The minimum wage battle
BY MICHAEL PIERSE
'You'll Never Get £3'
The Story of the Cork Home Help Members of the AT&GWU
By Noel Murphy (Red City Publications, 2002)
Fluidly written, engaging and a damning indictment of both elements of SIPTU and the Southern Health Board (SHB), 'You'll Never Get £3' epitomises, in a terse 68 pages, exactly what is wrong with trade unionism in Ireland today, and exactly what is right.
Cork born author, trade union activist and Communist Party member, Noel Murphy, makes this tale of struggle involving home help activists in his home county both accessible and compelling for the uninitiated reader. His experience as a former Amalagamed Transport & General Workers Union (AT&GWU) representative and, until recently, Secretary of the Cork Council of Trade Unions, adds weight to his inference of belligerence on behalf of the SHB and political cowardice on behalf of SIPTU.
Home helps, whom Joe Moore, President of the Cork Council of Trade Unions terms, in his introduction to 'You'll Never Get £3', "one of the most exploited sections of the Irish working class", have indeed come a long way. In 1997, those employed by the SHB received a risible IR£1.40 per hour wage and were denied holiday entitlements. This was a time when trade unions were slamming employers such as McDonalds for paying wages to teenagers of over double this amount, and were campaigning, in the 26 Counties, for a minimum wage of £5 per hour.
"Far from being enlightened employers," Moore comments, "the SHB tried all manner of tricks to avoid paying a realistic hourly rate to the home helps. When the women, and home helps are almost exclusively women, decided to join the AT&GWU, all hell broke loose."
"All hell" is an apt description for what followed, as the SHB unashamedly and bullishly defended the pittance it paid to the women, ignoring them until it became impossible to do so and refusing to negotiate with the AT&GWU right up to the present day.
BEFORE 'ALL HELL BROKE LOOSE'
Each chapter of 'You'll Never Get £3' begins with an erudite and appropriate quote, the first, from American folk-singing communist, Woody Guthrie, setting the tone:
"As through this world I travelled
I've met lots of funny men,
Some will rob you with a six gun,
Some with a fountain pen."
Established in 1972, the Home Help Service was envisaged as a way of encouraging friendly neighbours to provide a helping hand to sick people. It was an instant success. 15,500 home helps now work throughout the 26-County state, freeing up valuable time and ward space for the health services. Their work, for most of the last 30 years has, however, been undervalued.
Then Minister for Health, Brian Cowen, said in 1998 that the underlying philosophy of the scheme was "a community-based good neighbour scheme which attracts people primarily motivated by the desire to engage in community service", suggesting the government didn't see those engaged as home helps as workers, as such. "He could have been speaking about politicians," Murphy quips, "however, the difference in the rates of pay indicates that some 'motivated by the desire to engage in community'... are deemed more valuable than others".
Although home helps were categorised under a 1991 trade agreement as 'Group 1' employees, i.e. "non nursing grades", the other employees in that category, including porters, cleaners, laundry workers and gatekeepers, were to receive Group 1 wages, while home helps were left on a pittance. "Home helps were unorganised," Murphy explains, "and because of this, their interests were largely ignored."
But not all home helps were on the SHB wage of £1.70 per hour. Those working with the Eastern Health Board, for example, were on the highest wage for home helps, then £4 per hour, while the Western Health Board paid a paltry £2.42. Each Health Board set its own rate, reflecting the lack of organisation among home helps. Not only were the wages bad, but the conditions left a lot to be desired: no paid holidays, no job security, no sick pay or pension scheme. Maltreated by the health boards, home helps would soon find that SIPTU wasn't much better.
ORGANISATION
Former trade union shop steward, Mary Arrowsmith, from Ballynahinch, County Down, moved to Cork City in 1996 and was shocked, upon taking up a position as a home help, at the conditions she was expected to endure. She spoke to colleagues who were also dismayed at their pay and conditions and, with the aid of the Socialist Party's Mick Barry, Home Helps for Decent Wages (HHDW) was born.
