I know he is but we all need God's help, including the Senator. The Minister for Industry and Commerce came in here on that occasion regarding the situation in the ESB. A tribunal was appointed for the ESB some years ago. In fact, there were two tribunals. Both those tribunals were to be merged but nothing has been done with regard to that. Earlier I referred to the position of the semi-State undertakings and the whole set up of labour-employer relations. I said that we would expect the development of good relations in those employments. I accept, as I said earlier, that there are two sides to the story. I am not speaking objectively in this matter. I am speaking as a trade union and labour representative and I am speaking from where my heart is, namely, on that particular side. As I said, we have had a situation where relations have got worse in recent years. I wonder, in fact, if we had the Minister for Labour prior to this whether the position would be better. I think it would because the Minister for Labour should know what is happening in the semi-State undertakings where difficulties have occurred and where difficulties are continuing to occur. I hope that the new Minister will know exactly what is going on in regard to labour relations in those semi-State undertakings and that it will not be the function of the Minister for Transport and Power.
If relations have been bad that has been due, as I said, to the very conscious decision of the employers who declared war against the trade unions. People resented that remark when I said it last, but let me underline the fact that for about six months last year Congress, in a situation in which the value of the tenth round had been worn away by price increases, was trying to negotiate some stop-gap arrangement, some increase to alleviate the hardship of the workers, and the employers were not prepared to co-operate. They were simply continuing the negotiations, playing for time and eventually, as the Taoiseach knows, in January the Congress had to make a decision one way or the other. What they did was a very sensible and responsible thing. They recommended to their affiliated unions that in the present circumstances of the economy the unions should proceed to try to secure increases of not more than £1.
The employers still had the opportunity of trying to come to some understanding at national level in that situation and they knew very well, and the semi-State undertakings particularly must have known, that that round of increases would be secured. The case was there 100 per cent for the £1 increase and that it would be secured but apparently some backwoodsman within the employers' organisation did not want an agreement and had been acting on the theory that you must make the trade unions fight for everything. You must try and exhaust the workers, have strikes, try to exhaust the funds of the trade unions. That is a bad situation but it is no harm to say what we on our side feel is the true situation.
We are not saying it in any vindictive or incriminatory way. We realise that the employers have a right to fight if they want. We have that right and we reserve it. Let us face the fact that that has been happening and we are now prepared to co-operate not alone with the new Minister but with employers' organisations to try to improve the general atmosphere. I am sure I am as much at fault as everybody else but in this matter one is inclined to over-sympathise. We are dealing with human relations and human relations are always difficult.
Let me go back to the point I made a short while ago about the function of trade unions. What are they for? This was best summed up by Jim Larkin when he spoke at the Irish Management Institute at Easter in Killarney. He was making the point that too many managements and employers had wrong ideas with regard to trade unions. They thought the trade union's job was that of management, to help management to discipline workers and to help in increasing productivity, and that the attitude of management was that there was a joint partnership between trade unions and management, but the same people are never prepared, of course, to have any sort of joint co-determination. Certainly they run in horror of the idea of joint ownership. They imagine that the job and the responsibility of trade unions is to be an aid to management and industry. That is not so. Let us always appreciate that the job of the trade union is to protect the members of the trade union. That is our job. If we have to hurt people in doing it it is too bad, and we would regret it, but it is our job to protect the interests of the trade union members.
Let us also remember, and be blunt about it, that we largely represent the underprivileged. The House have seen the report on the financing of education in Ireland. Senators know the percentage of people who do not go beyond the sixth standard in school. They know that these tend to be from the same social structure, the same sector of the social structure at all times, father and son and son again. That is the sort of situation we have and these are largely the people the trade unions are there to protect and who in turn determine the policy and the attitudes of the trade union. Trade union leaders are not there to dictate policy to the individual members of the trade unions. We can attempt to guide, to influence, in ways to lead, but policy in democratic trade unions is determined by the individual members of the trade unions and let us always realise, and I repeat it, that we largely represent the underprivileged. I know the Taoiseach may say: "Look, Murphy, you represent salaried workers and you cannot claim they are underprivileged". I accept that. I am saying that largely the trade unions represent the underprivilged.
We must have regard to our responsibilities to those people, and fight continuously to improve their standard of living. We make no apology whatever for that but we are prepared to do it in a situation in which we want a steadily increasing standard of living for our people. We do not want strikes. They are the last resort. We do not engage in strikes for the purpose of kicking somebody. The people who suffer most are the workers out on strike. We want steadily increasing standards of living. We want steady and expanding employment. We want all these things and we are prepared to co-operate.
