Sir, - I read with keen interest the media coverage given to the issue of a legal minimum wage following the publication of the Fianna Fail/Progressive Democrat Programme for Government.
As one who has consistently lobbied over the past three years for a legal minimum wage for hotel and catering workers, I welcome the current debate and acceptance that it is an issue of major concern which must be addressed.
The Irish Government recognised as far back as 1946 that the State had an obligation to protect workers who are chronically low paid. Joint Labour Committees representative of employers, unions and independent members were established to regulate pay and conditions of employment as a temporary measure in the belief that legal measure could be replaced by free collective bargaining between unions and employers in their place of employment.
The principal reason why, 50 years later, we require a statutory legal minimum wage is as a result of employer hostility to recognising workers' rights to be members of trade unions for collective bargaining and widespread reliance on low pay and exploitative working conditions.
It is a scandal that in 1997 workers in the Three Lakes Hotel, Killarney, must go on strike and remain on a picket line for over three months for the basic right of trade union recognition - a situation which is becoming all too prevalent in the tourism sector. Tourism, notwithstanding its spectacular success, continues in non-unionised employments to sustain itself on pay rates and conditions which are so low that few today will consider working in the industry for the summer period, never mind choosing it as a career.
But in the US an increase in the legal minimum wage was followed by an increase in employment, particularly among teenagers. The service sector also has greater success in recruiting in countries which have a realistic legal minimum wage such as France, Italy and Germany.
The Small Firms Association and the ISME appear to be in constant competition to be the most extreme advocate of the low-paid agenda. It is time they faced up to their responsibility. JLCs have failed to eradicate low pay and exploitative conditions in hotels, catering, retailing, contract cleaning etc. Our society can no longer justify the prevalence of exploitation as the modus operandi of our ever expanding service sector. - Yours, etc.,
Branch Secretary, SIPTU, Dublin.