Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

This Bill is about trying to learn one of the lessons of the Covid-19 pandemic and protecting a particularly vulnerable group of workers whose plight was highlighted in the midst of the pandemic. It was revealed as one of the central stories and scandals of the pandemic. That was the plight of migrant workers working in meat processing, horticulture, dairy and other similar areas within which thousands of people work and about 70% of whom are migrant workers.

Reports into the plight of these workers in this country have shown a very poor record of their treatment in those industries even before Covid-19. Between 2015 and 2020, for example, nearly half of all inspections in meat plants detected breaches of labour law relating to pay, working time, inadequate record keeping and employment permit issues. This is an area where a vulnerable group of workers are largely unseen by the Irish population and are largely not discussed in public discourse. Maybe it says something about their plight that there are few Members here tonight to discuss this. Their role in Irish society was revealed in a stark way during the height of the pandemic when, despite initial Government denials, we had to highlight the fact that there were rampant outbreaks of Covid in the meat processing plants. The Government denied the problem initially but eventually was forced to acknowledge that there was a serious problem. There were hundreds of outbreaks. About 3,000 to 4,000 workers were infected with Covid-19. The high levels of infection in the Border counties and counties where these processing plants were situated told its own story about the conditions in those meat plants. One of the key issues highlighted was when these very vulnerable workers, in a sector where permits are often not properly arranged by employers and where there has been poor treatment of migrant workers historically, got sick or got symptoms they had a fear of not going to work and that it could put them in a vulnerable position with their employer.

We have introduced this Bill against that background. The most important provision of this Bill is, crucially, to ensure an employer pays for a sick pay scheme for workers on general employment permits working in these sectors so that if they become ill, they will receive 70% of the pay they would have got for four weeks, if it is personal illness or injury, or six months if it is work related. That is the central provision of this Bill. It is important to state why that is important. It is obviously important for the health of the workers that they are not forced to go to work while sick out of fear of financial loss or retribution by an employer who might be unhappy if they choose to stay off sick. It is, therefore, important for that reason. However, as we learned during the pandemic, it was critically important to address the plight of these workers to reduce the level of transmission of Covid-19. In other words, if they were treated badly, there was a serious impact on the public health situation in the towns, villages and areas around where those plants were based.

Of additional importance was the potential impacts on the food supply chain of this country. If 70% of the people who help process meat and pick fruit and vegetables to stock the shelves in the shops of this country to feed people were vulnerable and could be sick, this could have potentially endangered the food supply chain for the whole country. Addressing this is also good for workers generally. There is not a proper statutory sick pay scheme for all workers in this country. Many workers in the private sector do not have that and we need that as well.

If there is a cohort of migrant workers who are badly treated and vulnerable and who do not have rights, that undermines conditions for workers in this country generally and makes it more difficult for them to fight for their rights to the sort of statutory entitlement to sick pay they should have if they become ill. The central provision is to ensure that employers will not get permits for migrant workers unless they provide a sick pay scheme that will ensure that workers who get ill get sick pay for four weeks in the case of personal injury or illness or six months in the case of work-related illness. The Bill also includes a number of other measures to give workers who are treated badly by their employers access to the Workplace Relations Commission, WRC, adjudication process, even where there may be problems with their work permits if they can show they have made reasonable efforts to secure such a permit and where the responsibility for them not having one really lies with employers who did not take those matters seriously or who may even have thought it convenient to have workers in that vulnerable position. Section 1 seeks to ensure that workers have that sort of recourse to the WRC, even if they do not have a valid work permit. It also allows workers on a general employment permit to seek an alternative employer. They should not just be tied to one employer if it is the case that their health, their dignity at work or their well-being is threatened by their treatment at the hands of that employer.

Another section of the Bill ensures that migrant workers can receive any amount awarded to them under the Employment Permits (Amendment) Act 2014 as a result of redundancy in the case of an employer becoming insolvent. This is about giving rights to these vulnerable workers. We have seen just how vulnerable they are and just how bad it is for all of us if they are treated badly and do not have those kinds of protections.

The Government may point to the Bill, the Tánaiste, Deputy Varadkar, has talked about bringing in that will provide a sick pay scheme. He has talked about it being a benefit for Covid workers. In our opinion, that is not adequate in that, first of all, you will have to have been paying PRSI contributions for six months to avail of the proposed scheme so workers who have only been here a few weeks, like many of those at the centre of what we saw during the Covid pandemic, would not be entitled to sick pay in a situation such as that we have just been through with the pandemic. The scheme also only proposes to give an entitlement to sick pay of between four and ten days. The number of days is to increase over a number of years but will remain paltry compared to what is necessary. While the scheme proposes to provide 70% of a person's pay for those short and totally inadequate periods, it is to be capped at €110 a day, which is simply not enough.

The Government should support this Bill. We owe an ongoing debt to these vulnerable workers for the role they play in producing the food the people of this country need. There is a history of them being mistreated. We have seen starkly that, if they do not have a right to sick pay and protections as employees, it can be very bad not just for them, but for our entire society. The matter is cut and dried. The Government should not oppose this Bill and should let it pass to the next Stage so that we can give those sorts of protections to this vulnerable group of workers. This should be part of the much more wide-ranging payback that it is needed for working people in this country because we have seen the role workers, who although often poorly treated, are absolutely essential, played in keeping our entire society running during the Covid pandemic. Workers who are vulnerable often suffer from poor working conditions and very low pay. There was a lot of clapping for them and a lot of rhetoric about the role they played but we need to see really tangible measures to improve basic pay and conditions of employment for the workers in this country who kept us all going and sustained us through this very difficult and dark period. I will leave it at that. I hope the Government will respond positively to the Bill.

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