Again, let me be blunt about this. The trade unions and the people they represent have no vested interests in maintaining the present industrial and social structure. That does not mean, and do not misunderstand me here, that there is an attitude amongst trade unions towards a tearing down of our social structure, a tearing down of our economy. That is not so. The point I make is that they are largely the underprivileged. They will continue to be the underprivileged no matter what improvement is made but they have no vested interests in maintaining the present organisation of industry as it is. If industry is to be made a success the responsibility lies with management and with the employers. It is they who have the vested interests in making a go of it. It is they who must give the leadership.
The more I become involved in trade union affairs, in trade union experiences, if that is the appropriate expression, the more convinced I am that it is largely a question of leadership. I meet workers and members of other trade unions and I know their difficulties. I generally find that where people are properly led they are happier in their work. There are fewer complaints and things are going relatively smoothly. Possibly in management they tend to overlook their responsibilities in this matter. Management is seated behind a desk making decisions and it is a tough job and I am not critical on that matter. One of the greatest responsibilities and challenges of management is to lead the workers, have contact with them, know them, so that there will be a mutual exchange between them and confidence between the two sides. There must continue to be the two sides to industry. Where leadership exists the position is generally better and you will find less stress. I am sure that the Taoiseach must be thinking of some cases in which leadership has been very good and where strikes have been practically unknown. I can think of some of them right away. You are aware that there is good management who are consciously leading the industry, where the workers have confidence in it and where the relationship is good.
There are two points I want to make in conclusion and I will be brief because I think we are going to allow speeches from the other side tonight. The first point is in regard to the staffing of this new Ministry. This will take over a good deal of the functions of the Department of Industry and Commerce and we have already from that Department hived off the Department of Transport and Power. Earlier than that, I think, we had the Industrial Development Authority. This has been a good Ministry, a good Department and it had a good Minister for many years and it still has. The approach to this should not simply be one of taking people from Industry and Commerce and, so far as is necessary, Social Welfare but rather should we look to the Civil Service as a whole—not just the general grades but the other grades within the Civil Service structure for people who have aptitudes and qualities of mind suitable to the work in this Department. I think that the work of this Department and the work of the new Minister will be of fundamental importance to us. The degree of industrial progress, the degree to which we will develop our society in the next decade or so will largely depend upon the success or failure of the Minister in this new Department. Instead of simply hiving people off from their jobs that, in the long term interest, we should look around the people in the Civil Service as a whole, in all sorts of grades and try to get people who have special qualities and skills for the type of work which will be involved in this Department.
The second concluding point I want to make is in regard to newspaper publicity in regard to industrial disputes. I shall be very brief on this. I suppose the Taoiseach will rightly say: "Well, look I cannot do anything about this". I am drawing attention to the difficulties often created for both sides involved in industrial relations by our newspapers. Now I accept it is the job of the newspapers to report news, but surely we should not have had a situation such as we had last Saturday when there was some offer made by electrical contractors, including the ESB, which was objected to by one union, that that should have been front page news with the newspapers already putting them into their corners for a set-back, with no regard to the possibilities of negotiations and compromise in the meantime. The newspapers immediately got wind of this and put the ETU into one corner, the ESB into another and the Minister for Industry and Commerce into yet another. It is terribly difficult for trade unions and trade union leaders to do the best for their members with this sort of newspaper coverage. My reaction I must say, after some experience, is to try to keep the newspapers out of these things altogether. You may say I am hiding the truth; sometimes yes, by preventing this sort of publicity, because you find that, by this sort of thing, disputes are built up.
I had another experience of this— one of our bus disputes, not possibly the last one but one some two years ago when the dispute was largely made by the evening newspapers who started off about six months beforehand warning of the danger of a bus dispute or of a Dublin bus stoppage until eventually the employees, who did not know what it was all about, were conditioned to a frame of mind that there would be a strike anyway. This is not malicious on the part of the newspaper people. I do not know how it can be rectified unless, maybe, the Taoiseach, from his position of influence, would try to persuade the newspapers to report in as responsible a way as possible. Perhaps "responsible" is not the appropriate word but bad judgment on many occasions has led to the situation I have already mentioned. Anyway, we should try to prevent this because, as I say, I am satisfied that many of these disputes could have been prevented had we not had the sort of newspaper publicity we did have earlier on in the matter. If a strike takes place, it is O.K.; it is a matter for news and one to be covered by the newspapers, but I am talking about the ordinary industrial negotiations that go on time and time again—an offer made, an offer rejected and, when we reject an offer, we do not necessarily take off our coats and say: "That is that, boys"; it is a part of negotiation. I am sorry for talking so long on this but perhaps the Taoiseach could bring his influence to bear on the matter and try to persuade the news be less ready to show the mailed fist upon every occasion the employer does not meet their demands.
