Brendan Ryan (Labour)

I move:

That Seanad Éireann calls on the Government to:

—develop and extend the registered employment agreements model which gives binding status to agreements reached at sectoral and employment level;

—devote increased resources to the labour inspectorate with more effective enforcement and prosecution of offences;

—ensure enforcement and Revenue inspection of the sub-contractor and agency worker issue in the construction sector;

—ensure that contractors working for local authorities and other public bodies meet minimum labour standards, in order to prevent a repeat of the Gama situation;

—confirm the right of self-employed persons who work under contracts "personally to execute any work or labour" to join trade unions and engage in collective bargaining;

—amend existing equality legislation to prevent any worker being discriminated against on the grounds of membership of a trade union;

—support the temporary workers agency directive;

—extend the equality legislation to cover people in domestic service;

—advocate and support significant change to the services directive, in particular the "country of origin" principle;

—reform the existing work permit system so that it becomes a green card system which does not bind workers to a particular job; and

—gather better data on labour market conditions in order to accurately measure the extent of displacement and wage degradation.

Earlier this week, the Labour Party produced a long and detailed set of proposals entitled A Fair Place to Work and Live. It produced the document in response to a combination of anecdotal and almost universal evidence that problems have developed at individual level and may be developing on a larger scale. We know that the combined enforcement services of the State failed to defend the Gama workers from appalling practices. We discovered that the powers of the Minister to investigate the abuse of workers, such as that found in the Gama case, were quite limited and that the report on Gama cannot be published. We naively assumed that supplementary legislation would be introduced fairly promptly to ensure that a report in respect of a similar case in the future could be published so that we would know what was happening. We still do not know the full details of what happened to Gama workers.

Those who have highlighted anecdotal evidence would do well to remember that while everybody accepts that Gama workers were treated abysmally, the evidence for such abuses is still only anecdotal. We know the anecdotes are true but we do not have any verifiable public document. The absence of any vigorous pursuit of amending legislation to ensure that if the Department carries out an inspection and investigation in the future, the resulting report can be made public, shows the lack of enthusiasm in this area. Much the same scenario occurred in the case of a group of Polish workers who complained to their union that they were being paid €2 per hour. Six months later, the investigation still had not commenced because the inspectorate was overburdened.

Other issues have arisen, such as the extraordinary fact that a country with a booming economy and booming Government revenue does not have booming income tax receipts. A senior official in the Department of Finance, which is not renowned as a vigorous champion of workers' rights, stated that this could be due to the fact that a large number of the approximately 200,000 new jobs which have been created are low paid and, consequently, do not yield much income tax.

I do not wish to price this country's economy out of world markets and I do not want this country to become like the US with extraordinarily well-off people. In the UK, 16% of its income is paid to the top 1% of income earners. We perform worse than the UK on the world indices of inequality so one could estimate that approximately 20% of all the income in this State is paid — I will not use the term "earned"— to the top 1% of the employed population.

We then witnessed the extraordinary situation in Irish Ferries. The ranks of big business in the person of the chief economist of the Bank of Ireland rallied enthusiastically to the cause of a fellow employer until they discovered that Irish public opinion, to use that wonderful phrase, had a belief that there was a threshold of decency beyond which we would not pass. Suddenly, we witnessed the spectacle of the country's largest single bank in magnificent and glorious retreat from a position which had been uttered with great enthusiasm by its chief economist on "Questions and Answers". The reason for this retreat was that the bank was in danger of upsetting its customers who did not want to live in an exploitative economy.

The minimum wage is a very good measure but it is not a guarantee against exploitative employers. It only guarantees against an excessive degree of exploitation. Perhaps the best way to describe it is as a starting wage but it ought not to be the wage on which anyone is expected to live indefinitely. If one was to ask a first year economics student in any third level institution to write an essay on the effect on wages at the lower end of the wage spectrum of the taking of possibly 100,000 to 150,000 jobs — between 5% and 10% of the labour force — by people with no social welfare rights, he or she would reply that such a development would drive down wages at the lower end of the economy. This would occur because these people lack the basic right to negotiate from a position of any strength. It is no good talking about minimum wages because these people are not in a position to negotiate seriously.

One case with which I am familiar involves a young man from outside the EU who asked why he was not paid double time on St. Patrick's Day. I will be careful in what I say because the case is supposedly due to be heard by a rights commissioner. The young man's employer, who is well known in the catering business in Ireland, told him that this right was reserved for Irish workers because it is an Irish public holiday. The young man then moved to Spain but was due to appear before the rights commissioner. At the last minute the employer sought and was awarded an adjournment, which meant the young man had to travel back to Spain, and probably will not return.

I am concerned about that young person and that the case is documented. A proactive approach to defending the rights of people in our new economy would have immediately begun an investigation. One cannot prove this but perhaps 150,000 or 160,000 new jobs yielded only a marginal increase in employment. If one looks at the CSO figures one sees that for a significant period of 2004 and 2005 the average weekly earnings in the accommodation and catering business declined. This is the longest period of decline on the CSO website. It has probably gone up again now. One should look at the extraordinary explosion of self-employment in the building industry. At a time when we were told that there was a booming building industry we have fewer people employed in the industry and thousands of self-employed people.

In a rapidly changing economy groups of people can be left behind, exploited and be unaware of their rights. Groups of people who have come to this country and who are welcome here, who have limited English, who come from cultures where the state has been seen for much of their young lives as an oppressor from whom one expects nothing but hostility, oppression and negativity are offered perhaps twice what they would have earned at home but which is barely the minimum wage here. What happens when an unscrupulous employer finds a way to use that combination of naivety, limited English and past experience to use these people instead of Irish workers who know their rights and who may be unionised? One ends up with a slow, step-by-step displacement.

I received a phone call this afternoon about two separate contractors in the Cork region who have set up agencies in two eastern European countries to recruit people there without advertising the jobs locally. If we have genuine vacancies at the current rate for a job in any area we welcome people here. However, we want to ensure we do not build our prosperity on a combination of the exploitation of our new arrivals and the consequential exploitation of Irish people.

Although this motion comprises a list of statements to which no reasonable person could object, the Government amendment omits and fails to mention many of them. Why does the Government not accept our suggestion that it should gather better data on labour market conditions? It knows if one begins to look at what happens one will move from our anecdotes and patchy information to a comprehensive model that will clearly indicate that, to the benefit of unscrupulous employers, Irish workers are in danger of being replaced by other workers who will be easier to exploit, manipulate and deceive. It is a pity, in the spirit of partnership, that the Government felt the need to amend a mild and positive motion such as this and remove some of the obvious suggestions such as the assembly of information.