David Norris (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I find invoking the principle of volunteerism to support opposition to this Bill a perfectly sickening piece of hypocrisy. I just do not understand it.

There has been legislation for over 100 years to protect the vulnerable. This is part of that great liberal tradition in this country. An Act was introduced in the British Parliament in 1909, the Trade Boards Act, which was intended very clearly to reduce the whole idea of downward wage progression. Even somebody as conservative as Winston Churchill proposed and supported it. At the time he said, "the good employer is undercut by the bad, and the bad employer is undercut by the worst". That is the classic race to the bottom.

We followed this with our own legislation in 1946, the Industrial Relations Act, which was quite good. It is worth reading into the record because the language used was significant. It was also language from which the Government resiled very curiously and handed a veto to the employers. The 1946 Act stated, "Before appointing a representative member of a committee the Court shall, so far as is reasonably practicable, consult any organisation of employers or, as the case may be, workers concerned." That is interesting because the term "so far as is reasonably practicable" is not prescriptive or an extreme position. It means that one goes as far as one can and then, when one cannot, one goes on with the process. It is not restrictive in the way in which the Government accepted in its response to a particular court case. The 1946 Act also used the term "consult" which is a fairly neutral word. One takes the opinion but one does not have to act on it. One just seeks the opinion or the attitude of the employers.

The Irish Hotels Federation got a judicial review of the Act. That is when it all began to really change in a negative way. The legal counsel, on behalf of the Government, put forward the case that a joint labour committee could not be established or operated in the absence of employer representatives put forward by the employer representative organisations. That was a disastrous withdrawal from the stronger position previously. In fact, what it did was nothing else than handing the employers a veto which they previously did not have. That was a substantial change in the situation. It followed that any in sector of industry, whether there is little or no worker organisation and representation but there is an employer representative body, that latter representative body can prevent the establishment of a JLC by not turning up to the negotiation table, even though these are the sectors which the legislation always targeted for intervention. It is an astonishing situation.

I agree with Senator Nash when he quoted the excellent explanatory memorandum to the Bill which states "this represents a dramatic collapse of machinery that has been working for over a century and which was aimed precisely at sectors where representative bodies were not to be found". It also states, "if the ‘inadequacy of the existing machinery for effective regulation’ of pay and conditions of employment is the ground for setting up a JLC, then it cannot be right that the refusal of a representative body on one side to either support collective bargaining or to support a JLC can be a bar to its establishment". This veto is completely and utterly wrong. The fact employers might do this, have done this and do this is the clearest indication possible that this legislation is necessary.

This Bill is quite rightly intended to remove this veto. We must get rid of this anti-worker veto today in the Seanad.