Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

I will be sharing time with Deputy Boyd Barrett and, possibly, Deputy Barry.

I will start by making some suggestions as to how the small but positive reforms contained in this Bill could be improved before moving on to the wider issue of workers' rights. The Bill states that periods of time up to September 2021 during which workers were laid off because of Covid emergency measures will be included in their reckonable periods of service for the purpose of statutory redundancy payments. However, anyone laid off because of Covid since the end of September 2021 will not have those lay-off periods counted. This would penalise night club and pub workers who were laid off because of Government-mandated closures or restricted opening hours between October 2021 and January 2022.

The Government may argue in response that normal redundancy rights were restored at the end of September, meaning that employees facing lay-offs after that date could have claimed redundancy as normal whereas previously those rights were suspended, but this effectively means forcing anyone who was laid off because of Covid since September to choose between triggering redundancy and giving up on getting his or her job back on the one hand and, on the other, being laid off for a period of time that will not be included in his or her reckonable service for redundancy purposes. That is unfair and must be changed, and we will seek to amend it.

It is an issue that the Bill only applies to statutory redundancy, where workers who have negotiated better redundancy terms with their employers will not automatically be entitled to have lay-off periods included in their periods of reckonable service and will have to struggle individually or collectively as groups of workers with a private employer to win it.

I also raise a question relating to profitable companies that may be winding up or making a number of workers redundant for non-financial reasons not having to cover these costs themselves rather than it falling to the State to do so. There is already evidence of profitable companies super-exploiting pandemic-related corporate welfare, for example, companies paying dividends while receiving the employment wage subsidy. The absence of any attempt to deter this and the light touch approach taken in general to policing the billions of euro in corporate welfare that were handed out during the pandemic stands in stark contrast with the punitive approach taken towards those on the PUP. The PUP was the first Covid support to be cut long before anything for businesses. It is not so long ago that workers were claiming they faced having their payments stopped if they were intercepted by social welfare inspectors at the airport.

I wish to make an additional point about the relatively small payout compared to the cost of living and the scale of the oncoming redundancies. The Bill entitles covered workers to a maximum additional payout of €1,860. This is approximately the equivalent of one month's rent in Dublin and much less than the anticipated rise in the cost of basic necessities over the next year. While it is welcome, it is not going to go far. It is a drop in the ocean considering the tidal wave of involuntary redundancies coming our way once Covid payments to businesses are withdrawn.

The EWSS is to end for many businesses from 30 April and for businesses affected by the last round of Covid restrictions - mainly in hospitality, the arts and entertainment - from 30 May. It is only then that we will begin to have a clearer picture of the longer term impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on employment. At the committee yesterday, the Tánaiste trumpeted last December's 7.5% unemployment rate, but that may prove premature. The latest figures show 75,000 people still on the PUP and a further 279,000 on the EWSS, yet the Tánaiste has previously estimated a maximum of 56,000 redundancies over the next three years. The €150 million budget for the expansion of State payments under the Bill suggests that a higher number - perhaps in the region of 80,000 - is anticipated.

However many workers end up losing their jobs, it must be a core priority that not one worker loses out on any of his or her redundancy entitlements, be that from the State or his or her employer. Unfortunately, the Government has not taken this obvious opportunity while it is reforming redundancy law anyway to give workers what they really need and deserve, namely, the right to receive every cent of what they are rightfully owed by employers, including additional redundancy payments, and to be first in line when companies are liquidated.

This was a core demand of the Debenhams workers. They stood on picket lines in all weathers for 406 days during a global pandemic. These heroic and mainly female workers were betrayed time and again, not only by their employer, but the Government, which stood behind them with crocodile tears. Unfortunately, they were also failed by aspects of the trade union leadership. As with the Clerys workers before them, the Government sat on its hands, pretending it was useless for anything stronger than tea and sympathy or a few claps for front-line workers.

What would a left government that actually cared about workers' rights do in this situation? It would immediately legislate to protect workers in collective redundancy situations by putting them at the top of the queue. That could be done by amending the Companies Act 2014 to provide for preferential creditor status to employees in collective redundancies and to include all payments due to workers in the list of payments covered. That is what we proposed in our Private Members' Bill last May. Fearing a public outcry at a time when public support for the Debenhams workers was widespread, the Government took the cynical decision not to oppose openly our Companies (Protection of Employees' Rights in Liquidations) Bill 2021, otherwise known as the Debenhams Bill. Of course, the Government has failed to do anything since to progress our Bill or to improve workers' rights in collective redundancy situations materially. It has a golden opportunity to that now when it is amending the law on redundancies for other reasons, but it has chosen not to. We will be submitting amendments in line with the Debenhams Bill.

The second and even more important thing that a left government with an eco-socialist programme would do would be to carry out a radical overhaul of workers' rights in this country. The Industrial Relations Act 1990 must be repealed and replaced with a charter of workers' rights. It would include the right to establish pickets and workplace occupations, the right to engage in political and sympathy strikes, and the right to mandatory trade union recognition, as proposed in People Before Profit's Trade Union Recognition Bill 2021. Without these rights, the workers' movement is fighting with one hand tied behind its back, which is, of course, the whole point of the 1990 Act. In most other European countries, workers are not legally prohibited from striking in support of another group of workers. In Ireland, though, the Government has banned both political and sympathy strikes. This is despite our proud history of the world famous Dunnes anti-apartheid strike. Nearly 40 years on, parties on all sides of this House would profess to believe that the strikers were on the side of right, yet such a strike could not legally take place today against, for example, Israel despite its recently being declared an apartheid state by human rights organisations from Amnesty International to Human Rights Watch.

The right to mandatory trade union recognition, as proposed in People Before Profit's Trade Union Recognition Bill 2021 and commonplace in most other European countries, is also a fundamental workers' right. Without it, many workers' rights on paper are rendered essentially meaningless. In this situation, it is hardly surprising that union membership fell from 33% in 2005 to 24% in 2018. Collective bargaining coverage is approximately 33%, the seventh lowest of 22 EU countries.

We need to tackle the significant increase in precarious work, gig work and bogus self-employment. The Government has sat on its hands while precarious employment among young people has reached unprecedented levels. Research by the National Youth Council of Ireland found that 38% of people aged between 18 and 29 years were on temporary contracts. A "staggering 82 per cent" said precarious work was the only work available. Over 70% said that their current temporary or part-time contracts were causing them serious hardship. Part-time and temporary workers are also more likely to be low paid. Half of precarious workers under 30 years of age earn less than the living wage. On top of this, workers under 20 years of age are discriminated against by only being legally entitled to lower minimum wage rates. This Dáil term, I will be introducing the national minimum wage (equal pay for young workers) Bill, which will abolish discriminatory lower minimum wage rates for young workers, including apprentices.

To fight for workers' rights, higher pay in a time of soaring inflation and decent redundancies, we need to build an active rank and file base in the trade unions and reinvigorate them as democratic, fighting organisations, North and South.

It is only through an active, rank and file, fighting trade union movement that we can restore public sector pay, reverse cuts and fight for equal and better pay and conditions and decent redundancy pay for all workers, regardless of gender, race, disability or immigration status.

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