Trevor Ó Clochartaigh (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 1:

1. To delete all words after “That Seanad Éireann:” and substitute:

“ - recognises the importance of our hospitality sector and the significant revenue which it generates in Irish tourism; - recognises that improving industry standards in pay and conditions will lead to lower turnover of staff and be an important factor in enhancing customer experience;

- notes the key role that employees in this sector play in ensuring a good customer experience for our visitors;

- notes also that there are issues of concern across the sector with regard to terms and conditions of staff, as highlighted in the University of Limerick report on zero and low hours contracts;

- calls on the key stakeholders - Irish Hotels Federation (IHF) and Restaurant Association of Ireland (RAI) - to immediately engage with the State’s wage-setting mechanism for low paid workers in industries with low levels of trade union density; and

- urges both the IHF and RAI to work towards an agreement for a new Joint Labour Committee to be established for the sector.”

Molaim an leasú ar an rún seo go hoifigiúil. Tá míle fáilte roimh an Aire. Inniu Lá Idirnáisiúnta na mBan. Ba mhaith liom comhghairdeachas agus ardmholadh a thabhairt do bheirt bhan mhisniúla a labhair ag ócáid a d'eagraigh muid i nGaillimh oíche Dé Luain seo caite.

The Minister is very welcome. Today is International Women's Day. I would like to sincerely applaud two very brave women who spoke at a public meeting in Galway on Monday night. They are Eva Mitchell and Kayla McCormack and they do not mind me naming them. They have been working with me on some research we have done into the hospitality sector in Galway. Eva and Kayla spoke at the meeting about their experiences in the hospitality industry in Galway and it is not a pretty picture. There were also a number of other women who came forward on Monday night and spoke publicly about the mistreatment and abuse they have experienced within that industry. It is very rare for public representatives to come across people as brave as Eva and Kayla. They were willing to speak out, not on their own behalf but so that other people who are in vulnerable and unacceptable situations can be supported and protected.As were many others, I was generally aware of conditions in restaurants and hotels which left a lot to be desired and meeting these women spurred us into action. I never expected the initiative we undertook would snowball into such a campaign or that we would get the level of feedback and support we have received to date.

We looked at the abuses of people working in the hospitality industry in the Galway area and to that extent we did a survey. We expected to get perhaps 100 respondents to the survey but over 415 people responded. I will tell the Minister a little bit about the research we have done. We did it because when we put out an initial statement we received very dismissive statements from the hotels and restaurateurs representative groups. To counter those dismissive statements from the industry we felt we needed to gather more concrete evidence to back up what we were hearing anecdotally. The survey we conducted covers a lot of the basic elements of good work practice that employees should experience and asked questions about the basic legal requirements that every employer should adhere to. It also seeks to quantify the different types of abuse that employees in the hospitality sector in Galway experience, from whom and what, if anything, is done about it.

The responses are quite shocking and I will forward the report to the Minister. They point to widespread abuse of workers across the industry. They point to issues with contracts, working conditions, payments and tips, and document a wide range of verbal and physical abuse including incidents such as sexual harassment and assault, which are totally unacceptable and illegal in any workplace. The sense of helplessness that employees feel in this industry is palpable. The fact that so few of the incidents are reported because people are afraid of the repercussions or feel that nothing will change is extremely worrying.

I have no reason to believe that what we have documented about Galway is any different from what is happening across the country. We have been contacted by people who said they have the same issues. We also collected personal testimonies which paint pictures of the real human suffering experienced by workers in the hospitality sector. One gets a sense that this is the prevalent culture and that people are expected to put up, shut up and get on with it. That simply has to stop. The extremely low level of trade union membership suggests that workers need to be encouraged and supported to join unions. Sector leaders and Government must support this initiative as it is good for workers and business.

We need to heighten the awareness among the workforce of their rights as employees and the supports and remedies available to them to have those rights vindicated. We also need the hospitality sector and its representative organisations to accept there are serious issues that need to be addressed. We want customers of the hospitality sector to be aware of what is happening behind the kitchen doors and to support establishments that treat their workers well. That will be a focus of the campaign going forward.

It is simply not good enough for those in authority to promote Galway and other areas as a great place to come, where customers enjoy the best of hospitality, if it is at the ongoing expense of a low paid, vulnerable, disposable workforce, many of whom are being mistreated and exploited by their employers. We applaud employers who treat their workers well and welcome recommendations on establishments that should be included in that cohort. I propose we all vote with our feet and spend our hard-earned cash in hotels and restaurants that deserve our patronage.

The campaign has been supported by a number of different groups as well. We have unions on board and the Union of Students in Ireland, SIPTU, the Migrants Rights Centre, the Rape Crisis Network, Romanians in Ireland and other groups have come out in support of the work we are doing. I welcome the support we have been given, particularly by Dr. Deirdre Curran and Amanda Budyzk of the department of management in NUIG. We have been talking to the Workplace Relations Commission which is promoting good relations between employers and employees and has been providing information to us.

I will move on to some of the findings in the survey. It was designed to provide concrete evidence of the experience of hospitality workers in Galway. We closed the survey at 415 responses. Most of the respondents described themselves as Irish and were between 18 and 34 years old. About 45% were employed full time in the sector and a further 25% worked part time. About 43% of respondents had been employed for at least a year working in the three most common areas as waiting staff, bar staff or chefs. The survey contained questions about employment rights at work, mistreatment experienced, reporting of mistreatment and union membership. To put it in context, recently in the jobs committee I challenged the Irish Hotels Federation and the Restaurants Association of Ireland on compliance with current legislation. The Irish Hotels Federation was proud that only 34% of hotels were non-compliant with basic legal requirements. The lack of shock at the fact that 35% were non-compliant was outstanding. The Restaurants Association of Ireland told us it felt that 99.9% of its members were compliant with all of the legislation, which I find very hard to believe.

In our findings, 45% of respondents were not given a written statement of terms of their employment within the first two months and 18% did not receive a regular payslip. Regarding rest breaks, almost 60% claimed not to receive the statutory 15-minute break after four and a half hours work; 50% did not get a 30-minute break after six hours worked; and almost 50% did not receive their entitlement to nine public holidays per year. Almost 50% did not receive 11 consecutive hours of rest between shifts; 44% of the people we spoke to reported the employer using the rota as a negative control mechanism; 34% reported the withholding of tips regularly, very often or constantly; and 28% reported being underpaid regularly, often or constantly.

Perhaps the most worrying finding in the data relates to physical and sexual abuse, harassment and negligence, with 78% of respondents reporting experiencing verbal abuse, sometimes regularly, very often or constantly in the workplace; 36% reported experiencing sexual harassment or abuse as well; and 65% of respondents experienced negligence. Only 21 of the 415 respondents were members of a trade union and for the vast majority of transgressions, the perpetrator was someone in a position of authority over the worker, either a supervisor, manager or owner; 60% of respondents chose not to report incidents and the main reasons for non-reporting were a belief it would make no difference, fear of repercussions or lack of evidence. These are very serious issues.

We want to work with the industry and good employers. For parties here to close their eyes to the serious issues of abuse and mistreatment in the hospitality sector is absolutely wrong. We are calling on the Government and all parties in the Houses to work with us to try to remedy that.