Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 1:

To delete all words after "That Seanad Éireann:" and insert the following:"- believes that workers in Ireland deserve a pay increase;

- believes that under-employment is out of control;

- encourages workers to organise themselves within trade unions;

- accepts that trade unions need access to their members in the workplace for purposes related to the employment of their members for purposes related to the union’s business or both and that this access requires a statutory footing;

- believes that public procurement contracts should have a trade union recognition clause;

- will work to ensure that legislation is provided for banded-hour contracts, effectively ending zero-hour contracts;

- believes Government should ensure sufficient funding for vital public services so that disputes do not occur; and

- notes the level of subvention of public transport services in all comparable European cities and calls for a roadmap towards achieving a public subsidy of Dublin Bus to comparable European city levels."

I welcome the Minister to the House. I was interested to hear Senator Reilly speaking about the importance of child care and recognising the importance of unions. Perhaps the Senator or the Minister might chat to their colleague, the Minister, Deputy Zappone, who has excluded trade unions from the new child care committee. It seems to be a shame. When we talk about child care, we might think about the wages of child care workers.

I accept that the motion before the House is well intentioned. Sinn Féin has drafted an amendment to the motion because it has certain concerns about it. I will go through the motion paragraph by paragraph to explain the concerns we have. The first paragraph of the motion "welcomes official and other forecasts of continued economic growth". We are a little surprised that the Labour Party would begin by welcoming official statistics that have been the subject of such controversy at home and across the world. We are familiar with the phrase "leprechaun economics" and with what Bloomberg had to say. Therefore, it is surprising that the opening line of a Labour Party motion would praise what the rest of the world has been ridiculing. Perhaps the Labour Party should look at the statistics regarding under-employment. Figures from Europe's statistical agency, EUROSTAT, show that approximately 111,000 people, or just over a quarter of those who were working part time last year, were classed as being under-employed. Although it is improving, Ireland's rate of under-employment as a percentage of the workforce is one of the highest in the EU. Many people who do not receive enough hours of work each week live in a perpetual state of economic insecurity.

The second paragraph of the motion contends "that a growing economy should sustain well paid jobs, through which more citizens share in economic prosperity". This is essentially a statement of good intentions. Many things that should happen do not happen because those in power choose to do nothing about them. Unfortunately, that is the legacy of the last Government. It is widely accepted that the Labour Party made serious mistakes when it was in power. Cuts in young people's welfare rates forced many of them to emigrate. The benefits of working mothers and working families were also cut. Significant parts of the social welfare system were privatised by Deputy Joan Burton. Indeed, an effort was made to provide for the privatisation of bus routes in Dublin. It is unfortunate that the previous Government stood by while workers lost their pensions and their jobs. Workers were forced to occupy workplaces to try to get access to their entitlements. Our point is that we need more than good intentions.

We are in total agreement with the third paragraph of the motion which "notes that workers, aided by their trade unions, will continue to advance claims about pay and conditions". The fourth paragraph "notes that employer/labour bodies tasked with intervention in industrial relations disputes ceased to function with the collapse of national pay agreements". This is where we get to the crux of the matter. It looks as though our colleagues in the Labour Party want to take steps to reintroduce social partnership in the form of national pay agreements. That seems to be what this motion could be about. As someone who worked as a trade union official for ten years, I accept that there are various views on this topic, but I have to say I do not believe a return to social partnership at this point would be in the interests of working people or the trade union movement.I want to explain why. When the crisis hit, we had 20 years of social partnership and a key consequence of this was a lack of bargaining and worker activism at local workplace level. It is unfortunate but true that in many workplaces, active workplace committees and shop stewards no longer functioned in the way they should. There was also a growing perception that national pay deals were gifts from the Government rather than hard-fought deals won by an organised trade union movement. In hindsight, there was too much emphasis on tax breaks rather than pay increases during those years of social partnership.

I know my union, SIPTU, is currently doing amazing work developing a new generation of shop stewards and workplace leaders, building an organised and empowered union. The last thing trade unions need as they build on this new organising agenda is a return to centralised bargaining. The future must be empowered, organised workers, negotiating at sectoral and local level. We do not need the process policed by an overarching social partnership body.

Paragraph 5 recognises the need for a new body of representative employers and employees to oversee the attainment and maintenance of industrial peace and stability. Does the motion call for the superseding of the Workplace Relations Commission and the Labour Court? Does the Labour Party want a voluntarist appeals process to compensate for problems that arise in another voluntarist appeals process? In the absence of an overall social partnership deal, it does not make sense. As I have stated, we should not have a return to centralised bargaining at national level.

We need to give real legislative status to our cause for workplace justice and equality, and that is why Sinn Féin has been drafting and moving Bills with this expressed intention. Paragraph 6 calls in particular for the intervention of such a body in the ongoing Dublin Bus dispute. We welcome this part of the motion but we do not need a new social partnership body to do this. We just need the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport to do his job. There was a film from the Coen brothers a few years ago called "The Man Who Wasn't There" and whenever I think of the Minister, I always think of that film. We need Deputies and Senators to stand up and say what should be said, namely, that Dublin Bus drivers need and deserve a pay rise, the Labour Party recommendation in this instance is not sufficient, more investment is needed and the Minister must act now. I was proud to stand on the picket line with Dublin Bus workers last week and I will stand with them again if the talks do not succeed. At this point I pay tribute to the union leaders who have done an excellent job in communicating the case of Dublin Bus workers. In particular I will single out my former colleague, Mr. Owen Reidy, of SIPTU, and we should also acknowledge the tremendous support of so many of the travelling public for the Dublin Bus workers. I hope the talks currently under way reach a successful conclusion.

The last paragraph calls for the restoration of funding to pre-crisis levels for Dublin Bus. The language used is significant and points to a lack of ambition. Sinn Féin does not want to see subvention restored to pre-crisis levels as what we need is subvention at levels of comparable European cities. I accept the motion is well-intentioned but we need more than good intentions; we need good legislation. Our party does not accept that a social partnership type of body should be convened to oversee industrial relations. We are happy to work with others on the left in drafting legislation on improving worker rights and we were happy to receive support from the Labour Party for our banded hours Bill in the Dáil, although it was blocked by Fianna Fáil. We are happy to support the Labour Party's Bill in the Seanad on bargaining rights for workers in the arts. The question I have for my colleagues in the Labour Party is whether they want to return to government at the first opportunity and prop up another right-wing Government or do they want to work with us and build a real left alternative to the Apple tax alliance of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. I urge them to choose the latter path and that is what trade unions across the country want to see.