Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

To establish this right and link this legislation to what is a human right is a very positive, progressive and necessary step. We must raise the standards and counter the pressure and drive towards the race to the bottom.

I would point to another dimension to this issue which we discussed at the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform yesterday and I was very pleased to get a positive response from economists who were there. We were debating the issue of quantitative easing, which is a technically dense, complicated, barely understandable process that is being engaged in by the European authorities, the ECB and so on, essentially to counter the impact of austerity. I, and others, put it to that group of economists, Stephen Kinsella, Dan O'Brien and Constantin Gurdgiev, who are quite a mixed bag from the political and ideological spectrum, that with respect to all the economic crisis, quantitative easing, austerity and the problems the European and global economy are facing, that the big problem is low pay and that all of those measures were symptoms of the fact that the share of income that is going to labour has dropped by about 10% since the Thatcher- Regan era and there has been a corresponding increase in the national economic cake or wider European economic cake going to profits. There has been a significant and consistent transfer across Europe and the world of wealth from the pockets of workers, in the form of wages, into the pockets of the rich in the form of profits and that transfer lies at the base of the economic crisis we are now witnessing.

There is an economic imperative, from the point of view of the whole economy, to address the issue of low pay, not only for the low-paid but for the stability of the entire economy. If workers do not have enough money in their pockets, they cannot afford to put a roof over their heads and they cannot afford to pay for goods. If they cannot do that, it causes a big problem for the economy and there is only one way that can be resolved and that is by them getting loans - many loans - they cannot afford pay back. The result of that is credit bubbles and the financialisation of the entire economy. That is what has happened during the last 25 years.

The question of radically redressing the race to the bottom, the issue of low pay and the transfer from wages to capital which has essentially taken place during the past 25 years is really a matter of economic urgency for our economy and the global economy, not to mention for the people who are really struggling. Some 19% of those working are living in poverty, which is an extraordinary situation. Stephen Kinsella said yesterday that this is a Marxist argument but Marx was right; he actually said that. I was amazed by that comment. Constantin Gurdgiev did not quite agree with him all the way but he nodded to indicate that there was a very significant element of truth in it.

For various reasons we have to shift the narrative on the question of fair remuneration, a living wage and a decent income for working people. Otherwise, the crisis our economy has just gone through will recur and on the current trajectory, it is increasingly likely that will happen. We have to address this and one way to do that is to say that decent remuneration is a human right to counter the relentless narrative about competitiveness, which becomes the justification for attacking pay and conditions for workers. That sounds good on the face of it but when we examine it closely, it is a disaster for the economy when it is viewed in its entirety.

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