Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome our colleagues from Mandate. I have had the pleasure of working alongside them. Mandate represents the very best of the trade union movement. It is a fighting and campaigning union and we are proud to have its representatives here.

Sinn Féin welcomes the Bill. I am pleased that we are again being presented with an opportunity to address the issue of precarious work which has practically become the norm for hundreds of thousands of people. We believe that, at its core, the Bill is attempting to identify and resolve the issue of precarious work. It goes some of the way towards resolving it and for that reason, we will be supporting it.

Sinn Féin has long recognised the urgent need to address the exploitation of workers on low-hour, zero-hour and if-and-when contracts. These contracts are wrong and there needs to be legislation enacted to deal with such exploitation. Only last week a Senator suggested at the jobs committee that there was an awful lot less of this kind of thing occurring than some people claimed. Actually, the opposite is the case. The entire hotel and catering sector now operates on this basis. For 137,000 workers in the accommodation and food services sector, the average wage is just €325, which is less than half the average wage in the United States. Precarious contracts are now commonplace in the retail sector. They have even got a hold in manufacturing plants. I know this because, during my time as a union official earlier this year, I came across these contracts increasingly, to the point where it became a daily occurrence.

I echo what Senator Catherine Ardagh and my colleagues in the Labour Party have said. Women are particularly affected. For the most part, I was working earlier this year with women in the contract catering industry. Each week they had to wait to find out how many hours of work they would be given. They had no rights. This is appalling. I give full credit to my colleagues in the Labour Party for introducing the Bill.

One does not have to take my word for what I am saying. The University of Limerick report on the prevalence of zero-hour contracts states, "If and When hours and low working hours are prevalent in the accommodation/food and retail sectors and in certain occupations in education and health: community care work, so-called 'bank' nursing, general practice nursing, university/institute of technology lecturing, adult education tutoring, school substitution, caretaking, and secretarial and cleaning work".

As Senators know, Sinn Féin previously brought forward its own Bill in the Dáil to deal with this issue, the Banded Hours Contract Bill. If passed, it would allow workers to have the ability to plan their daily and weekly lives with some structure. They would have some idea of how much money would be coming through the door every week and they would be able to plan for rent and food bills and everything else people need in order to live a modest life. The reality is that some workers are on 15-hour contracts, but they are actually working 30 hours a week. When they try to apply for a mortgage, they are denied because according to their contract of employment they are guaranteed only 15 hours work. How exactly are parents supposed to plan for child care when they are not guaranteed a certain number of hours each week? The core question is how workers are supposed to cope with reality when their contracts are not based on their actual working hours. The Banded Hours Contract Bill and the Bill before the House are trying to empower workers with the dignity they deserve. The Banded Hours Contract Bill would allow workers to apply for a contract that was reflective of their actual working week. The Bill before us, in section 3, would achieve the same. Of course, we support this proposal.

Section 4 proposes to amend section 18 in order to ensure the minimum entitlement to payment for employees is extended to cover employees initially engaged to undertake work of a casual nature. Again, we support this principle.

Sections 5 and 6 deal with continuity of employment. Both sections strike a good balance between the rights of employees and employers and give additional protection to people employed on a casual basis.

Section 7 creates an entitlement to a corrected written statement of hours of work and specifies a minimum period of six months.

Section 8 is an anti-victimisation provision. It is needed to give the Bill some teeth.

Sections 9 and 10 deal with complaints and adjudication, respectively.

While we reserve the right to table amendments as the Bill makes its way through the Chamber, we see no case whatsoever for delaying its passage. The UL report has been sitting on a Minister's desk for a year. It is actually a disgrace that not one of its recommendations has been implemented to date. We were not put in this Chamber to procrastinate but to legislate. It is welcome that both Fine Gael and, belatedly, Fianna Fáil are not going to oppose the Bill on this Stage, which means that we can move it forward. The workers who have to live on if-and-when or zero-hour contracts need us to act now. Sinn Féin is ready to act. Those affected are ordinary people living under extraordinary pressure. I am glad that those who were opposed to the Bill have changed their minds.

I welcome the contrast between what happened in the Dáil, where Fianna Fáil delayed the Banded Hours Contract Bill, and the welcome progress made today. I appeal to both Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil not to undermine the core elements of the Bill on Committee Stage. It is too important. There are hundreds of thousands of workers affected who, as I stated, should not have to wait any longer. In fairness to Senator Gerald Nash, a very good report was produced by the University of Limerick. The recommendations have been made and we should all be able to buy into them and support the Bill, not just today but on the crucial Stages to come. I welcome it. I welcome the positive comments of the Leader of the House and hope we can build on the consensus and enure we can do more good work to protect workers.