Madam, - It appears that the considered opinion of some of the highest and most respectable authorities is that a proportion of workers should work for less than a living wage.
When Mandate trade union members went on strike recently for an increase in a wage of, in many cases, €9 per hour - which would be just over €350 for a 39-hour week - the employers' group Ibec protested that they should refrain from such active steps to raise such low earnings.
Earlier this month EU ministers failed to agree a directive that would extend EU protections to vulnerable agency workers in Britain and Ireland.
The ruling of the European Court of Justice that Swedish construction unions should not have enforced Swedish trade union terms on a Latvian company paying Latvian-type wages seems to sanctify Gama-like episodes all over the EU, wherever agreements are not registered, and to give official permission for displacement and poverty wages across the continent.
Now Fás has become another august body to bless impossibly low wages. It has suggested, as a response to the first nip of economic frost, that the present privilege of a guarantee of €8.65 an hour to feed and house oneself might be eroded in value over time.
I challenge the EU court judges to live on Latvian wages in Sweden, Ibec officers to live on €9 an hour and the Fás economists to live on €8.65 an hour - or, as they suggest, less. They should try it for, say, the Christmas festive period.
The Ghost of Christmas Past hovers over the working people of Europe. - Yours, etc,
DES DERWIN, President, Dublin Council of Trade Unions, Dublin 9.