Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin Bay North, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The very point of the existence of the Labour Party is to protect the worker against exploitation. Protecting the worker means that, at times and circumstances change, legislation has to change. Things do not stay the same. That is why when we bring forward proposed legislation in the House it is always with an eye on the worker, the reality of the vulnerability of many people who are at work and that often employees can be exploited.

There is no greater exploitation than to insist that workers never stop working, always have to be switched on and are constantly under some kind of employer surveillance and must answer emails, be at the end of the phone and be constantly contactable and have to second guess whether they can spend free time with family, children, leave the house or even go on holiday, which, it is to be hoped, can happen again soon. This always on culture is incredibly corrosive. It is very difficult for people to manage the terms of the mental health.

It means people are never free of their employer. They cannot really have a work-life balance. Rather, they work and work and work from the moment they wake up. In the modern world the first thing people probably do before they even turn to their partner is look at their phone. For many people in work, a message will be waiting to be answered. When an email comes in in the evening, there is an expectation that it will be answered.

If people do not answer a call or an email or respond to communication from an employer there are consequences. The chances of advancement in a job will be curtailed. The feeling is that people have to be responsive and always be in a position to answer. That is not good for anybody's productivity, work-life balance or a society or a country that is trying to raise a society that is at ease with herself. It is not good that all people who are trying to have a fully rounded existence do is work.

This is not just a Monday to Friday phenomenon; it is all the time. It involves weekends. If emails, messages or phone calls come in on a Friday, Saturday or Sunday the expectation is that they must be responded to. Junior employees on low wages want to protect their jobs and career advancement. There has to be an absolute right in legislation to switch off. Only a few countries in the European Union have this right, but Ireland has to legislate for the right to switch off.

Workers have a right to not always have to be working. Workers have a right to free time. They should be able to put a phone or laptop away or closed down a computer without feeling that they will lose out in terms of their employment advancement prospects.

We can have legislation, but employers will know that while there may be a right not to answer an email an employee will feel that he or she has to. Employers have to have policies laid down by legislation to ensure that employees can point to the policies and say that they were working within company policy and they did not respond to an email or phone call. If people were to respond to an email or phone call, that would be designated as work and people would be paid for it accordingly. We could have a much more productive society that would work better for employees and employers if there was a basic right to switch off.

In terms of remote working, we are again lagging behind many of our EU colleagues in not having legislation to cover this area. As stated by my party leader, Deputy Alan Kelly, the number of people working from home has grown from 200,000 at the beginning of year to 800,000 at this point.

It is the more vulnerable workers who we are worried about, namely, people who are working at the end of a bed, in a bedroom that they may share with a sibling or in an overcrowded space. Socialisation in work, workplace mingling, sharing stories and coffee culture will be important for many people as they go out into the world. They are losing out on that, which is very unfortunate.

We have to have protections for younger workers. Employers have to step up and ensure employees are protected or have the resources within their homes in order to do their work to a sufficient standard. Far too many children in this country do their homework at the end of stairs or lying on their stomachs in front of the television due to overcrowding. That is also the reality for many of our workers.

As we move forward, try to battle our way through this pandemic, rebuild our economy and consider a post-Covid Ireland, that is where the attention of the Government needs to turn in terms of how we will reconstruct our society and economy once the pandemic has subsided.

Are we just going to revert back to where we were? One of the tragedies of the last crisis was that we just went back to where we were, which was certainly the case with the housing market. I plead with Government not to make the same mistake again. Huge societal issues have been exposed by this pandemic that need to be rectified and a radical approach to this is going to be necessary. It may be desirable in the future that many people will work from home. This would ensure that many of our rural towns will keep their young people, will ensure that this drift to large urban centres is not necessary, will ensure that we do not have this crazy traffic gridlock every day in many other urban centres and if it is their wish and their wont workers can legitimately work from home in the future. This is something that may be desirable from an environmental perspective but we have to have laws, regulations and legislation laid down in order to protect and encourage workers and to also encourage employers in that scenario.

We ask that the Tánaiste might instil some vision into Government policy to look forward into this post-Covid-19 space about how our economy and workers might work.

In summary, the Labour Party wants, as always, to protect the worker. As work and employment practices change we want to protect those employees. We cannot have a situation where the only way people can live their lives effectively and earn a salary is never to stop working. We cannot stand over that. Unfortunately, in our party, we view the potential for employers to exploit is very high which is not something that we say lightly. It is our experience and the experience of many people on our side of the argument that employers have a chequered history of exploitation when it comes to the worker if they are allowed get away with it. This new phenomenon of always being “on” is a classic example of where an employer has an opportunity to squeeze more and more out of a worker. The only chance outside of a trade union - we know that we have restricted trade union and collective bargaining rights in Ireland - is that the State would do something in order to protect workers. The Labour Party exists in order to provide a legislative backing to the trade union movement. It is why we are here, is why we introduce legislation like this and why we hope the Government will look at it in a positive manner, unlike other legislation we have brought forward. Workers have the right to switch off and to have protections under law when they work from home.

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