of trouble, who do not wish to live in our age or in our world. My only worry about this section or about the previous one, with which it is connected, is whether the penalties involved are commensurate with the offence. The drafting here is "...enter at all reasonable times any premises where he has reasonable grounds for believing..." Presumably he will enter premises only on the basis of some kind of report, some kind of prior information. It appears to me, as we are legislating here, that what he can ask for is the minimum. I do not agree that any citizen's rights are impaired under the section.

Mr. S.D. Barrett

I am pretty horrified to hear Deputy O'Leary talk as he has been talking. I hope he will never be in a position to introduce legislation of this type if this is the view he takes. He says, in effect: "This does not matter because they are only a very small section of the community and, in addition, they are employers. Therefore, their rights can be clipped and it does not matter". We are supposed to cherish all of the children of the nation equally. The fact that they are employers does not in the view of Deputy O'Leary, entitle them to protection. We have here a reference that an employer is convicted under fair conditions. I would appeal to Deputy O'Leary to think twice before he says that, because they are a small number and only employers, they are not entitled to the same treatment as I am entitled to, as Deputy O'Leary is entitled to and as everybody else is entitled to.

Mr. James Tully

I think it is unfair of Deputy Barrett to make the comment he has just made. Deputy O'Leary gave a third cause. They are a small number, they are employers and they are people who are not treating all the people of the nation equally. They are people who are——

Mr. S.D. Barrett

——suspected of that.

Mr. James Tully

——and there must be good reason for the suspicion.

Mr. S.D. Barrett

This is wrong. You cannot presume that this is so. They are only investigating an offence at this stage.

The section says that a person who shall be guilty of an offence shall be liable to a fine not exceeding £20. In fact, he may be saving three times that amount by not carrying out the regulations.

Dr. Hillery

We will look into all these penalties.

Mr. James Tully

Put two noughts on and we will be satisfied.

Question put and agreed to.

SECTION 13.

Question proposed: "That section 13 stand part of the Bill."

Dr. Hillery

This is an entirely new provision and one on which I touched on Second Reading. Disputes can arise in regard to matters other than pay, hours and holidays. An example would be a dispute in regard to discipline or the dismissal of a worker or indeed in regard to a variety of things which have come to be regarded by workers as their right, whether they are written down or of long standing practice and custom. They can develop into a dispute situation with strike action being taken and the Labour Court being involved. Often the dispute leads to widespread action, although it relates only to one person. If we could remove these cases from the Labour Court and try to have a new system, to have a rights commissioner, we would be making an advance. From the text of the provision it will be seen that the whole concept is based on the voluntary acceptance by the parties of the commissioner and there is no crossing of lines in regard to what the rights commissioner would do and what the Labour Court would do. If the court has heard a case and issued a recommendation, then the commissioner could not hear the same case. If the commissioner has heard the case and issued a recommendation, then the Labour Court can be brought in only by way of appeal. With a view to encouraging acceptance of the commissioner's recommendation it is provided that if his recommendation is appealed to the Labour Court it will be on the basis of a moral commitment to accept the court's decision.

We have often seen a rejection of the Labour Court's recommendation and people have said "We were dragged before the court and we did not want to go". They cannot be dragged before the commissioner. The idea is to have the third man who is an experienced officer come in and make recommendations in a rights issue which could lead to a strike. I think in this way we would solve a big number of cases. If one of the parties is opposed to this the commissioner would not be able to come in at all. It is experimental and I could not say how the idea will work out.

It is proposed to appoint a commissioner in Dublin for a start and to appoint others in various centres. We may need a big number of them and they may be a great success. I hope they will be. It is one thing that we should try out in order to deal with disputes arising out of rights issues rather than conditions of employment or questions of wages.

Mr. M. O'Leary

The Minister is saying something which we have always held. He will be aware of what we have said in our publication Workers' Democracy—it refers to this matter— that many problems in industry are far deeper and more widespread than purely wages issues and are caused by resentment against the whole work situation. We have expressed this view in this document. However, it is not before the House now and it may take some years before it does come before it. In regard to recruitment of these rights commissioners there has been a tendency when dealing with industrial relations to concentrate exclusively on recruitment from the legal profession. The legal profession is an august body but we want to be careful in this area of industrial relations. I have repeatedly stated that if we really wish to tackle the problem in a realistic fashion, we must understand that the ordinary lawyer, with his common law background, and all the judicial training with which he is equipped, has possibly a mental attitude which is not attuned to the realities of industrial relations, and the valued judgments that are involved in mediating in industrial relations. We have to realise that in regard to the whole idea of industrial relations between employer and employee there may be several political philosophies with regard to how those relations should be solved. The whole period of industrialisation over the last 200 years, since the industrial revolution, has not given us any final answer to what the exact balance of power should be. Since we came to know the exact situation we have not been pragmatic towards the problems which cropped up and certainly we cannot be accused of being doctrinaire in this situation which is one of a shifting balance between important forces in our society.

