Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independents 4 Change) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for his reply. I am aware of the regulations regarding transfers of undertakings and have assisted workers to get their rights under that process. It is inevitable in many cases that workers with good jobs that are permanent and secure, on which they base the securing of their mortgage or the payment of their rent and so on, may lose out if they are moved to new companies. In the case of the bin collection workers, for example, who were local authority workers before moving to Greyhound in a transfer of undertakings, they were, in a matter of years, kicked out of their jobs. The company brought in other workers and locked them out because they wanted to ensure their wages stayed as they were but the employer did not want to pay that wage. That was the bottom line.

The more than 100 hundred workers in Tesco are potentially facing the same situation. The company did not even bother to meet with the unions and workers before making its decision. Instead, they were brought in individually, which is a very underhand way to intimidate workers. As a society, we should be dealing these multinational companies, which are very profitable and have no need to outsource their workers like this. We should be looking at protecting full-time employment and security for workers. We have been in a race to the bottom, which is moving workers towards part-time, insecure work. These workers are in full-time employment.

The Minister of State said he did not know my question related to the situation at Tesco. However, the question I put in referred to the fact that up to 180 retail security officers, many with long-term service, were told on Tuesday morning that Tesco is acting unilaterally to outsource their employment. The company was named in the question I submitted. We do not do enough to ensure our employment laws protect workers in these situations. I ask the Minister of State to respond to that point.

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