In the Dáil the Taoiseach referred to some of the intractable disputes that take place from time to time. It was suggested that he was thinking aloud in making the suggestion that it might be necessary to impose a solution in the case of an intractable dispute for which there did not appear to be any negotiable solution. Rather than thinking aloud I think he was probably throwing out this idea in the hope that it would not be challenged too strongly. It was a feeler more than thinking aloud. There are certain types of strikes and one wonders will they ever end but, with the exception of the famous strike in the Dún Laoghaire public house, most strikes come to an end sooner rather than later. There nearly always is a solution, and one wonders why it was not thought of in the beginning.
I would rather hope that in the re-organisation of the Labour Court, the way in which it will be manned, and the kind of principle upon which it will act, will be such that either side to a dispute will be in a position to dare the other side to go to the Labour Court where the Labour Court will determine the matter for them impartially. This is like the situation that very often arises in regard to law cases where someone has a claim against another for one thing or another and litigation is the end result. It is always a test of the strength of the other person's case as to whether or not he will go the whole hog and go to court. Eventually they must put up with the decision.
I do not say the Labour Court should be like that but I hope it will develop in such a way that both management and the trade unions will feel that if they resort to the Labour Court a decision will be arrived at which it would be very difficult for either side to criticise. That is the kind of situation we hope to achieve. If the Labour Court acts upon principle and not upon expediency, if it builds up its own code of principles in dealing with the labour disputes which come before it, in time people will probably resort to it in the belief that the Labour Court will produce the type of award which it will be very difficult for either side to reject. If we could get that kind of court—and I am not at all without hope that we will get it—that would be far better than making inroads upon the liberty of trade unions which would produce more industrial unrest than it would quell.
The Taoiseach referred in the Dáil also to the amount of work Ministers have to do. He advocated an extension rather than a contraction in the number of Ministers in the Government. I rather took from him, when he was dealing with that aspect, that he urges his Ministers from time to time to go around the country, to go to these various functions and so on, to keep in touch with public opinion and that he felt they did not do that sufficiently because they had so many decisions involving them personally and requiring them to spend so much time in their offices.
I do not at all agree that that is the way in which Ministers of State will acquire a knowledge of what is going on in the country. In some respects in recent times, as I said on a Bill the other evening, some Ministers of the Government have shown themselves not to be in touch with the requirements of the public and with public opinion. To illustrate that I referred to the disastrous provisions in the Succession Bill which was first introduced, then withdrawn and then re-introduced. There are other illustrations with which I will not delay the House at this time.
I believe Ministers have too much to do, but if they have it is because in Bill after Bill coming before Oireachtas Éireann they are taking more and more decisions upon themselves. In the Town Planning Act there are perhaps 50 different matters concerning the local authorities all over the country which have to be personally decided on appeal by the Minister for Local Government. One of two things will happen. Either the Minister will spend his time reading the recommendations of his officials, studying One could be excused for picking out some aspects of them which would help to develop comparisons with other countries, other constitutions and problems faced elsewhere, because it will be recognised immediately that even to attempt at this stage to cover the whole range of problems and administration that this new Ministry will deal with would be foolhardy, and possibly even those who are now setting the limits and the guidelines for the work which is to be undertaken by this Ministry—the Taoiseach and the Government—will be prepared to modify and change or increase the scope of that influence in time.
I could be pardoned for referring to two aspects of it which I think bear some examination. The first is that, as the Taoiseach said in his introductory speech, one of the functions of the new Ministry will be to implement improvements in institutional facilities to assist free collective bargaining, and, in other words, subsequently to give more active Government encouragement to free collective bargaining. There is no suggestion, and there has been no suggestion, that this is in any way an interference with free collective bargaining between employers and trade unionists. If there were, indeed, any such suggestion I think that we all would both from experience of other nations which have in some way infringed on them and from our own direct inhibitions also be very slow to give our wholehearted support to this measure.