Those involved in a dispute at this stage would not be eager to worsen the situation and they themselves are the best authority about whether they should be conscious of public opinion. Public opinion certainly plays a large part in this area of industrial relations. I do not know if the Minister gets public opinion loud and clear but I do know that we are all in a profession in which, if we do not hear the tune, our deafness will prove mortal in the long run to our continued presence in this House. That is something which we must understand.

What do you do with it?

Dr. Hillery

It comes to the House. Up to now it went to the Government.

Question put and agreed to.

SECTION 17.

Mr. M. O'Leary

I suppose he will tell the spokesman for Labour some time what he proposes doing.

Amendment No. 7 not moved.

Dr. Hillery

I move amendment No. 8:

In page 8, line 11, to delete paragraph (e).

A health inspector is mentioned as a worker for the purpose of Part VI of the 1946 Act, so he has access to the Labour Court in the event of a trade dispute. The trade union representing health inspectors have told me that inspectors wished to participate in the scheme of conciliation and arbitration available for local authority officers. This scheme does not apply to local authority officers who have access to the Labour Court. They have asked to have their name removed from paragraph (e), section 17, subsection (1). It is to meet the wishes of the health inspectors themselves which were conveyed to me by their union that I propose to delete paragraph (e), section 17, subsection (1).

Mr. Andrews

I think it is really a matter of semantics as far as the Deputy is concerned, not as far as the Minister is concerned.

Mr. M. O'Leary

For God's sake grow up. This is a serious question. Would the Minister consult with his advisers?

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Is amendment No. 9 withdrawn?

Mr. M. O'Leary

Has the Minister promised that he will consider this problem?

Dr. Hillery

I will have a look at it.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Amendments Nos. 10 and 11 not moved.

Section 17, as amended, agreed to.

SECTION 18.

Question proposed: "That section 18 stand part of the Bill".

Mr. M. O'Leary

Section 18 says:

... Subject to subsection (1) (b) of this section, the Court shall not investigate a trade dispute unless—

(a) it receives a report made by an industrial relations officer who has acted as mediator in the dispute stating that the parties to the dispute have failed to arrive at a settlement of the dispute through conciliation, and

(b) the parties to the dispute have requested it to investigate the dispute.

What exactly could the Minister say would be the exceptional circumstances where the court may investigate a dispute irrespective of the foregoing provisions?

Dr. Hillery

The 1946 Act which invests the Labour Court with general power to investigate disputes, has specified restrictions on this general power. These provide that the court will not investigate the following types of disputes except on certain conditions: (1) a dispute involving persons on a registered joint industrial council, that is unless the council asks for an investigation or the court thinks a stoppage of work is imminent; (2) a dispute involving the ESB Tribunals, that is unless the tribunals ask for an investigation; (3) a dispute involving an agreement between the parties which provides for other methods of determining the dispute, that is again unless the court thinks the dispute is likely to lead to a stoppage of work; (4) a dispute involving matters dealt with in registered employment agreements, again unless a party to the agreement asks for an investigation or the court thinks the dispute is likely to lead to a stoppage of work.

That is the general situation in regard to the power of the Court to investigate disputes and the intention of section 18 of this Bill is to provide on a formalised basis that before the court will investigate a dispute, the conciliation procedure will first have been tried and if conciliation fails then the court may investigate the dispute if the parties ask it to do so and if the industrial relations officer who had acted as mediator at conciliation reports to the court that the parties failed to settle at conciliation. This should be normal procedure and I hope will be normal procedure but it would be unwise to set up rigid, unqualified machinery or statutory procedures. Accordingly, it is being provided that the court may investigate a dispute which has not gone through the conciliation service and for which it has no request from the parties if the court thinks there are exceptional circumstances which would warrant an investigation.

Question put and agreed to.

Would the Minister not say it is strange to find this section in this Bill? We are now dealing with industrial relations in general. This is a large semi-State concern and it has an unenviable record of fraction and strife over the past few years. The two reports published on the situation make interesting if pretty sad reading.

Mr. M. O'Leary

Can the Minister say whether there are any grounds for believing that the vacuum created by the two tribunals will be filled by something else? One can see that, if the ESB has had a bad industrial relations record in the past few years, we in this House have not helped in our own dealings with the ESB. Witness the monumental blunder with the ESB (Special Provisions) Act. I cannot understand why we did not get a section in this Bill to abolish those provisions, seeing that the Minister time after time has announced his willingness to remove that Act from the Statute Book. This is a time for admitting mistakes. The Minister for Labour and the Government have some mistakes to their name in the matter of the ESB (Special Provisions) Act.

Mr. P. Belton

If the Minister abolishes these tribunals he should not leave the ESB without some method of negotiation. I suggest that he should give them, in the interim period, the same machinery as is available to the guards and civil servants, as the Minister mentioned in connection with section 9.

