Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 23 May 2017

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation

Banded Hours Contract Bill 2016: Discussion (Resumed)

3:30 pm

Photo of Pat BreenPat Breen (Clare, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

That is more or less covered in what Senator Gavan is talking about in regard to putting notices up in Irish and English. Suppose there are people from 20 or 30 different countries, with different languages working for a company, which is very evident nowadays because a lot of people who work on the minimum wage are people from other nationalities. That can happen a lot. It would be confusing the situation. It puts more work on the employers when they could be doing better things. We believe the fact that the employees are getting this information at the commencement of work is the proper way to deal with the type of business that the Senator has referred to.

There are a lot of interpretations of what is meant by the term "casual work". I cannot define casual work as it is at the moment. There was not that much reference to casual work in the submissions we received.

On the exemptions in the zero hours, the Senator spoke about general causal work. That is for emergency situations where somebody has been called in and they are needed for an extreme emergency and also short-term employment relief. We have to have faith in the WRC in all this, and the Labour Court as well. That is important. They will not be fooled by an employer incorrectly stating that the work is causal. There are various different areas. If one looks at if-and-when contracts, there are different interpretations of what is meant by that, and what is regarded casual work. Take the example of the hospitality sector, which is something with which we are all familiar. Take a wedding in the Senator's area where they employ casual workers. They might have to give them 24 or 48 hours notice to come in for a wedding or funeral, for example. They would be regarded as casual workers. They would not be full-time employees for that company. That is what they are.

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