David Cullinane (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 6:

In page 45, between lines 7 and 8, to insert the following:
“Amendment of section 4 of Act of 200248. Section 4 of the Act of 2002 is amended by inserting the following subsections after subsection (9):

“(10) Actors, voice-over actors, freelance journalists, freelance photo journalists and session musicians are not subject to the provisions contained within this section.
(11) Representatives of retailers may engage in commercial discussions with large suppliers for the purposes of advice only.”.”.

My amendment has two sections and I shall deal with the first one now. Unfortunately the Bill has not dealt with an anomaly that has existed for a long number of years in competition legislation. As the Minister will know, this fact was acknowledged by the social partnership agreement called Towards 2016. In light of previous discussions, I declare that I have been lobbied on this issue by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions and SIPTU. They raised concerns with me about the Minister not taking the opportunity to deal with a long running issue.
I want to put the issue in context and remind everyone of what we are talking about. SIPTU had a collective agreement with the Institute of Advertising Practitioners in Ireland which set a minimum rate of pay, overtime and rest breaks for voiceover actors. In 2004, the Competition Authority ruled that the agreement was in breach of section 4 of the 2002 Competition Act as each writer was, in effect, a business undertaking or, in layman's terms, a business.

They decided it was unlawful for these undertakings to agree to fixed prices, as they put it, for the sale of their services. The Competition Authority then went on to threaten to fine both Equity and SIPTU €4 million if either sought to use the collective agreement in place. The unions argued at the time that a gun was put to their head, signed up to the Competition Authority's agreement. The Irish Congress of Trade Unions pressed the Competition Authority to review its decision, which it did, and unfortunately it upheld its decision in 2006. After this SIPTU and the National Union of Journalists looked to social partnership to pursue legislative change. It has to be said that they had greater success with the former Government than with this Government.
Let me read from the social partnership agreement 2016 which states:

The Government is committed to introducing amending legislation in 2009 to exclude voice-over actors, freelance journalists and session musicians, being categories of workers formerly or currently covered by collective agreements, when engaging in collective bargaining, from the provisions of Section 4 of the Competition Act, 2002, .....

It then goes on to discuss the logic of that.
Unfortunately they have had less success with this Government than they had with the previous Government. My understanding is that negotiations between ICTU and the Labour Party and Fine Gael parties broke down in 2012. I suppose yet again this is the Labour Party in government failing to progress the rights and protections of vulnerable workers. In 2012, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions wrote to the Minister seeking an exemption from the Competition Act. It is my understanding that in 2013, the Minister's private secretary told the unions the troika was blocking the Government from exempting the workers from the competition legislation. I think that is laughable for a number of reasons. First all the political parties and the Independent groupings had opportunities to meet the troika when they were here. The troika had been very clear that its job in this State was to ensure that the Government reached its deficit reduction targets. How the Government went about its business and achieved those targets was, it would argue, entirely a matter for Government and not for it. In other words it was not micro-managing all of the policies and certainly not worker's rights or competition legislation, industrial relations and to suggest that it was in the business of doing that is laughable.
Even if we were to take that at face value and imagine for a second that the troika members were of that view, which I do not believe they were, they are no longer here so there is nothing stopping the Government from doing the right thing. The Competition Authority judgment is wrong - and that is plain and simple - and has unduly impacted on the income of freelance journalists, photographers, voice-over actors whose rates of pay have dropped significantly. The Competition Authority in this instance has taken a very heavy handed and rigid interpretation of section 4 of the 2002 Act. This Bill is an opportunity to address that but unfortunately the Minister has not taken the opportunity to do so but he can by accepting the amendment which we in Sinn Féin have tabled.
The second part of our amendment states, "(11) Representatives of retailers may engage in commercial discussions with large suppliers for the purposes of advice only.”. We have had representations from small business organisations in respect of this part of the amendment, which seeks to provide effective representation and expert technical advice to small retailers who believe that they should be free to request their representative organisations to assist them in negotiations in keeping with the determinations of the Competition Authority or the IMO. They would argue that this is neither radical nor anti-competitive. For example, in Australia it is specifically provided for that retailers can engage with two lottery companies and can engage with all newspaper publishers. The alternative to allowing small businesses to have a centralised and a well financed advocacy group discussing terms on their behalf would be to permit suppliers such as tobacco companies, newspaper distributors, telephone top-up companies and so on to dictate terms and conditions on a take it or leave it basis. Retailers of products exclusively supplied by one company would be forced to accept its terms. Again we see the logic in the amendment being accepted and we do not see that it would be in conflict in any way with competition rights.
I have outlined the logic of this amendment and I look forward to the Minister's response.