Marie Sherlock (Labour) | Oireachtas source

The Tánaiste is very welcome to the House. I pay tribute to the work of the One Galway and One Cork movement, which did a significant amount of campaigning and work to bring this issue to national attention. I pay tribute also to the work of Senator Gavan and his colleagues who introduced the National Minimum Wage (Protection of Employee Tips) Bill back in 2017. When the campaign commenced then, I was struck by just how much of a chord it struck with so many people. People were justifiably dismayed that an employer would ever deprive workers of the tips intended for staff. In that context, I very much welcome the spirit of the legislation. It says something that we need to have legislation such as this to clarify that tips clearly given for the benefit of workers actually are the property of workers. In welcoming the spirit of the legislation, we have to ask a number of questions as to why certain decisions were taken in drafting it. This Bill has had the benefit of pre-legislative scrutiny by the Joint Committee on Enterprise, Trade and Employment, but I wish to raise two concerns that have been touched upon, the first of which is the treatment of the service charge and the distinction between the definitions of "mandatory" and "voluntary". As the Tánaiste noted, the public would be horrified to know that service charges are not contained within the definition of a tip or gratuity. For years, we have been duped into thinking we were paying something extra towards the service and not for the service itself. This point raises the issue of the power of employers within the hospitality sector in particular in lobbying the Government to exclude service charges from this Bill. In the 2017 Bill, service charges were to be recognised as part of a tip, but they are being excluded in this legislation. I am taken by Dr. Deirdre Curran's suggestion that, if service charges are not to be included, they should be relabelled as an additional employer charge. If this Bill is intent on bringing legal certainty for workers and transparency for customers, something needs to be done to highlight to customers that the service charge is just another item on the bill. The Tánaiste stated he was open to amendments. We need to be clear on whether a service charge is something that goes to the employer or is intended for the worker without it being part of his or her taxable income, which is the crucial element.

My second concern has to do with the enforceability of this legislation. Legislation is only as good as the enforcement procedures that are in place. We were supportive of the original Bill's intent to make the withholding of a tip by an employer liable to criminal sanction. Since that provision is also in place under the Payment of Wages Act 1991, I am unsure as to why the same standard does not apply in this amendment to that Act.

While I welcome the spirit of the Bill, we must be careful not to overstate the importance of a Bill like this. Some Senators have spoken about the extent to which tips form part of the income a worker needs to cover his or her living costs or how they should be seen as something to help manage or mitigate the gender pay gap in workplaces. Senator Garvey is right in that the workforce in certain parts of the hospitality and service sectors is predominantly female. The key issue is the extent to which the Bill will address the gender pay gap and, as the Tánaiste mentioned, help the tourism and hospitality sectors to be seen as valued and sustainable career choices. While workers in the service sectors will appreciate the efforts being made in this Bill, the real question is what the Government is doing as regards their wages. The confiscation of tips is insult added to the injury of low pay. We need to hear the Tánaiste's plans for improving pay and conditions in these sectors. He has spoken about the five key plans as regards workers' rights, which is welcome, but if this Bill is the height of the Government's efforts, it will be exposed as tokenism and a failure to address the real injury, which is persistent and exploitative low pay in many parts of the hospitality sector.

It is striking that employers are complaining of labour shortages in many parts of the economy. In one of the Sunday newspapers, there was a feature article with three hoteliers who talked about wanting to offer health insurance, yoga and other perks, yet only one of them spoke about wanting to improve pay. That hotelier said the sector would be on a "journey" over the next number of years to try to bring its staff to a living wage. We need to understand what a living wage is. It is defined not as a decent standard of living but as the minimum essential standard of living. For a hotelier with a five-star hotel to say the sector was going to take a number of years to get to that point says a great deal about the mentality of many employers within the hospitality sector.

As the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, the Tánaiste is in a unique position to bring employers and trade unions together. Senator Gavan spoke about the collapse of the joint labour committees, JLCs, and the legislation to reinstate that system. Interestingly, when the then Government commissioned a report from a former vice chairperson of the Labour Court to determine the appropriate sectors for a JLC, hospitality was identified as one. Hospitality remains one of a number of sectors that still do not have a JLC because of the intransigence and blatant opposition of employers to engaging with workers and worker representatives in a fashion that can set out sustainable terms and conditions. We want this sector to thrive and survive, but we also want to ensure workers can earn a decent standard of living.

I welcome the spirit of the Bill but there is much more we must hear from the Tánaiste about his plans in respect of low pay. On average, a hospitality worker earns 47% of the average wage.

Culturally, not everyone in this country pays tips. In the United States, it is part and parcel of what people pay when they go to a café or restaurant, but that is not the case in this country, so we must be careful not to overstate the importance of tips as a part of people's income.