Proceeding to hold a series of awareness-raising meetings, the home helps felt, when their membership hit the 50 mark, that joining a trade union was the next logical step.
Arrowsmith and some other members of the HHDW then approached Cork's biggest trade union, SIPTU, but were told, at its regional headquarters, that as part-time workers, on a reduced subscription, it would not be viable for the union to take them on. "Having assumed SIPTU did not take them seriously," Murphy writes, the home helps then approached the public service union, IMPACT. Local official, Dominic McEvoy, recognised the legitimacy of the women's claims but, "realising the mammoth nature of the task that taking their case on would be, he had to decline as he was at that time understaffed in his office".
It was the AT&GWU, which had in 1997 located a new office in Cork, that came to the rescue - and HHDW agreed to join.
DIhSUNITY
The first task of the union was now to write to the SHB seeking a meeting on the home help issue. The reply, considering HHDW's recent ordeal, was shocking. SHB Personnel Officer, Denis Fenton, said that the SHB had already held negotiations with another union representing home helps and that it was inappropriate for the board to negotiate with the AT&GWU as the other union had claimed sole negotiation rights. What was that other union? SIPTU, of course.
Claiming sole negotiation rights for all home helps employed by the SHB meant that SIPTU had effectively usurped a right it had itself refused. The SHB and SIPTU, however, would be intransigent on this issue.
The AT&GWU was "not unused to this situation", Murphy informs us. In other instances, not remotely connected with home helps, employers had decided not to deal with the particularly radical union on the basis that they had already dealt with another union for the particular category of employee in question. Irish Congress of Trade Union (ICTU) Rules pertaining to negotiation rights meant that "strange though it might seem", Murphy writes, "employers could use the Rules of the ICTU in order to stifle any advance being made on behalf of the lowest paid workers".
"The union felt that this position was merely a ploy by the Southern Health Board to avoid the possibility of seriously improving the rates of pay and conditions of employment of home helps."
It was felt that the ICTU would have to resolve this inter-union dispute, but meanwhile, the SHB raised the home help pay from £1.70 to £2 per hour, a paltry increase, but one that showed that publicity was beginning to bring pressure to bear on the board.
AGITATION
The AT&GWU began organising mass demonstrations and eliciting the support of local politicians, including Green Party, Democratic Left and Socialist Party members, and Sinn Féin councillor Cionnaith ó Súilleabháin, who "was instrumental in getting the West Cork women to join the AT&GWU". The ranks of the union rapidly began to swell.
One tactic adopted by the women was particularly suited to their situation. "Manic Monday," as it was to be known, compensated for the usual strike action - withdrawal of labour - which "would only bring suffering to the patients that they looked after".
Each home help was given a time when they were to phone the SHB on Monday 25 May 1998, to complain about their mistreatment. The calls were coordinated so as to jam the SHB lines and a disruption equivalent to a withdrawal of labour was effected. "A new form of industrial action had been invented."
Agitation continued, as the AT&GWU members disrupted a meeting of the SHB in June of the same year, but the inter-union conflict remained unresolved.
As an initial ICTU meeting failed to reconcile the two unions' contentions, the AT&GWU decided not to refer the dispute to the ICTU disputes committee, as it felt SIPTU's numerical strength in the county would win out. A meeting was eventually arranged between the leading officers of both unions, though this would not be held until March 2000.
THE FIGHT INTENSIFIES
Labour Councillor and SIPTU official, Joe O'Flynn, threw a spanner into the works when he accused home help activist Mary Arrowsmith of slanderous accusations - a claim he did not pursue, and which the AT&GWU contested.
Meanwhile, Minister for Finance, Charlie McCreevy's budget in 1999 upped the home help wages to a minimum of £3 per hour. At a previous organising meeting, "one cynic", Murphy tells us, had suggested this was an impossible claim - thus the title of his book, 'You'll Never Get £3'. This had also become a rallying slogan for the home helps from 1998.
