We were dealing with amendments to section 11 which is the most controversial and, from the point of view of the trade union movement, the most important section of the Bill. It proposes to regulate picketing policy and to impose restrictions on picketers that were not there before this Bill was brought before the House. It is all very well to say picketers have the right to place pickets and that workers have the right to withdraw their labour, but if one so restricts the ability to place pickets one effectively undermines the right to withdraw labour and the workers' right to strike. I am afraid the measures now proposed by the Minister go so far that they will effectively deprive a great many trade unionists of this ultimate sanction.
I ask the Minister to accept that we are operating in a world of holding companies, subsidiary companies, associate companies, multiple stores, chains of companies and contractors. In that situation it is simply not feasible to practically prosecute a trade dispute effectively unless the workers who have withdrawn their labour may place pickets on associate companies, subsidiary companies or whatever where they have an honest belief that that associate employer, subsidiary employer or whoever is acting to undermine, damage or frustrate a strike. That is the structure of the workforce out there at the moment, and the Minister must accept that it is now possible to transfer production, as Deputy Bell explained on the last occasion, from one plant to another plant owned by the same holding company in such a manner as to leave the workers outside high and dry because their dispute is not effective. If that is the case in production, it is most certainly the case in other forms of service industry, the retail trade for example, where one store can take up the slack and can argue they are doing no more than exploiting a niche in the market and that they are not assisting the primary employer.
I ask the Minister to consider what he is doing to contract labour, a growing feature of the economy and employing a great many workers. The Minister no doubt will say he is not taking away the right to strike, that these workers may picket their own employer. That is true but why would they want to picket their own employer where that employer has been undercut in the marketplace and has lost the contract to a competitor? In that case it makes no sense for them to picket the headquarters of their own contractor. They picket the place where they worked in pursuit of employment with the new contractor. They may do that as the law stands but they cannot do so when this Bill is passed. It is regrettable that those in the most vulnerable sections of the workforce are effectively being deprived of that right.
On Committee Stage at column 757 of the Official Report on 30 May the Minister said at a late hour of the night that: "At present people do not have the right to picket in order to get themselves a job." That is not actually the case. Under the Trade Disputes Act, 1906, workers have the right to prosecute for employment. We dealt with registered agreements where, for example, building workers frequently picket an employer on the site. The way the trade union movement have tried to combat the contract phenomenon is that they acknowledge they cannot prevent one competitor from undercutting a rival company, but they can give sanction to their members who are employed in providing that service in that employment for a number of years to take industrial action, to picket the new employer for the right to work. If a new company wins the contract that is fine but they must employ the workers who were providing the service. Under this proposition the trade unions cannot prosecute such a dispute for employment and that has a severe, adverse impact on the most vulnerable workers in the economy. I had hoped the Minister would have responded to that point.
We are seeking to take case law as established in Ellis and Wright which, in a nutshell, said that there must be a clearly discernible connection where workers decide to picket a secondary employer. The Minister has said that is too broad, too vague, and that there is a need for a statutory statement to tighten it. The statutory statement the Minister is making here is far too restrictive and will make the prosecution of a trade dispute by a trade union in many cases virtually impossible. In addition, it rules out the rights of a large section of the workforce employed at the most vulnerable end of the market. I ask the Minister to reconsider his position on that.