Wet Time, precarious labour, and the Irish city

How we understand our climate has never just been about the numbers that appear on thermometers and rain gauges, but also depends, crucially, on the cultures and norms that surround how weather is understood. The weather can only be experienced on and through the body, on raw skin battered by wind and rain, in the feel and smell of damp woolen clothes, the heaviness of wet boots walking through muddy streets. This has meant that the experience of the weather has shifted as the built environment has changed and employment patterns have shifted. Throughout the archives of nineteenth-century urban district councils, there is a sense that commissioners were constantly making choices about what work should continue, and what work should stop, when it rained. Indeed, receipts in these archives for council provided coats and boots provide a material history of the sorts of labour which was considered essential to maintain urban functions even in bad weather. Most notably perhaps, scavengers and road workers continued working in poor weather, as the movement of people, goods, and the mail coach in and our of town all relied on the maintenance of the roads. Fairs and markets also tended to go ahead even when the skies opened, and in reflection of this craners and their assistants were usually also supplied with oilskin coats and hats as part of their terms of employment. Indeed, as Irish towns modernized, introduced lighting, trams, and electricity, we can also observe an increasing body of low-paid or precarious labourers keeping these services running throughout the winter.

But as the rain continued to fall, plenty of other outdoor labour stopped, without compensation for workers. Increasingly during the early twentieth century labour activists campaigned for what became known as ‘wet time’, or insurance against pay lost on rainy days. After the builders’ strike of 1937, wet time compensation was agreed as part of the terms for the cessation of the strike, conditions which finally entered legislation as the Insurance (Intermittent Unemployment) Act 1943. This act provided insurance against intermittent unemployment resulting from stoppages of work due to inclement weather for manual workers in the building trade (extended to workers in civil engineering and painters in 1955).^[1] The scheme was self-funding; workers paid insurance, which was logged in their Wet Time books, which was then be paid out when they missed work due to the weather. However, the act opened up a series of definitional problems, with legislators having to deal explicitly with the problem that weather is experienced differently by different people in different places. As Sean Lemass (in his capacity as Minister for Industry and Commerce) averred: ‘It would be impossible for anyone except a skilled person familiarly with the circumstances to say what weather conditions make unavailable a stopped of any particular building operation. Light rain would justify a stoppage of external painting but probably nothing more. Severe frost would justify a stoppage of bricklaying but not of carpentry.’[2]

The legislation created new imbalances between trades which were covered by wet time protections, and those which were not. Despite being vulnerable to the weather, neither dockers nor fishermen were included in the scheme. As a rule, wet time did not cover rural labour, but this meant that workers on Bord na Mona projects, forestry, drainage, road work, and quarry work were not covered by wet time (they were often covered by different county council schemes, but these were administered locally and there was plenty of variation in their application and generosity).[3] Stories abounded of men making long journeys on bicycles, with rain driving in their faces, only to find that there was no work for them on these schemes.  The largest distinction, however, related to the position of agricultural labourers. Farming’s intimate relationship to climate and weather, and the seasonality of tasks on farms, meant that wet time was hard to impose on the sector.

Wet time was abolished from January 1985, as part of a broader reform of social welfare, as part of a programme of economic reforms which reorientated the Irish economy towards services (the history of office workers battling to work in their cars on rain-swept mornings will have to wait for another day). There was some muted opposition from trades unions and labourers; Joseph E., of Knockenrahan Upper, Arklow, Co. Wicklow, wrote to the Minister, ‘if you think that you can take away wet time from workers like that well you are out of touch with the people in this country.’[5]

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[1] NAI TSCH/S/3/2727A Leaflet relating to Insurance (Intermittent Unemployment) Act 1942.

[2] NAI TSCH/S/3/2727A Explanatory of the Supplementary Unemployment Insurance (Building Trade) Bill, 1939.

[3] Dáil Éireann, 15 June 1948.

[4] Seanad Éireann 11 April 1951.

[5] NAI TSCH/S/3/2727A Letter from Joseph E. [n.d.].