A test case between the South Eastern Health Board (SEHB) (who, incidentally, had no problem recognising the AT&GWU), and a home help was now put to the state's Rights Commissioner, focusing on the contentious issue of holiday pay. The case was successful, and it opened the floodgates for all home helps to claim payment for annual leave, backdated to 1991, and the same pay and conditions of employment as any other part-time employee in other Health Board areas.
Other test cases ensued in the SHB area, though the body still refused, on the basis of what Murphy terms its "invisible agreement" with SIPTU, to negotiate face to face with the AT&GWU. Mirroring events in Drumcree, the SHB, like the Orange Order, would only go as far as engaging in 'proximity talks':
"In other words they would not sit in the same room as the AT&GWU but would convey their views to the union through the Rights Commissioner, who would rotate his person between two rooms. Such a situation made farcical the alleged claim that SIPTU had sole negotiation rights."
Meanwhile, Chair of the Labour Relations Court, Finbarr Flood, told a hearing on the home helps that it was his opinion that they were very badly treated and that he would adjourn for three months, expecting the Health Boards to make a realistic offer on pay and conditions. No such luck.
SIPTU DIRTY TRICKS
The AT&GWU was again excluded from talks, as the Health Boards went into direct negotiations with SIPTU - without even letting the AT&GWU know. The union found out when a perceptive member noted an article in SIPTU's newspaper, Newsline, declaring its coup. "It was becoming very apparent," Murphy explains, "that somebody somewhere did not like the idea of the AT&GWU representing home helps and everything possible would be done to make life awkward for the Amalgamated Union."
AT&GWU member Mary O'Driscoll from the south side of Cork City, received a phone call on Monday 16 August from Ann Marie McIlwraith of SIPTU, inviting her to a home helps meeting the following Friday. O'Driscoll was furious. Despite the fact that her phone number was ex-directory, somehow SIPTU had managed to obtain it, along with another confidential fact - that she was a home help.
When she asked McIlwraith where she had obtained such information, the SIPTU official said she could not disclose such information. O'Driscoll also wrote to the SHB, which has yet to offer her an explanation.
SIPTU further exacerbated the bad feeling when a misunderstanding between its National Industrial Officer, Matt Merrigan, and Regional Secretary, Kevin O'Connor, left the AT&GWU bewildered. While Merrigan agreed, in March 2000, that the AT&GWU would attain sole negotiation rights with the SHB - ending, the home helps thought, years of isolation - O'Connor and the Cork SIPTU membership denied the agreement had been reached and succeeded in convincing the SHB as to the same. "It was a case of the tail wagging the dog," Murphy notes.
ENDGAME
April 2000 saw the introduction of a minimum wage in the 26 Counties, which meant a wage rise from £3 per hour for the Cork home helps. Also that year, agreement was finally reached that the home helps were part of the elusive 'Group 1' non-nursing grade - bringing that wage up to £6.50 per hour. Back pay was also agreed.
As the banner in the picture shows, in just four years the home help struggle had succeeded in raising wages by £5.10 per hour: a considerable success and proof positive of the fact that, as Murphy puts it, "organisation works".
This book would work well as part of a catalogue of trade union struggles, but is also an admirable stand-alone publication. The many illustrations break up the text and the author is concise and interesting at all times.
Joe Moore, in his introduction, extrapolates the salutary reminder of what can be achieved if the lessons of history, and of this particular struggle, are utilised into the future:
"As the 20th century gave way to the 21st, it seems that the old lessons, long forgotten by sections of the leadership of the Labour Movement, are once again being learned. Militant trade union organisation is the best guarantee workers have that their interests will not be ignored. In the face of privatisation and the refusal of several governments to enact legislation obliging employers to recognise the rights of workers to be represented by a trade union of their choice, the sleeping giant which is the Irish Trade Union Movement will have to be aroused. The story of the SHB home helps suggests that the giant is restless and hopefully will soon awaken from its slumber."
d so say all of us Joe, and so say all of us.
Pearse speaks for himself
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