Alex White (Labour)

I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak on the Bill. My party and I oppose the legislation because we should not seek to have those who earn €30,000 per year or €600 per week take us out of what is, undoubtedly, an economic crisis. That is what we are dealing with. We can talk about ESB craft workers and the belief that talks on public service reform should resume, which I want to refer to in my contribution. When we examine the Bill, which is what we are asked to do as legislators, it is the starkest and most reprehensible legislation the Government has brought before the House to cut the pay of the lowest paid workers in the public service.

I am not a member of a trade union, nor am I part of the emerging winter wonderland that seems to pertain in the House this afternoon. People think the trade union movement is not relevant or should not be involved in negotiations and discussions on genuine public service reform. It cannot be achieved without agreement, discussion and negotiation unless we go for the jackboot approach that says this is how it will be done and there is no other way to make progress. That is not going to happen. I do not believe the trade union movement should have a veto or that trade unions, whether in the public or private sector, should have a veto on how the Government does its business. People can correct me if I am wrong but I understood there was a measure of consensus across all parties and most of the country that it was a good idea that hauling ourselves out of the shocking mess we are in would be attempted with some measure of agreement. If that is the basic proposition people adhere to, they must come into the real world.

There are two sides in any negotiation. It does not take place with empty seats on one side. That is not negotiation and it will not occur. Senators Butler, Bradford and Harris suggested the unions should return to negotiations. Senator Bradford suggested they should be asked back in and that they are under a moral obligation to do so. These are people who attended negotiations over a period of weeks with the Government and found, at the 11th hour, a gross breach of trust and they withdrew from those negotiations.

Even if one takes the view that the Government was entirely correct in what it proposed and the trade union proposals were wrong, if one lives in the real world and wants to ensure people come back to the negotiating table, one is seriously deluded if one thinks this can be achieved by coming in here late on Thursday evening and making a speech saying it should happen. What planet are people living on? Do they think the trade union leadership is lining up for further humiliation and that they will be available to be shafted again? Do people think this will happen?

If people have an ideological position against any discussion with trade unions and want to exclude trade unions, let them say that. Let people be honest about it by saying that trade unions should not be involved in these discussions. I have heard the point made indirectly in this House that these reforms should be implemented irrespective of what the trade unions think. The corollary of that is to exclude trade unions. If one thinks trade unions should be involved, one cannot have it both ways. One cannot have the trade unions on side and negotiate with them only when they are doing what they are told.

I respectfully disagree with a number of things Senator Harris said about social partnership and the recession. I have voiced my doubts about social partnership and the manner in which social partnership appeared to be becoming a proxy parliament. All of the big issues of the day were being dealt with through this so-called social partnership process. The role of Parliament has been supplanted to a considerable degree by social partnership. Some of the areas it wound into were inappropriate at best. However, in a narrower version of social partnership where one negotiates and attempts to reach agreement with trade unions on matters pertaining to their members, there is a serious role for negotiating with trade unions.

With regard to the recession and the inappropriateness of this approach, I refer to 1987. Up until six months ago we were sick of hearing people saying that what pulled the country back together in the late 1980s was the tripartite approach including trade unions and employers. Social partners were involved in a real national effort to turn the country around in 1987. The trade unions were centre stage then when we were in the economic crisis so it is not true to say they only have a role when we are not in a recession.

The debate on public versus private goes around in circles. I am not a particularly paranoid person and I do not take the view that stories are whipped up in particular newspapers and suddenly become what everyone is thinking. People are more complex than that and do not take their views on the basis of what they read in one newspaper or radio station. The public and private divide has not been whipped up by the Government and various commentators but there is a nasty undercurrent to some of the attacks on the public service. Perhaps Senator Harris believes what he said in his speech to the effect that people are underemployed in the public service.