Imelda Munster (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome our guests. I commend Ms Marciniak from Unite and Dr. Curran on their excellent work. It is great that they are attending the meeting. It brings the voices of those working in the sector to the fore. When we hear from the tourism and hospitality services, we usually hear from business owners or their representatives, so it is good to have workers' representatives here today. Dr. Curran suggested we produce a report on the issues. This is so serious that we need to consider doing precisely that, that is, holding a few more meetings on the matter and producing that report. Our guests from ICTU mentioned the 2018 legislation on certainty of work for workers and we need to seek a review of that. It has been three years.

Over the summer, we heard from representatives about the labour shortage. When we hear about the poor pay and conditions in the hospitality sector, the reasons for the shortage seem clear. I will not get into everything that was relayed in the reports about workers' rights violations and so on. We all witnessed that disgusting and demeaning incident a few weeks ago where a worker's pay was left out in the form of a bucket of coins. If that is an example of the contempt shown to workers, it is just too serious to ignore. We might return to that matter towards the end of the meeting.

Unite carried out a survey that found a large number of workers are not interested in joining a union. Why is that? Is it that, faced with what we have read about in the reports, they feel their employer will never agree or is it because the trade union legislation in this State is so watery? For example, workers have the right to be a member of a trade union but their employer does not have to recognise that right by engaging. I cannot make head nor tail of that. It affords no rights to an employee. If any employer can refuse to engage, that worker has no rights, ultimately.

Our guests from ICTU and SIPTU mentioned the JLC system. Mr. Hynes stated that ICTU had written to the Labour Court and employer representatives. Did it get a response? If the response is not positive - I refer in particular to the Irish Hotels Federation and the Restaurants Association of Ireland - would that reflect poorly on them such that any time they cry about not having workers, the union could ask why in God's name anyone would want to work for them or with them if they are not prepared to do what they can to ensure that workers’' rights are adhered to?