Any attempt by the Government to increase opening hours for pubs without consulting with barworkers' union, Mandate, could lead to a national bar strike, a senior trade unionist warned.
Mandate's national industrial officer, Mr John Douglas, said the union was totally opposed to the suggested extensive expansion of pub opening hours. "We caution the Government to engage Mandate in consultations prior to any final decision. Failure to do so could invoke an industrial relations time bomb akin to the barworkers' strike in 1994.
"Some politicians and the drinks industry would have us believe that they are doing us a favour by proposing longer opening hours," he said, but the drinks industry's sole goal was to increase alcohol consumption and profits "by any means possible, whether it is the promotion of alcoholic pops aimed at young drinkers or increased pub opening hours".
Mandate made no apology for saying that longer opening hours "would have a devastating effect on working conditions in the licensed trade and a huge negative impact on wide range of social issues". He criticised the Labour Party Bill proposed by Mr Pat Upton as a PR stunt that would see bar staff working until 2 a.m. seven days a week.
The licensed trade had proved it was not mature enough to be allowed increased opening hours. As it was 40,000 employees in the bar trade "are currently working what can only be described as intolerable conditions and many thousands of them are now voting with their feet and leaving the bar trade".
"Presently bar workers have a liability to work from 10 a.m. to 1 a.m. the following morning, 16 hours a day, seven days a week, 363 days a year, for a gross weekly wage of £302 and that includes Sunday premiums and cleaning-up premiums. Employment in the trade in already in crisis, there are no new apprentices, few new entrants and vast numbers leaving."
An increase in opening hours would exacerbate the problem and lead to further casualisation of the workforce. Already 50 per cent of the workforce was part-time and employers were "turning to cash-in-hand systems and the black economy to run their bars".
Longer hours would spell the death knell of the licensed trade as a career and provider of skilled employment, thereby reducing tax revenue for the State and increasing dependency on social welfare.
Mr Douglas disputed claims that there was a popular demand for longer opening hours. The Government itself, in its 1996 national alcohol policy document, said reducing the availability of alcohol would produce public health benefits.
He quoted it as saying that "most studies demonstrated increased drinking with increased opening hours. This, in turn, led to increases in alcohol-related problems such as drunkenness, arrests, violence, assaults, domestic disturbances and accidents".
A Limerick delegate, Mr Noel Dunphy, said conditions in the licensed trade were now so bad that "I couldn't in all honesty entice young people into it as a career. Absenteeism is already bad and will get worse with longer hours". He added that longer pub hours would also lead to a loss of jobs in the off-licence trade.