Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 10:

In page 24, between lines 33 and 34, to insert the following:"Employer obligation to display notice of employment rights in the workplace

26. Every employer shall display in a prominent position in or at the place of work, being a place to which employees have regular access and in such a position that it may be read easily by employees, a notice or notices in a form, manner, and in an appropriate language or more than one language that is reasonably likely to be understood by the employees concerned containing the following information--

(a) entitlements under employment legislation, either generally or by reference to particular enactments or a particular class or particular classes of enactments or to employees of one or more than one particular class or description, as may be specified in the notice concerned,

(b) complaints procedures concerning entitlements under employment legislation, and

(c) the contact details of the Workplace Relations Service for the purposes of--

(i) making general enquiries regarding entitlements under, and the application and enforcement of, employment legislation, and

(ii) communicating information to the Director pursuant to the Protected Disclosures Act 2014.".

There are three main elements to workers' rights - the right is in law, the worker knows he or she has that right and the Government enforces it. If these elements are not ensured, the process does not work properly. If the Minister of State took a special interest in the J.J. Rhatigan Kishoge site and met the workers in the near future, it might help to resolve the problem.

Many of the workers and trade union representatives whom I meet are not fully au faitwith the machinery available to them from Departments to resolve rights issues. We must ensure that all workers have access to that knowledge. Mine is a simple amendment that ICTU has also recommended. It places an obligation to display basic employment and equality rights information notices. If we wanted, we could give the Workplace Relations Commission, WRC, in consultation with employers, unions and workers, a function in preparing a statutory notice that employers would be obligated to post in their workplaces to ensure that workers know their rights. It strikes me as a simple and obvious way to proceed.

Turning to amendment No. 11, it is the experience of unions that too many employers do not take their obligation to maintain or produce employment records seriously. This contrasts radically with the level of responsibility that employers have to maintain revenue and taxation records. The latter is important, but it should be no more so than recording the history of employees' experiences within their companies. The Government has a specific incentive and objective to ensure that revenue information is collected and maintained properly, but a progressive Government should have the same level of incentive to ensure that workers' employment experiences are properly recorded and maintained. For this reason, I ask the Minister of State to accept both amendments.

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