Madam, - Your reporter Ali Bracken provides a very detailed account of construction companies underpaying foreign workers (Home News, February 6th) and Ronaldo Munck writes about Siptu's "concerted campaign to recruit and organise migrant workers" (Opinion, February 10th). At the same time, your Economics Editor, Marc Coleman (Opinion, February 7th) points out that none of this underpayment is showing up in CSO statistics.
He writes that "in the construction sector - the alleged source of a migrant-related race to the bottom - wage rates are rising by around 6 per cent", in contrast to the industrial sector where "wages are growing by 3 per cent". Your readers could be forgiven for feeling confused.
In fact, the statistical discrepancy is even wider than weekly earnings data suggests. Hourly earnings in industry rose by only 2.1 per cent, or half the minimum increase provided for under the national pay agreement.
The CSO survey entitled "Earnings and Hours Worked in Construction", showing an hourly increase of 6.8 per cent, might suggest the absence of similar wage degradation in that sector. But it measures only what it sets out to measure, the earnings of a declining proportion of the workforce. Firms surveyed provide earnings data only in respect of workers directly employed. These are clearly being paid the appropriate semi-skilled and skilled differentials due.
Unfortunately, there is no CSO measurement of earnings by workers employed through the use of sub-contractors. Also excluded are those de facto employees who are falsely registered as "self-employed", in order to sidestep legal obligations to include direct employees in the sector's pension scheme - and about whose mushrooming numbers the Pensions Ombudsman has expressed such alarm.
In its "Monthly Index of Employment in Construction" the CSO does, however, try to measure total numbers in the sector. These are accompanied by a background note or "health warning" about "the accuracy of the index". Given the scale of the problem, both in sub-contracting and bogus "self employment", this should perhaps be an "epidemic warning".
The index is becoming increasingly detached from the realities of the sector. According to its figures, construction employment growth slowed from 4.7 per cent in the year ending June-August 2004 to 2.9 per cent in 2005. But the CSO's "Quarterly National Household Survey", based on responses from workers themselves, shows that for the same June-August quarter, total construction employment was rising annually by 10.8 per cent in 2004 and 13.7 per cent in 2005. The increase in the total number of employees on this basis was an astounding 17.7 per cent.
A third of that increase consisted of immigrant construction workers. Their numbers doubled in 12 months. Most are not directly employed by Irish firms, but indirectly via sub-contractors. Consequently their earnings remain outside the scope of the CSO's earnings survey. It is now a matter of urgency to include an earnings question in the "Quarterly National Household Survey" to complete an accurate profile.
It is in sub-contracting that wage degradation is occurring through the underpayment of foreign construction workers, as the examples provided by Siptu to Ali Bracken showed. In the mass demonstrations of December 9th Siptu's Polish and Lithuanian members proudly carried national flags and bilingual banners proclaiming their refusal to become cheap cannon fodder for greedy employers. We in Siptu are determined to vindicate their rights. - Yours, etc,
MANUS O'RIORDAN, Head of Research, Siptu, Liberty Hall, Dublin 1.