Dr. Deirdre Curran:

For me, breach of employment rights is one thing; abuse is a whole other level. My bigger concern would be ill-treatment, the levels of bullying and harassment, and the lack of employee voice. On the employment rights side, many hospitality workers do not know what their rights are. We need an information campaign. This is why I said that with apprenticeships we need to teach workers and prospective workers what their rights are. If employment rights are breached, hospitality workers do not go looking for help. They do not know that the WRC exists. If they did, they would be too intimidated to go there. I am all for collective bargaining but most hospitality workers are not members of a trade union. In the absence of collective bargaining, we need to find another way for workers to have a voice. Nobody is listening to them and they have so many positive things to say that would be of benefit to the industry, to customers and to everybody, but nobody is listening. For me, the big issue is voice. We need to find a way to tap in to the voice of hospitality workers who care about the industry, who want to stay and who are passionate about it. When I ask workers what they like most about working in hospitality, the number one answer is "people." These are "people" people. They love their colleagues. They love working with customers. The number two answer is the satisfaction of delivering good service and the number three answer is the buzz and the variety of the work they do. They want to stay. The industry needs to make it attractive for them to stay and to address the issues that have been there for decades.