The reduction in the minimum wage marks the start of an “employers’ offensive” on the rights of workers and people on social welfare, the United Left Alliance has claimed.
The union, which is running 19 candidates in the general election, today challenged trade unions to "rise to the challenge" of defending workers' rights and conditions.
Cllr Richard Boyd Barrett of People Before Profit, who is standing for the alliance in Dún Laoghaire Rathdown, criticised the "ridiculous spectacle" of highly-paid people lecturing the lowest paid on accepting further pay cuts.
Mr Boyd Barrett claimed the reduction of the minimum wage on February 1st, combined with social welfare cuts and the incorporation of the low paid into the tax net, was part of a wider agenda to force down wages.
Another alliance candidate, Socialist Party MEP Joe Higgins, said the old minimum rate of €8.65 was too low and its reduction to €7.65, if enforced by employers, would tip thousands of families into poverty.
He claimed employers up and down the country were going to seek the written "consent" of their employees to amend contracts and reduce wages.
"A campaign must be waged by the unions, particularly Mandate and Siptu to urge workers not to give this consent to their employers but to organise resistance to this attack."
Another Socialist Party member standing for the alliance, Cllr Clare Daly, predicted that employers would now attack regulations governing conditions for 300,000 private sector workers.
