Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Anti-Austerity Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the workers, trade union activists and trade union officials who are in the Visitors Gallery. Today, the union Unite published a report entitled The Truth About Irish Wages. The report shows that Ireland is a low-pay economy and has a high level of income inequality. It showed that low-paid employees constitute a disproportionate percentage of the Irish workforce compared to other wealthy European countries and that almost a quarter of Irish workers are in low-paid jobs. The report confirms what we know from other reports. Some 23.3% of full-time employees are low-paid, which is a greater percentage than in any other OECD country except the US and South Korea. In Tesco, where workers are battling wage cuts of up to €6,000 per annum, more than 1,000 workers are already so low-paid that they must survive on family income supplement.

Against this backdrop, we must consider the Labour Party proposal for a "programme of incremental increases in the national minimum wage". The national minimum wage stands at €9.15 per hour. How many years do the Deputies envisage the programme of incremental increases will take before the national minimum wage reaches 60% of median earnings, which would be slightly above €12 per hour? The AAA-PBP amendment seeks to increase the national minimum wage to €12 per hour this year, immediately, as a step towards €14 per hour by May 2018.

Workers cannot wait for years to reach 60% of the median wage, which is the European decency threshold. A worker living in Cork city, earning the minimum wage and working a full 40 hour week would earn €17,420 per year, after tax. To rent a house, he or she would need to spend €1,003 per month, 69% of his or her take-home pay. To rent a one-bedroom apartment, he or she would need to spend €748 per month, more than 50% of take-home pay. The rent increases in both sectors during the past year were greater than the increase in the national minimum wage last year. This means the increase has been more than totally wiped out by rent increases alone.

The minimum wage of €9.15 per hour is way too low. The €9.65 rate which Sinn Féin advocated last year is way too low. Workers forced to survive on those wages are among the more than 80,000 workers who live in real risk of poverty, the working poor. They should not be forced to live in poverty. In any even the rent will not wait to be paid. Today, the Irish secretary of Unite the Union, Jimmy Kelly, said:

Fine Gael were the main reason for diluting what the trade union movement needed [the previous] Government to do, and the Labour Party had to go in a direction that would be favourable to Fine Gael interests. So we ended up with something that is not really true collective bargaining.

We are putting forward the idea of a statutory route to union recognition. This route must be clear, straightforward and speedy. While the situation in the UK is not perfect, it is better than we have here. The amended 2015 legislation does not go nearly far enough. We need mandatory collective bargaining, access to workplaces for union officials, space and recognition of shop stewards, and facilities within companies that will allow the unions to go in.

Last night, the leader of the Labour Party said Sinn Féin and the Trotskyists had a critique but no solution. Sinn Féin can speak for themselves. I find it ironic that the founder of the Labour Party, James Connolly, was an admirer of the 1905 Russian Revolution led by Mr. Trotsky himself. We will not take any lectures on workers rights from the party that introduced JobBridge. We ask the House to support the AAA-PBP amendments. We will support the Sinn Féin amendments.

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