If one might quote from the President of the Swedish Trade Union Congress as reported in some of the week-end papers in this connection, he said that in so far as their employers' organisations and trade unions are concerned they are mutually anxious to avoid Government intervention, and that this influences their efforts to reach a compromise even in situations in which there seems to be no hope whatever of agreement being reached. They are so mutually anxious to be left in charge of their own affairs to reach a family agreement without Government intervention that this influences them towards a conclusion. This is, in fact, as I think, what we would hope to accomplish here, because it has never been fully accepted that this situation is, in fact, because of a lack of a Minister for Labour either directly interested in a dispute as such apart from its national consequences or of a direct influence or authority in such disputes. It is to be hoped that this very power of intervention towards drawing the parties together, towards, if necessary, laying down guidelines towards solving disputes, which will presumably be vested in the new Minister, may have the same encouraging effect on our employer-employee relations as it has had obviously in other nations in Europe. That is one aspect of it.
Another aspect of it is that it has been suggested that one of the functions or one department of this new Ministry would be concerned with research into labour relations and the problems and solutions of such relations in other countries. In this, again, I think we can take a great step forward because, granted that the Irish temperament may be very different from that of others and that the temperament of every nation is different from that of another, we may have special problems, but what has proved to be by and large successful in other countries more highly developed industrially than ours and with a longer history of industrial relations than ours — the solutions that have been reached in most cases may be found to apply in one way or another to our nation also. Here I would like to say that it appears to me from maybe not a very detailed study of the attitudes of trade unions in European countries that they welcome liberty, liberty to negotiate their own affairs. They welcome a further very important thing— they welcome responsibility, and they look for liberty with responsibility. I can recall here in this House in the debate on the Electricity Supply Bill the suggestion that it was unfortunate that a small number of men involved in that dispute were unfortunate in not having an opportunity of exercising their right to withdraw their labour. I suggested then and I suggest now that far from being unfortunate in not having an opportunity to withdraw their labour they were fortunate in having an opportunity of exercising such great responsibility, that by their very smallness, so to speak, in their numbers a greater responsibility was being put on them than on many other workers, and by the very importance of the job they do a further responsibility was being laid on their shoulders.
This is not just a factor of industrial relations. It is a factor of life. The greater the responsibility, in many ways the greater the restriction, at least, the greater restriction on personal freedom to indulge in the ordinary things one wants to indulge in. It has been the hope and the purpose in many of those countries to which I have referred to have liberty with responsibility. Our new Minister and this new Department should encourage the same approach between employers and trade unions. If one can judge from a very short trip to the European community office in Belgium, and from a passing and cursory address on the social programme of the European Community, one is definitely left with the impression that the purpose of the annual meetings of employers and trade unions is to reach voluntary guidelines or voluntary agreements which will bind them mutually in their relations for the coming year, or two years, as the case may be. This they do under the auspices of the Ministry of Labour in each country.
Senator Murphy has indicated that most of the European countries with the possible exception of the Netherlands have a Minister for Labour, and the Netherlands have probably the equivalent in a Minister for Social Affairs. They are encouraged in their efforts to reach voluntary agreements by the knowledge that if they do not they will in some way be subject to direction from the Minister responsible, that is the Minister for Labour. That is the kind of responsibility and partnership—if I may use that word, because Senator Murphy appears to be afraid of any suggestion of partnership—that this new Ministry will encourage.
When he was introducing this Bill in the Dáil the Taoiseach said that the present problem has largely arisen because of the failure of the Federated Union of Employers and the Irish Congress to reach a voluntary national agreement at the beginning of this year. In many ways this is simply the logical conclusion to that step. This is purely to assist the parties on both sides to reach a conclusion in the ultimate. I think the best work of this Ministry will be done in the context of industrial relations. I have confined myself to that aspect although there are many other aspects.
It is rather regrettable, too, that for one reason or another it was suggested that this Bill—and, indeed, any Bill which is now mooted in connection with trade relations—is being introduced to penalise the workers. That was suggested in the Dáil by some of the Members and I think it was a very unfortunate suggestion. The Taoiseach said the purpose of the Bill is to protect the workers. It is not intended to penalise the workers any more than the employers. In fact, it is to protect the interests of both, and the interests of all of us. We are a little thin-skinned in this matter, if we are a little thick-skinned in others, as soon as there is any suggestion of legislation in connection with trade disputes.
I appreciate that as Senator Murphy has said they have many problems to deal with, and that they have to deal with vast numbers of people pressing their various claims. This is an attempt to assist them, not an attempt to take from their authority or penalise them. Time will tell that this is an attempt to look after the welfare of all, and particularly those who are most closely involved.
Senator Murphy has seen fit to repeat some of things he said last week in connection with—I have forgotten what legislation we were dealing with last week.