Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The Employment (Miscellaneous) Provisions Bill 2017 is inadequate to address what is one of the most difficult and dreadful developments of our age, which is the continuing expansion and growth of different forms of precarious work. To be perfectly honest, this area is becoming like that of tax legislation. In other words, people in HR departments continually review and change work arrangements to beat, if one likes, the system of labour and wage regulation. The Government needs to acknowledge and wake up to that fact.

During my time in government, one of the first things I did was raise the minimum wage by €1 per hour, reversing the reduction introduced by Fianna Fáil and the Green Party at the height of the crisis. When I was Tánaiste, I got the agreement of Fine Gael to bring in the Low Pay Commission and to introduce the only labour legislation throughout the EU, and certainly in any of the countries which had experienced economic collapses such as Ireland's, to give additional powers to trade unions and strengthen provision in the area of collective bargaining.

The concept of what a job is and what is work is important. We all know how important work is to people and how important it is that they can get work. One of the very good things of recent years is the fact that, notwithstanding the 330,000 jobs lost at the height of the crisis, many people have been able to return to work. In some cases, people have set up their own businesses. All of that has been positive. The concept of work, however, is that a person will do work which is satisfying and important to him or her or gives experience so that the person can go on to do those things that he or she wants to do. It is important to people's lives and well-being. Furthermore, if people work hard, they can support themselves and their family. Through their PRSI contributions and taxation, they can collectively provide for a social insurance and social welfare system that will provide for income support in periods of unemployment and for pension entitlement on retirement. That is the way the social democratic model works and it has worked well in countries such as Germany, Austria and those in Scandinavia. It has also worked well here for generations.

The other key element is collective bargaining, but the Fine Gael Party is highly adverse to it. For the social democratic model to work, it must include collective bargaining. Fine Gael shies away from collective bargaining, however, and we can see that running through this legislation. Although the Bill seeks to improve on the serious flaws and gaps in current legislation, it simply does not go far enough, and this is not in our interests as a country. We want to attract more development, employment, business and foreign direct investment. We also want to develop Ireland in a way which provides employment and all of the different things we want in our society, whether that is education, health care, public development or public works.

When I was a Minister, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions brought to my attention issues relating to this area, including the issue of bogus self-employment. After a long wait and continuing questioning on my part of the Taoiseach on the matter, the report was finally published in the past week or two. It was approximately ten days ago. Lo and behold, there was no debate or discussion. In two tables, however, the report showed that there was a loss to the Exchequer of approximately €60 million in tax and social welfare revenue as a consequence of disguised or bogus self-employment, or whatever one might want to call it. That is part of the problem. There are very few days a Government will sniff at recovering an extra €60 million in either PRSI or taxation because that money would go into the collective to fund our system and give people assurance.

Will the Minister arrange a debate in the House on the report on bogus self-employment? Why is the Government looking this gift horse of €60 million in tax and social welfare receipts in the mouth? It deserves a debate. The Minister made a short comment when the report was released but it received almost no media attention.

From my ministerial experience in this area over five and a half years, there are two sectors of workers who face particular difficulties, namely, younger workers, particularly those under 25, and older workers, particularly those over 55. If they have had spells of unemployment, be they in an urban or in a rural area, they may find it extremely difficult to get a job. They are extremely vulnerable when it comes to precarious work. We need to take a sectoral approach to this and provide for a mechanism over and above the Low Pay Commission. I put forward this in the previous Government and Fine Gael agreed to it on a limited basis. I also appointed my colleague, Senator Ged Nash, as Minister of State in the then Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, to work on the required legislation and on which he did a good job. As this field is evolving so rapidly, however, it is difficult to keep up with the development of the structures, which continuously outrun and outwit the formal structure.

One of the best protections against this would be for the Minister to work in partnership with both employers and with the representatives of employees, particularly the trade unions. Including in this legislation a framework for an ongoing social partnership would be the greatest guarantee for the Minister and the Government, ensuring they would be advised and informed of new mechanisms emerging. This was traditional but disappeared at the height of the crisis, partly because it got a bad name. When I was in government, I argued strongly for a social dialogue, which was essentially the beginning of a return to social partnership. If we really want to tackle this issue, we need more institutional development.

