THE Minister for Social Welfare, Mr De Rossa, has invited the employers' organisation to put aside their traditional opposition to the broad principle of minimum wages, "and join us in discussing how best the problem of low pay can be addressed".
He told a Democratic Left youth seminar in Dublin at the weekend that he saw minimum standards, moving people towards decent, acceptable wage levels in all industries and occupations, as being a perfectly justifiable flip side to the extensive supports already offered to Irish business and industry.
Mr De Rossa said he supported the principle of the minimum wage as a means of ensuring that all citizens enjoyed a fair deal.
"But let me add that I have no particular attachment to the ideal of a single national minimum wage that would apply right across the board in all industries and occupations."
There was little or no evidence to support the view that high profits and lower taxes for employers would automatically lead to more employment. "I myself am very sceptical of this argument, which I suspect is overly simplistic", he said.
He called on all the social partners to be honest with one another. If the State could provide a taxation and social welfare system that favoured work and enterprise, employers should in return deliver in terms of good jobs, pay and conditions of employment; just as workers should contribute to social development through their labour and taxes.
Advocating the elimination as a category of that section of the Irish workforce which could best be described as the "working poor", the DL leader suggested that they should begin to build on the system of sectoral minimum wages which had already operated in the State for many years.
Their first step should involve making the Joint Industrial Council rates binding, then possibly merging them with legally binding Joint Labour Committee rates of pay, and in some cases extending them to related industries and occupations.