Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

We welcome the Bill as an attempt to address a growing problem, that is, the use of bogus self-employment contracts and definitions that will stop workers from accessing rights and using legislation that is supposed to be there to protect workers. It seeks to ensure that anti-competitive laws are not used against groups of workers who are deemed to be self-employed. I am not sure it will deal with the wider, growing issues at the heart of why workers are in this situation, in the form of the use by employers of bogus self-employment contracts. I am a member of the Joint Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation and with companies like Deliveroo and Uber we have seen that there is a growing phenomenon whereby employers insist that workers sign a contract which explicitly says they are not workers but a business that is selling a service to the employer. The result, for the bosses or entrepreneurs that came up with this whizz-kid idea, is that they do not have to pay minimum wage rates and are not responsible for workers' health, safety or sick pay. God forbid that they be entitled to a pension.

This is not a new phenomenon. It has been around for a long time and is old as the system of capitalism itself. It is not a result of some shiny new, high-tech economy but is an attempt to individualise workers, to atomise them, to stop them coming together as a collective and organising as a union. This attempt will ultimately fail and workers will organise, whether they are in Deliveroo or any other company that attempts to classify them not as workers but as individual, self-employed service deliverers. They will come together as a collective and no amount of legal jargon or anti-competitive laws will stop that. This Dáil should legislate to make it illegal to classify workers as self-employed for the purpose of stopping them organising and forming and building trade unions, but it will not do so as long as we have a Fianna Fáil-Fine Gael majority. We need to make the attempts of Deliveroo and Uber illegal and allow workers the legal right to organise and have access to their union in their workplace, even if they have to hang around street corners waiting for information on an app, as Deliveroo workers do. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael combine to stop us achieving that and they always use the excuse that it is bad for foreign direct investment.

The growth of bogus self-employment is just the tip of the iceberg and the iceberg is also about low-paid, flexi-hour contracts, if-and-when contracts, non-union employment and other attacks on the traditional values of working class people by the great and good in academia, as well as some newspaper columnists who think the very idea of a secure, pensionable, well-paid job belongs to history books and has no place in the brave new world where foreign direct investment and paying no taxes are treated as sacred cows.

While we support the Bill, it is really only an answer to a bigger question, that is, how we reverse the onslaught on workers’ rights over the past decade or so. The first step will be to encourage workers themselves to take action by joining a union and standing up and fighting, something we saw magnificently in the Tesco strike. This is why the battle in Bus Éireann is very important. It is an attempt orchestrated by the Government, by the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport and the NRA to make a secure pensionable permanent job in transport a thing of the past. This manufactured crisis in Bus Éireann could have been dealt with by the intervention of the Minister and will be a litmus test for the workers' movement. Bus Éireann workers cannot fight this battle alone but need and deserve the support of their colleagues in Dublin Bus, Irish Rail, the wider labour movement and the wider community. Just as we came out to support Tesco workers, we need to support Bus Éireann workers too, particularly where our community services are being cut, such as those from Athlone to Westport and Derry to Dublin. Communities are going to suffer and they need to get on side with workers to insist their rights are protected.

If we stop the spread of bogus self-employment and lead the fight to preserve every job that pays decent wages, we will go a long way to doing what we should do, and what this House is failing to do, for workers. We need to proclaim that the State is not a neutral actor in the fight between competitively vicious employers and workers who are at the whim of their definition of what they are or are not. The State needs to put itself on side for workers' rights because this is not a level playing field with two equal actors. It is, in effect, a class war and is one our side will have to wake up to for victory. Tesco workers got together and fought alongside communities and other trade unionists and we will have to do the same for Bus Éireann workers and everybody else whose secure, pensionable jobs are under threat or who are being forced into low, if-and-when and flexi contracts. The passing of this Bill will play a small role in that war but it will be workers themselves, as it has always been, who will determine its outcome by getting organised and fighting back. We can echo that and be a voice for them, but we need solidarity to come back onto the agenda in order that people's rights are not trampled on. I commend the Senator who brought forward the Bill.

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