Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance)

I support the motion 110%. This is a red line issue for the Labour Party. As Deputy Clare Daly said, it will be down to the Labour Party to show its support for this motion and its support for the workers in these industries.

It may surprise some Deputies and others that the first legislation in this area was introduced by Winston Churchill in 1909. This was a recognition that in certain areas, sweat-shop conditions and the undercutting of wages were a significant problem at that time. In Ireland these trade boards were incorporated into industrial relations law as joint labour committees, JLCs, in 1946. There has long been a recognition, even by people not friends of the labour movement, such as Churchill, of the need for effective legislation and regulation for vulnerable workers. The proposals by the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Deputy Bruton, would, in effect, dismantle this protection. It would declare open season by unscrupulous employers on those who are the poorest, most vulnerable and least able to stand up for their rights.

Some of the employer groups pushing for these changes to the JLCs are the Irish Hotels Federation and the Quick Service Food Alliance. The so-called hospitality industry includes hotels and restaurants and employs 130,000 workers. A total of 35% of these are migrant workers. Wages in this sector are the lowest of any sector in the country. A survey of more than 800 catering businesses by the National Employment Rights Authority in 2008 showed that 53% earned below the minimum legal wage, 51% did not receive a payslip, 84% did not receive a contract or any terms of employment, 44% did not get any breaks and 85% received no overtime pay or Sunday premium. One third of all complaints to the Migrant Rights Centre came from workers in the hospitality sector. Brutal exploitation and denial of the most basic legal entitlements, are rampant and this is even with the JLCs in place. What is needed is not the Minister's new charter for exploitation but instead, Labour Party Deputies should demand that the employment law (compliance) Bill is given real teeth and brought before this House for urgent attention. Will the Labour Party Deputies do this? This legislation was promised after the Gama and the Irish Ferries disputes. It has since been buried. Workers in the hospitality sector need greater, not less, protection. The National Employment Rights Authority must be beefed up with extra staff and the power to impose on the spot fines on employers.

In the main, workers covered by the JLCs are women, young people and migrant workers. Driving down wages in this sector, which is the purpose of these proposed reforms, will increase inequality and widen the gap between male and female earnings. Such proposals will increase levels of poverty. Many cleaners are part-time workers and their wages are crucial to family income. We already have the highest rate of poverty out of 17 developed countries and only the United States is worse than us. A total of 100,000 children live in persistent poverty. A total of 23,000 people work in the contract cleaning industry and these are women in the main. The JLC rate is €9.50 an hour. This job involves working outside office hours, from 5 a.m. and after 7 p.m. or later in the evening. Putting the boot into people working unsocial hours on extremely low pay is criminal, while the people who destroyed our economy have walked away with huge pensions or are still in place on obscene salaries.

I refer to what a Fine Gael Minister said, post the election regarding the protection of the vulnerable in society: "These are the women who clean the offices in the morning; these are the women who serve food at weddings or hotel functions, who do the washing up but who go home to their families before the dancing begins." That Minister is the Minister for Finance, Deputy Noonan. The women to whom he refers are women whose income is set by the JLCs and whose families will be the most affected by any dismantling of JLCs.

I remind Labour Party Deputies that they are in very strange company on this issue. I note there are none of them in the Chamber: they seemed to have disappeared. Wage councils, the equivalent of JLCs in the United Kingdom, were first reformed by Thatcher in the 1980s and given the coup de grace by Major in the 1990s. Therefore, the Labour Party will be standing shoulder to shoulder with the right-wing policies of Thatcher of the 1980s which destroyed the workers' movement in Britain at the time of the miners' strikes and were against women workers throughout Britain.

We call on the Labour Party to support these low paid, vulnerable and often abused workers. The best way to do this is to support this motion. I refer to recommendation number 17 of the Duffy-Walsh report which recommends that statutory provision be made to allow for derogation from the terms of either an ERO or an REA on economic grounds. Any Labour Party Deputy hiding behind that should be ashamed of themselves. They either support this motion or they do not. If they support the Duffy-Walsh so-called report, they are supporting the fact that the ability to pay clause is embedded in it.

The Labour Party Deputies should come out from wherever they are. We would like to see them in the Chamber and eyeball them on this issue. We want to know their stance. In 1981 the then Department of Labour said any inability to pay element would affect and undermine the whole system. It was very critical of the inability to pay proposition, saying: "Any proposal which would allow for a fallback position weakens the principle in such a serious way as to make a nonsense of the entire concept."

This is an important red line motion. It is an important and serious issue for the thousands of workers affected by JLCs. Any Labour Party Deputy who supports the proposal of the Minister, Deputy Bruton, to change JLCs should be ashamed of themselves. We ask them to come into the Chamber and discuss and debate the matter in a true and honest fashion. They should look us in the eye, as they should the 250,000 workers who are waiting desperately for some sort of certainty on this issue. They are fearful for their jobs, families, incomes and futures. The Labour Party Deputies can either back this motion or deny the workers what they deserve, which is decent pay for a decent day's work.

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