THE COUNTRY’S largest trade union has launched a campaign against what it has said is the Government’s plan to drive down pay across the economy.
Siptu has strongly criticised proposals to introduce “an inability to pay” clause which would permit employers to seek an exemption from having to pay minimum pay levels in certain sectors which are set down under Employment Rights Orders.
The union said that the Government’s planned changes to rights orders – which cover pay and conditions in sectors such as agriculture, catering, contract cleaning, hairdressing, hotels, retailing and security – formed part of an overall objective to undermine regulations ensuring workers on the lowest pay rates received a living income.
Siptu divisional organiser Patricia King said that in most cases the hourly rate set under the rights orders was about €1 above the statutory minimum wage of €8.65. The rights orders system had been in place since 1946 and was aimed at protecting the most vulnerable workers.
People covered by the minimum rates set under rights orders in the last year had had to face rises in public transport costs and the introduction of a prescription charge for medicines while local authority rents had not reduced, Ms King added. “What is going on here is that the sins of the greedy are being paid for by the sweat of the poor.”
Ms King said that on the one hand the Government’s proposed legislation was seeking to copperfasten the legal status of rights orders and not have them as susceptible to challenge. However, she said that it also represented “an opportunity being grasped by the Government to bring down the rates of pay in some of the hardest jobs that people are asked to do”.
Head of Siptu’s legal rights unit Michael Halpenny said the proposed legislation would facilitate employers in rendering protections afforded by the rights orders null and void.
“In the contracted sector such as contract cleaning, security and so on, the exemption, if granted, will effectively mean that it is the exempted employer who is paying less than the . . . rate who will be the most attractive magnet for the actual contract.
“Those employers who desire to be compliant and to treat their employees in a fair and reasonable fashion in accordance with the law will be put at a disadvantage by employers going in and looking for exemptions and therefore undermining . . . the whole pitch.” He added that the move could give “free rein to rogue employers”.
Ms King said that as part of the campaign the union was going to bring the people who were working in jobs covered by rights orders, and who faced pay cuts under the new proposals, to the relevant Minister.
She said she would also be seeking a meeting with the chief executives of business groups such as Isme and the SFA, who were lobbying for such changes, to allow them “to hear the human stories and the consequences of their policies on human beings”.
“I am going to try to convince them that the route they’re on is very ill-advised,” she said.
She added there was no need for an inability to pay clause as existing law provided for the commercial circumstances of companies to be dealt with as part of the rights orders process.
But Isme chief executive Mark Fielding said that an inability to pay clause in areas covered by rights orders was necessary to provide flexibility that was required. He said that without such flexibility businesses would continue to go bust and jobs would be lost.