Our society has a difficulty with certain kinds of jobs where the skills of our people are now being intensely sought internationally. We sorted this issue out with primary school teachers when the Labour Party was in government. However, we have researchers and teachers in colleges and universities whose skills are highly sought internationally. Our society invested in their education and in the development of their PhDs and other postgraduate qualifications. However, they have no proper employment contract structure or security. The bands set out by the Minister are too wide. Far more bands are needed to ensure it is possible to address different situations where, for periods, the amount of work available might be relatively small. However, as the person builds up in a job, there may be a callous disregard for that individual's right to employment. Accordingly, they may never get a permanent contract.

What are the social implications of this? If a skilled university researcher, qualified secondary school teacher or third level librarian is not able to get an actual contract of employment, it may mean that when they want to get a mortgage, they have no status of employment. In turn, this will prevent them from buying a home for themselves or their family. That is tearing the social fabric of the society apart. The Minister needs to give thought as to how she will strengthen the power of employers, employer organisations and the trade unions to have a social partnership which will seek to address these issues. As I said, the idea of social partnership is deeply unfashionable with Fine Gael. However, without that kind of structure, it is impossible to keep up with what is happening in the employment field.

Young people, those over 55 and those who live in jobless households, if they cannot get part-time or full-time employment, are more likely to be at risk of poverty than other groups. The economist, Joseph Stiglitz, who has written extensively on poverty, acknowledges the European model of social welfare and supports in Ireland has prevented the kind of poverty levels one sees in societies, such as Greece, where the social welfare system is either limited or non-existent over large elements of the economy. Similarly in the United States, if one loses employment, one loses medical insurance and so forth. In turn, as there is no replacement, one can sink rapidly down to losing one's home and so on. Joseph Stiglitz commends the European model, which we have here. While we need to strengthen it, all the longitudinal surveys showed that, notwithstanding our economic crash, our social welfare system saved significant numbers of people from falling into poverty. Joseph Stiglitz acknowledged this in his writings and when he visited UCD.

Is the Minister open to amending the Bill to ensure strengthening of the social welfare and work protection framework in order that a job is treated in law as employment and the worker acquires rights? Is she prepared to address the bogus self-employment issue in which she is losing out on €50 million a year? The Labour Party will be happy to work with the Minister to achieve these two measures.

Notwithstanding all the work already done in providing younger people with opportunities around apprenticeships, little progress has been made by this Government. Apprenticeship numbers are staggeringly low.

While I welcome the new apprenticeships in finance and insurance, the old model in the construction trade, which is returning to high levels of activity, whereby plasterers and so on used to take on one, two or three apprentices, is no longer available with small employers. Many young people would love to take up apprenticeships as sparks, plumbers or so on in construction or the motor trade, but that option is not available to them because the structure of those industries means that the small traditional employers who used to provide apprenticeships can no longer do so. Larger companies can, however. During my time, we got the ESB to restart recruiting electrical apprentices. Many large companies, including the one doing the work on Leinster House, are employing a large number of apprentices, which is great. If we keep building at this pace, however, and in light of all the new housing that we will build, we will not have enough people to do the skilled work. The Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government knows this. As such, the Government must think afresh about how to get young people who are interested in a range of trades into good apprenticeships and how to give them the opportunity to get qualifications and well-paid, regulated jobs with good terms and conditions, as provided for in the legislation.

The Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection should set up a monitoring unit in her Department if one is not already there. Since my time, employment has moved into her Department. Just as is the case with other areas of activity that are examined, there should be a unit that monitors continuously whether there are negative developments in respect of workers' rights. When I entered the Department, one of the tragedies of the time was that so many building companies had collapsed and gone into liquidation. The then Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation was not able to cope with the level of demand for redundancy payments. The then Department of Social Protection took that function over, built platforms and ensured that people received their redundancy payments within a relatively short period. If a monitoring unit was established in conjunction with social partnerships, given that this is a social partnership model requirement, it would be possible to examine those areas where employment patterns do not allow people to earn a decent living wage, have proper terms and conditions and have access to the social welfare system in a way that would grant them entitlements in the event of experiencing periods of unemployment or other difficulties for which they would need social welfare support.

If-and-when contracts are not properly covered in this legislation, but they should be. The bands are too few and too wide. The House should be able to agree that this matter can be addressed immediately in the form of an amendment. The legislation will be no good if it does not help the person who is in an exploitative situation and needs proper terms and conditions. When replying, the Minister might be in a position to make those commitments for the benefit of workers throughout the country.

I see people cycling around Dublin on Deliveroo bikes and carrying large boxes. I was a student and I worked in all kinds of jobs down the years. We have all done that, but to think that grown men and women - men, in particular - might spend large parts of their lives as human carriers on the streets of our cities without having proper terms and conditions is sad.

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