Deconstructing the Irish Hotels Federation statements
Earlier this week, the Irish Hotels Federation sent out a press release arguing that the government is “caving in to unions on wage setting mechanisms.”
The main premise of the article is that the JLC (Joint Labour Committee) system is obstructing job creation and that the horrible unions, who are seeking to protect their members’ and other vulnerable, low paid workers incomes, are short-sighted, outdated and unpatriotic.
To read the article in full, you’d be left with the overwhelming feeling that the hotel employers group are just a lovely bunch of lads trying to get the whole country back to full employment.
And fair play to them if they do say so themselves.
Here are a few quotes to whet your appetite:
“In a survey carried out in advance of the conference, some 9 out of 10 ( 91%) of hoteliers stated that the increased burden and cost of meeting employment regulations under the JLC system would hinder their ability to take on additional staff this year.”
Wow. So now we know how jobs are created. If a business person makes a profit of €100,000 per year, he sits down and decides how many more people he/she can hire. That’s approximately 6 new full time hotel workers they’ll hire, whether they need extra staff or not. Don’t be daft. There isn’t one business person who hires for the sake of it. If a hotel has a choice between pocketing profits or hiring another worker, it’ll be the former that is adopted.
Next quote: “This comes at a time when room rates in Irish hotels are among the lowest in Western Europe while wage costs for new recruits are the fourth highest in the EU.”
Ok, so hotel rooms in Ireland are “among the lowest in Western Europe”? Great. Here’s a radical business idea for you, increase your prices. If there’s plenty of scope for increases because you’re already at the bottom end of the market, by all means increase your prices rather than ask for your already low paid workers to take a hit to their already meagre wages. Remember, the working poor are growing across the whole Island of Ireland and if a business is only paying the JLC rate at this current juncture, it means that their workers are probably working and living in poverty. Now they want to drop the worker further into poverty and deprivation?
“While wage costs for new recruits are the fourth highest in the EU”... That is of course provided that you decide you’re going to pay the full legal cost."
According to the most recent National Employment Rights Authority (NERA) quarterly report, the compliance rates for the hotel sector is running at 37%. That means 63% of employers are breaking the law in terms of payment of the national minimum wage for example. The unpaid wages recovered by NERA amounted to €70,551 and that’s from only 57 inspections. That’s more than €70,000 being stolen from the pockets of hard working hotel worker. According to the IHF, 54,000 people work in the hotels sector and if we assume that the rates are correct, approximately 34,000 hotel workers are being exploited.
So essentially, what the IHF have called for is the legalisation of the underpayments that they’re already partaking in.
“We need the Government to be more pro-business”.
I had to pinch myself after reading this one. Ireland is probably the best little country in the world to do business in. We have a corporation tax rate which is among the lowest in the world at 12.5%. We’re one of three countries in Europe with no legislated collective bargaining rights. And Irish unions have no right of access to speak with workers about underpayments, health and safety breaches etc. If we were any more “pro-business” we’d be a state based on slavery, but maybe that’s the IHF’s intention. Get rid of all obstacles and barriers to employment... like wages.
The worrying thing about statements from organisations like the Irish Hotels Federation is that they tend to get coverage in publications like the Irish Times. But there's no counter-argument from the trade unions in the article and it's given the headline "Governments caving in to hotel unions."
The best thing any of us can do is remember what the IHF is there for. They are an employers' body there to ensure their members make as high a profit as humanly possible and they have absolutely zero concern for the unemployment rate in Irish society or the well being of their own low paid workers.
