Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein)
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I thank the Chair and thank our guests.

This is one of the most important meetings that we have held. Huge credit is due to Dr. O'Sullivan and her team on the level of research conducted and the findings.

I will read a couple of the quotes from that research into the record because they are so stark: "Everything you type is being recorded in instant messaging."; "Up the line they want oversight of everything, centralisation of tasks brings control. Automation brings control." and "Sales targets in the biggest things like mortgage products are crazy, are unattainable and that adds pressure to you when technology breaks down. That takes time out of your day."

My first job was in a call centre. It was a long time ago. We had a lot of monitoring then. I remember colleagues being called out to be effectively disciplined because they were spending too long talking to customers on calls, etc. I agree that tone can be important, as Deputy Stanton said, but, to be frank, the level of micro-management in those call centres, even then, was quite frightening.

I happened to have occasion to telephone an insurance company yesterday and my heart went out to the person I was dealing with in terms of their desperation at the end of the call in asking would I give them a good review when I got the email through. Can the committee think about the pressures that young people are facing?

Dr. O'Sullivan mentioned a power imbalance. The elephant in the room here, in my opinion, is the fact that co-governance, for example, as Dr. O'Sullivan has raised, only works if workers have a right to collective bargaining. This country, 100 years after independence, remains an outlier in that we do not have a right to collective bargaining.

Reference was made to the importance for trade unions accessing employers.

I will declare an interest. I was a trade union official. I believe in workers' rights. When I was a trade union official, it was incredibly hard to access employers when they did not want me there. I ask the guests to deal with an issue that is the elephant in the room, namely, the fact we do not have collective bargaining rights. All the concerns all of us have expressed will not be meaningful unless we address that power imbalance. If that power imbalance is not addressed, we are kidding ourselves. Clearly, we are heading in a very dark direction right now. How do we fix the issue of collective bargaining? How urgent a task is it, given this report?