Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Minister's explanation was a graphic example of making a mountain out of a molehill. In fact this amendment was an incredibly positive measure and entirely in keeping with the EU part-time workers directive. It serves to enhance the security and opportunity to work extra hours for part-time workers should they desire to do so.

The Minister referred to the directive and the prohibition on part-time workers being treated less favourably than full-time workers. She referred to opting to transfer between full-time and part-time employment and so on. These points are utterly irrelevant for the purposes of these two lines. The text is carefully written. It provides that in the event of hours becoming available an employer shall be required to offer any surplus hours to existing part-time employees first.

None of the scenarios that the Minister outlined about people on social welfare and people who do not want to do extra hours apply. In my former job everyone knew who those people were. If there were extra hours, everyone knew who might want them as well. The Minister says that an employer is sensible – of course costs will come into it – and will offer the hours to existing employees. I agree with her. That is the normal situation. In any healthy employment, that scenario will arise. Therefore, inserting this clause in the legislation will not have any negative impact on that healthy employer-employee relationship.

The reason to include the provision relates to other scenarios that have arisen, for example, the likes of the Dunnes Stores dispute. The idea is to protect people whose faces did not fit, perhaps the outspoken worker down at the back who encouraged other people to go on strike. That person may have found that access to hours were impacted upon and she was being treated less favourably in that sense. The reason was not because the person was part-time but because she was a union activist.

Essentially, these are the very circumstances behind the Ryanair dispute at the moment. It is a similar scenario because what is being sought is a master seniority list. In other words, a transparent mechanism available for changes in hours of work and for transfers between bases and so on. Ryanair wants to keep that because it wants to have the power to send people to different bases and deny them holidays in order to keep them compliant. This is a similar scenario that can be used. Let us suppose a worker wants to avail of extra hours to ensure security.

We should remind ourselves that last month the European Economic and Social Committee stated its view that the directive should open up real opportunities for workers in non-standard jobs, which is important, to move to standard terms of employment appropriate to their qualifications. It said that this requires minimum rights for temporary workers to be moved into open-ended employment or to upgrade from part time to full time where there are places or hours in the company and the worker has the necessary skills and qualifications.

Is the Minister honestly trying to tell us that the Workplace Relations Commission, WRC, thinks that it will be forced to uphold a claim when, say, tomorrow Ryanair does not have a pilot to fly the flight and a baggage handler is going to offer to do it for it? Does she think that the WRC will say that is a reasonable expectation for that worker, any more than a hospital porter thinks that he or she will take over the doctor's job? Be serious. It is a nonsense to suggest the WRC is saying that anyone expects that based on this wording. It says "appropriate to their qualifications" and necessary skills or qualifications are implied, they do not need to be spelled out. However, if they did need to be spelled out, I ask the Minister why she did not insert that wording? This is critically important to workers in this State, and against the backdrop of the research done by Social Justice Ireland which says that more than 104,000 people at work are at risk of poverty. Some of those people want extra hours. Maybe their face does not fit. The Minister is absolutely right that in most cases, if the hours are there in a healthy work place, the workers will get it. This only refers to a minority of cases but it is so important and just having it there will act as a corrective for those employers who might want to exercise discrimination against their workers. It is incredibly important. For me, it was the most positive amendment to come out of Committee Stage and it would be appalling to overturn it at this stage. It would be incredibly harsh of the Minister to do that. If she had taken the discussions on board she would have re-worded it if there was a problem with the wording.

I am also aware of the email correspondence where the Department sought the WRC's advice and opinions on the amendments brought in by the committee. The WRC commented on many things but it did not comment on this one. It had to be emailed repeatedly by the Department which kept asking if this would be a problem and in fact in one of the emails the response was that it did not believe it was. The WRC kept receiving emails asking whether it did not think it was a problem. Finally, we have wording that there was a phone call with the WRC and it said that it could cause huge problems and a burden for it. No workers will take cases saying that they were a baggage handler and wanted to fly the plane and they were not given the hours. If they were stupid enough to do that, no WRC would uphold it. It is utterly ludicrous.

There is a problem here. We have to look at it in the context of the rising number of disputes. The legislation that we bring in can be important. There is currently an issue in the Minister's own constituency with workers in Etihad Airlines. Workers were given a letter under a collective redundancy situation and are now in negotiations. They are vulnerable workers whose company is failing to recognise the union. People with no expertise are supposed to go in and represent all their colleagues in a life-and-death situation regarding their jobs. The company is failing to sit down with the union that those people have joined. That is the consequence of the type of bullying which this legislation and the clause that we are discussing is meant to protect workers from. I feel very strongly that it has to stay.

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