asked the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs if any directive was recently given by his Department that telephonists employed in the Dublin exchange were not to make or receive telephone calls during hours of employment; and, if so, the reason for such directive.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Telephonists Private Calls.
99.
For many years the telephone operating force have been allowed to make or receive private telephone calls of an urgent nature whilst on duty. It recently came under notice that the private call concession was being seriously abused with adverse effect on the standard of service to the public at periods of heavy traffic. The local union representative was informed that it was intended to withdraw the privilege temporarily and an instruction was issued to the supervisors in Dublin exchange last Friday concerning suspension of the private call concession whilst present traffic conditions obtain. Arrangements were made to ensure that private messages for members of the staff would be passed on to them. Following representations from the staff union, this instruction was suspended on Monday morning pending discussions which are to take place with the union.
While being grateful to the Minister for having the commonsense to have this instruction suspended might I ask him to have it completely revoked? Will the Minister agree that this concession is available to employees of private firms and does he not agree that it is outrageous that a State Department would not allow to its workers what is allowed by any ordinary firm to its employees?
While I should like to agree with much of what the Deputy has said there are a great many difficulties involved here. During visits by headquarters staff to the Dublin exchange in recent weeks when traffic was extremely heavy and when the speed of attention to calling signals had not been satisfactory, it came under notice that there was an excessive number of private calls, many of long duration. If the privilege was not being abused the matter would not even need to be discussed here. With a bit of commonsense on both sides we shall probably work out a solution acceptable to everybody.
It would be interesting to know how the private calls were checked. How would they discover that they were private calls of long duration?
It is very hard to decide what is an urgent call and what is not and what is a private call and what is not. I suppose the fact that there are 600 or 700 girls working in the exchange might mean that they would have many boy friends calling up and whether these would be urgent calls or not it would be difficult for anybody to say.
Would not an appeal to the staff to co-operate in this matter be a better way of doing it?
I agree that it would be. We hope to discuss this matter very shortly with the union involved.