The announcement by the Tanaiste, Ms Harney, setting the national minimum wage at £4.40 an hour has been criticised by the two main unions representing the low-paid. SIPTU and Mandate said the rate should be £4.80 when it is introduced next April.
The SIPTU vice-president, Mr Des Geraghty, said yesterday it was "regrettable that the Government is engaging in penny-pinching now and is, in effect, reneging on the findings of the commission which recommended the introduction of a minimum wage. The figure of £4.40 represented two-thirds of median earnings in 1997. But it will be nearly three years out of date by April of next year.
"Then it will only represent half the median earnings and will mean a watering down of the recommended level for the minimum wage," Mr Geraghty said. The appropriate rate was £4.80, on the basis of the commission's approach.
Responding to employers' criticism of the minimum wage, he said SIPTU rejected "continuing claims of impending job losses following the introduction of this new minimum standard. This is not borne out by the experience of other countries, including the US." Mr Geraghty pointed out that SIPTU had already concluded a series of agreements for members in the low-paid sector which matched, or exceeded, the £4.40 rate.
Mandate, which represents 35,000 workers in the bar and retail trades, said that introducing the minimum wage at £4.40 would actually widen the gap between the low-paid and the rest of the labour force. "If the Government is serious about tackling low pay and poverty it should have set the national minimum wage at a rate somewhere between £4.80 and £5 an hour," the Mandate industrial officer, Mr John Douglas, said.
"From 1988 to 1997 the average industrial wage rose by 56 per cent, compared to a 32 per cent increase for a shop assistant at the top of the scale," he added.