Legislation reforming the joint labour committees (JLCs) covering the wages and conditions of thousands of workers is to be introduced in a matter of weeks, Minister for Jobs Richard Bruton said today.
He said the Government would put in place a robust system to protect workers and also provide the flexibility to allow the maximum creation and protection of employment.
"The approach of the Government is not a race to the bottom," he said. “Indeed we have shown already, by restoring the national minimum wage, that is not the agenda of Government."
The Minister was responding to a Sinn Féin Private Member’s Bill, debated at a special Dáil sitting today, which the party argued would protect workers whose conditions were covered by JLCs.
Mr Bruton said that while he was not accepting the Bill, the Government would not impede its passage through second stage in the Dáil. It now goes to an Oireachtas select committee to be considered further.
Mr Bruton said that while he accepted Sinn Féin’s good intentions, its proposal was, in effect, a three-year-old Fianna Fáil Bill which had been found by the courts not to fill the gap that had been opened.
He said making a provision that Sunday working would be governed by general legislation, rather than specific JLC orders, was not turning one’s back on its importance as a working day. It was to recognise options made available in other sectors.
Introducing the Industrial Relations (Amendment) (No 2) Bill, Sinn Féin TD Peadar Tóibín said the JLCs had been established to provide statutory minimum remuneration levels and terms of conditions for workers in sectors of low pay and where no collective bargaining existed.
"They were set up to prevent the exploitation of workers and hundreds of thousands of people being pushed into poverty," he added.
In the past 10 years, said Mr Tóibín, it had become apparent that the legislation framing the system was inadequate.
He said there 100,000 people making up the "working poor" in the State. Many could not afford to feed their families and were cutting back on medication to pay fuel bills.
The Sinn Féin Bill, he said, would help to protect them, adding that a failure on the part of Labour to support it would mean the party’s TDs becoming “the caricature of gombeen politicians’’.
Sinn Féin TD Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin said there was no valid reason to delay the matter.
A Sinn Féin protest supporting the Bill, attended by trade union representatives and the coalition for the low paid, was staged outside Leinster House before today’s debate.