Mr. Dowling

I should like to appeal to the Minister to consider the abolition of the ESB Act. This would assist in bringing about better relations between the workers and the ESB. This is not the first time I have asked the Minister in this House to repeal this legislation. With the introduction of this Bill the time has come when the Minister should reconsider the situation in the hope that the elements making up the different groups who negotiate will get a better grip on their members and, in that way, create more satisfaction and better agreement between people who are more fully and more comprehensively represented and with a greater degree of responsibility. I would ask the Minister to consider the repeal of this enactment. Such repeal would serve a useful purpose and would inspire greater confidence and engender better industrial relations.

Mr. James Tully

I understand that when the last war was nearly over a number of the guards in the concentration camps in Germany took off their uniforms and put on the prisoners' rags in the hope that they would not be recognised for what they were, that the invading forces might think they were prisoners and treat them well. That would almost seem to be the position now where some Members of this House are concerned. Deputies who were not so sympathetic to the ESB when the Act was being passed and who voted for the Bill now say, on the eve of a general election, "I am not in favour of it now and we should never have put it on the Statute Book. It should be taken off now."

With regard to the abolition of the tribunals, I do not know whether or not the Minister has fully considered this. He seems to be playing with fire. He and the country may get a shock if he proceeds with the proposals in this Bill. Deputy Belton is correct: what is sauce for the goose should be sauce for the gander. If certain people can say they will not go to the Labour Court and, because they will not go to the Labour Court, the Minister decides that is all right, they can keep their method of arbitration or conciliation and the Labour Court will put on a workers' and an employers' representative to keep in line with what is going on, then I cannot see why the ESB employees should not be treated in the same way. If others have the right to say they will not go to the Labour Court is there not a danger that ESB workers will also say that they will not go to the Labour Court, that they have their own system and want to retain it?

The Minister referred to the fact that there was some dissatisfaction expressed with the ESB tribunals some time ago. There was, but I do not think all the adverse comment came from the workers. I distinctly remember dissatisfaction being expressed by Government supporters because there was an award made with which they did not agree. It is freely rumoured— the Minister must know this—that this is one of the main reasons why the tribunals are being abolished; it was felt that at least one of the awards made should not have been made. Apparently, if someone steps out of line and gives the workers what is considered to be too much then they must be dealt with in the only way the Government know and that is by abolishing them completely. That seems to be the approach.

We are asked to accept this for the good of industry. The Minister said, fairly enough, that because the ESB was such an important industry we tended to give it more attention than would normally be given to other industries of its size. Of course it is an important industry. The entire industry of the country depends on it. This is the extraordinary thing—despite complaints that it has a bad industrial relations record, and a number of Deputies commented that it had, that is not actually true. If we check we will find that the record is not at all bad. It is, in fact, reasonably good and it would be unfair that it should go out from this House that we consider the industrial relations record bad. However, I do not think the Minister will improve the record by removing the tribunals set up for the purpose of settling disputes and putting nothing in their place. At the moment ESB employees have the tribunals and they have the Labour Court as a last resort. Under this they will lose the tribunals; they are told: "You can take it or leave it. If you do not take the Labour Court you will get nothing."

On serious consideration, I am sure the Minister will agree that he is experimenting here. He said earlier on in another connection that he was trying an experiment. Here he is trying an experiment which may explode into his own face. The Minister will offer ESB workers the Labour Court as a means of settling their disputes. Without in any way decrying the Labour Court, I suggest the Minister is trying a very doubtful experiment. If he said there would be a particular section of the Labour Court, with specialist knowledge, to deal with disputes and that they would investigate ESB disputes, then I could see some slight merit in the proposal but, as it stands, I cannot see any merit in it at all. This is very dangerous. I am sure that in the two years during which the Minister has been discussing this matter with the trade unions and the employers he has time and again had advice as to what should be done. Perhaps he would tell us if some of that advice was that he should abolish the tribunals. Did the advice come from the workers' representatives? Have the unions at any time suggested it would be a good idea to do away with the tribunals and give these workers access to the Labour Court? If that advice was given I certainly am not aware of it.

The Minister is not being fair to the workers concerned and he is not being fair to Members of this House when he asks them to agree to the passing of a section like this. It is no use saying it will prevent duplication because people will know they can go eventually to the Labour Court if all else fails. That is not the answer. The Minister has got it into his head that he will lump the whole lot into the Labour Court and that special consideration will not be given to the ESB employees. I claim these employees are entitled, because of the important work they are doing, to special consideration. It is quite a common thing here for people to decry the claims of those who are doing special jobs with special rates. People doing special jobs are entitled to special rates. They are entitled to be adequately paid for the work they are doing. It is not sufficient to say there is a court to deal with everybody else and it should be good enough for them. It is not good enough for the people concerned here and they will not take it. Before the section is passed the Minister should reconsider it. The matter is too serious to have the section as it is. Perhaps the Minister will tell us whether or not he will give further consideration to this particular section before the Report Stage?

Progress reported; Committee to sit again.

Dáil Éireann díospóireacht - Thursday, 24 Apr 1969

Committee on Finance. - Industrial Relations Bill, 1966: Committee Stage.

Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Thursday, 24 Apr 1969