Ms Ethel Buckley:

I thank Ms King. It is important for me to respond to a question that was asked earlier by saying that the services division of SIPTU, which represents workers in the private sector, has reached numerous voluntary agreements with employers that are trading successfully in respect of banded-hours contracts. I will restate the nature of these agreements. A worker can claim the banded hours that he or she has been working but cannot claim for additional new hours. Some of the employers with which we have agreements are very large and successful. I will not name them because I want to comply with what the Chair said earlier. They include some of the most successful wholesale and distribution companies. If those good unionised employers had been given an opportunity to be here, they would say that these agreements with trade unions allow them to plan their businesses successfully. They also take pride in offering quality employment that people can actually live on in the certainty that they will earn living wages. Like previous speakers, I would like to put it on the record that we have already reached such agreements voluntarily with employers.

Unfortunately, a positive story is not coming through in the hospitality sector at present. We regularly deal with workers in this large sector of the economy, which is generally not unionised, who are fearful of organising unions because they know of numerous examples in the industry of workers who have been discriminated against and have faced recriminations after taking such steps. Last year, there were many media reports of dismissal for unionising and asserting the right to fair employment and good working conditions. The prevalence of low pay, low working hours, zero-hour contracts and the lack of certainty of earnings in the hospitality sector reflects the fact that employers in that sector appear to be pursuing an employment strategy based on having a large pool of casualised workers available to them. I would say that until the 2000s, the hospitality sector offered decent employment to people. Somebody could do the group cert or the leaving cert and then go to CERT, which was a State body, to be trained in a craft skill as an apprentice chef, commis chef, chef de partie or silver service waiter or waitress. This would enable him or her to get a job in a hotel and stay in that hotel to earn a living, raise a family and own a home. Now the vast majority of workers in the Irish hotel industry cannot aspire to owning a home or rearing their own family without State subsidy in the form of family income supplement.

Legislators and policymakers need to consider whether this country wants to pursue an employment model where profitable private sector employers are being subsidised by the State in pursuing casualised employment with low levels of working hours, zero hour contracts and low pay. That is what is happening in the industry.

A veto is being pursued by the hotel and catering industry – the entire hospitality industry to which Ms King referred – regarding engagement with the machinery of the State in addressing these matters, which are joint labour committees. They are to where the low pay industries have traditionally gone. Worker and employer representatives sit down and deal with the particular issues in their industry. They reach an agreement, which becomes the statutory minimum. Hotel and catering employers are currently refusing to do that.

If one compares that to employers in the private sector in industries which are agreeing to sit down and negotiate with employee representatives, one finds there is a very different pattern. For example, the contract cleaning and private security industries have agreements that address wages. Nobody is going to get rich as a private security guard or contract cleaner, but people can raise families on the wages they earn because they are the result of collective bargaining.

Joint labour committees and EROs can agree working hour patterns that reflect the particular characteristics of an industry. We have concluded a negotiation which will, I hope, do that very thing in the security industry, namely give certainty of hours to security guards. It is an industry in the private sector where the employer body has agreed to put in place guarantees and conditions regarding working hours. If the security industry can do it, I do not know why other industries cannot. I wish to reiterate the points made by Ms King regarding the Unfair Dismissals Act, which were very clear.