Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chair. This Bill seeks to address two central areas. I welcome the decision to replace the registered employment agreements that were struck down as a result of a court ruling. Similarly, the provisions in the Bill that seek to address the whole issue of collective bargaining are long overdue. Obviously, the context for this legislation is the fact that we have the second highest level of low pay in the OECD, which is a pretty dire situation, and the existence of the phenomenon of the working poor, which is linked to the fact that 16% of those who are living in poverty are working. The Government has been central in pursuing an agenda that involves the introduction of so-called labour activation schemes like JobBridge and Gateway. To my mind and the minds of many others, such schemes are exploitative because they essentially use cheap labour instead of employing people on a properly paid basis to do real jobs that need to be done by local authorities. In the case of JobBridge schemes, private sector employers are essentially able to avail of free labour. Like many people, I would certainly say that such schemes have been used as a mechanism to massage the unemployment figures, encourage a push to the bottom in terms of wages and conditions and further the low pay economy.

It has been mentioned already that the phenomenon known as bogus self-contracting is another important dimension to the context in which we are debating this legislation. The abuse of the relevant contract tax system was particularly highlighted at the time of the Rhatigan dispute. Construction workers will certainly say that the absolutely flagrant, widespread and massive abuse of that system is absolutely endemic across the construction sector. Developers and big contractors use the relevant contract tax system as a means of exploiting workers in the most appalling way. In the Rhatigan case, workers discovered after six weeks that they were getting €5 an hour, in effect. They were forced to go out on strike. It was just appalling. It is worth remembering that the workers were fully vindicated when they finally went to the courts, which found that the abuses they claimed were happening were happening, that they were being exploited and that this system was being abused. It has been clear ever since when I have been talking to those workers and others concerned with this area that the Government needs to take urgent action to address this whole scheme.

It does not seem that Revenue is making a serious effort to address this issue. One allegation made by workers concerned about it is that there is a massive loss to Revenue. The massive number of people employed under the relevant contract tax system is disproportionate. Of course there are real subcontractors out there. If they are examined carefully, it is clear that many of these people do not fit any serious criteria of being a subcontractor. The tenders they put in, often for public jobs, are a joke. Any serious examination of them would show that these people are putting in tenders that they could not fulfil without brutally exploiting the people who work for them. These subcontractors often use laughable addresses. I have a document showing the address of a contractor involved in a public contract for a development at St. Patrick's College in Drumcondra. The address of the contractor who was employing people to do a job at that college turned out to be an undertakers on the Lisburn Road. There is too much to go into there. This is a very serious abuse. These things have to be looked into.

On the Bill itself, obviously the re-establishment of the registered employment agreements is a positive development. We will have to examine the details of this measure on Committee Stage to make sure it is fully robust.

Whether a group is substantially representative is the key issue we need to consider to ensure that there are not too many hoops for workers to jump through in order to avail of these employment agreements to ensure decent conditions at a sectoral level or in the registered employment agreements.

On Committee Stage we will need to scrutinise the Government’s claim that we cannot, for constitutional or legal reasons, establish union recognition where the employer is obliged to recognise a trade union. The Government will no doubt argue we cannot do that and this is the best way to get around it. There is, however, a substantial difference between proper trade union recognition and an employer’s being required to recognise a trade union, which should be a basic right for workers, and what this legislation proposes which is also potentially open to abuse by the employers.

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