Gerald Nash (Labour) | Oireachtas source

With respect, Senator Buttimer must have been listening to a different contribution from Senator Higgins than the one I heard. If Senator Higgins can be accused of consistency, the consistency I would accuse her of it being consistently supportive of the low paid, in particular women who are low paid.

I have developed a relationship with Senator Higgins over the years. I very much enjoyed the work we did together. Wearing a previous hat, she gave advice to me when we established the Low Pay Commission. In fact, the very valuable work the commission did included identifying the needs of women, in particular, who are in low-paid jobs. As the Senator correctly pointed out, a preponderance of women experience low pay in Ireland and earn the national minimum wage.I commend the work of the Low Pay Commission, work I asked it to do, to try to get under the bonnet of that issue to understand the issues pertaining to women in low-paid jobs, who need to be supported and protected by improved legislation and indeed improved statutory minimum rates of pay in this country, particularly when we look at the sectors in which those women are concentrated. Sectors in which women are concentrated include the hospitality, food and accommodation sectors and this has been referred to earlier.

I am pleased to support the Bill presented by my good colleague, Senator Gavan, and Senator Ó Clochartaigh, who I know did an enormous amount of works in terms of the research that underpins the necessity for a Bill like this to be presented to this House and to find its way on to the Statute Book. This work confirms what we already know anecdotally, which is that all too often, workers in hotels and restaurants and the food and accommodation sector effectively have their tips stolen from them. This is what it is. They are cheated out of money that is rightfully theirs. I want to consider this figure for a moment. On foot of a request I would have made through the Low Pay Commission when we dealt with those issues a couple of years ago, we asked the CSO to ask a question in its quarterly national household survey regarding the number of people who are on the national minimum wage. We always made an informed assumption that about 5% of the workforce was on the national minimum wage hourly rate. In fact, the quarterly national household survey figures produced last year indicate that the figure is double that with about 10.1% of the workforce engaged on the national minimum wage rate. This has been confirmed. The sector with the second highest proportion of workers on the national minimum wage is the services, food and accommodation sector. This is the sector on which we are focusing in the context of this Bill. That is not to say that there are no other sectors where workers receive tips for the work they do. Standing at a quarter of all those earning the national minimum wage, these are among the workers who are least likely to be members of a trade union and, therefore, do not get the protections that members of trade unions generally have and who are the most likely to be on contracts where they are not guaranteed hours or work - precarious work of one description or another.

Despite the fact that it is State policy that there should be a joint labour committee in the hospitality sector, like the joint labour committees that are successfully operated in the security and contract cleaning sectors, there is no such committee in the hospitality sector and there is very little evidence that one will be set up any time soon. Against this backdrop, we see far too many people working in the hospitality sector - a sector that has, as Senator Buttimer, who is not here to hear this contribution, has said has benefited from almost seven years of consistent State subsidy - being cheated out of their tips in a way that is very difficult to comprehend and defend. It takes some brass neck for an employer to do their staff out of tips to which they are rightly entitled but "brass neckery" is not something of which there is a shortage in this country and that industry. Denying a worker the tips to which they are entitled is a horrible, vindictive and cruel act and is nothing short of robbery.

This Bill could be tightened up and nuanced in some ways. I know that Senator Gavan does not have a monopoly of knowledge or expertise on this. Neither do I. Nobody in this House has. Those of us who have the interests of working people at heart are prepared to work with officials in the Department, the Low Pay Commission and the Minister to try to nuance this Bill and make sure it is the best possible piece of legislation we can produce to defend the interests of the people targeted by this Bill. In reality, we are all agreed that the tips that are generated for the staff who wait on tables, work in kitchens and work in this industry should go to where they need to go, which is into the pockets of those who are entitled to them. It is a really sad commentary on us as a society and on elements of that sector that we must have a legislative response to this issue. It would be helpful if companies could be encouraged and obliged to post in their premises a widely understood policy on the distribution of tips and what happens to them because the public needs that reassurance.

I am also pleased to see that there is provision in this Bill to make sure that the owner-manager is in no way excluded because the reality on the ground is that probably the vast majority of small food businesses in this country are operated seven days a week by the owner-manager - often in very difficult circumstances. They need to be acknowledged and recognised in the context of this Bill. They are as entitled as everybody else working on the floor, in the kitchens or in the background in that company to tips because of their hard work.

I am also pleased to see that there is provision in section 5 around the primacy of collective agreements. It is really important that we encourage employers to use the machinery that is in place, which in this case, is a joint labour committee, and that if a joint labour committee can identify a better customised and tailor-made approach to the sector, it is quite free to do this. I have been on the receiving end of a considerable amount of criticism from elements of the hospitality industry in recent years because I have the audacity to believe that workers are entitled to some certainty regarding the income they might expect and their hours. I have no doubt that Senators Gavan and Ó Clochartaigh and others who have moved this Bill and been involved in its gestation have received similar criticism because they have the audacity to believe there should be a legislative response to address these issues in terms of tips getting to the staff who need them. When I engage with those industry bodies, I always say that there is an alternative to the blunt instrument of primary legislation being imposed on them and that alternative is to engage with trade unions in a joint labour committee to customise an approach to certain rights and entitlements, rates of pay and terms and conditions in their sector, an approach that works for them. However, in the absence of such an agreed order that might emerge from a joint labour committee, legislation like this is needed. Sometimes I get a bit uncomfortable when I hear Ministers talk about the necessity of introducing a code of practice instead. My experience regarding how the code of practice around self-employment has worked tells us that given what we know with the rise in bogus self-employment, sometimes codes of practice are not worth the paper they are written on. However, I have every confidence that the Low Pay Commission has the expertise, interest and the commitment to help us to address these issues that we are ventilating on the floor of the House this evening. I look forward to that report but my absolute preference would be for us to legislate and give legislative effect to attempts to address this issue and not rely simply on a weak and toothless code of practice.