Derek Nolan (Galway West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I am delighted to have the opportunity to speak on this very important Bill. It shows the implementation of the Labour Party agenda in government and in statute and the debate is very welcome.

One of my most poignant moments in my job as a public representative occurred when I went down to the picket lines at the six Dunnes Stores outlets in Galway city a couple of weeks ago. I met the workers, primarily women, on the picket lines. It was not easy for them and there was not uniform support from customers or staff. Many of the people protesting and picketing were outside while there were people inside working. The divisions, the bitterness and the discord were notable. The decision they took was largely on behalf of other people.

The people who are active in the unions were doing it for other people who are coming into Dunnes. They saw how the younger people working there had such precarious conditions and such volatile hours and so on. If we are to take anything from that, we should realise that when people engage in an industrial dispute, they do not do so lightly. They do so when there is something at stake, in an atmosphere which is not conducive to their own progress at work and is often very harsh. They must be commended for what they did.

They are aware that this legislation is going through this House. They know the need for it and it will make a big difference in those situations. The vast majority of employer-employee relationships work quite well. We do not hear about strikes or industrial disputes very often because most of the time employers and employees engage quite positively. Where employers refuse to acknowledge that their employees have a collective view on their working conditions and hours of work and refuse to engage with their employees, that is anathema to good industrial relations. It is bad business practice. This legislation will help to remedy that and put in place a structure that will allow those workers to see their rights vindicated.

We need to take a step back. In the years to come, as the economy continues to recover, we must have a debate in this country about the kind of society we want to build.

Will we just go back to where we were ten years ago, the era of light-touch regulation, of worshipping at the altar of the developer, of the quick buck, of the guy who manages to buy a site and sell it on, or do we build a society and an economy that rewards people who get up in the morning and contribute? The only thing we all have that is individual to ourselves is our day's work. Whether it is Bill Gates or someone working in Dunnes, all a person can do is get up in the morning and go to work. People should be rewarded and respected for contributing and we should not have this hierarchy of entitlement and worship in the economy based on people's roles. If we go down that road again, saying that the guys at the top need to be looked after and the people at the bottom have to watch themselves because if their wages go up a little we will lose the jobs, and so on - if we go down that road of a low-wage economy, where it is very good to be at the top and very bad to be at the bottom - we will sow a seed of real discontent and we will do people a disservice.

The measures we are debating today, with the registered employment agreements, the collective bargaining, and the excellent work the Minister of State is doing on the Low Pay Commission, will ensure that everybody in society who gets up in the morning, goes to work and contributes will be respected and afforded the decency they deserve because they are contributing and doing their best. If we keep that message at the heart of what we are doing and the decisions we make, and if we create an economy and a society that is based on people working and respecting them, we will have a far different trajectory from the one we followed in the boom years, when it was about whoever had the flashiest car, the biggest house, or whatever was admired. We need to realise that our society is broader than that and everyone must contribute and must be able to get by. I commend the Minister of State on his passion in pursuing this. He has been dogged in his determination to see it through. He has consulted widely and he has strengthened the Bill from its original version, putting in anti-victimisation measures and comparative measures that were not there before. All of those measures will go a long way towards creating that floor and that trajectory in our discussion about our economy and participation, which will see us finally moving in the direction in which we all want to move, namely, that of an economy that is people-focused and worker-focused.

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