Brendan Howlin seeks support for workers’ rights motion

Labour Party leader Brendan Howlin has written to other party leaders, as well as Fine Gael Minister for Jobs Mary Mitchell O'Connor, seeking support for a Dáil motion that aims to increase workers' rights.

The motion will be debated next week.

Mr Howlin has written to Fianna Fáil's Micheál Martin, Sinn Féin's Gerry Adams, Eamon Ryan of the Greens, the Social Democrats' Róisín Shortall and Richard Boyd-Barrett of the Anti-Austerity Alliance-People Before Profit.

Mr Howlin is seeking cross-party support in a similar fashion to Fianna Fáil’s motion on mortgage interest rates a number of weeks ago.

The Labour proposal calls on the Government to introduce a legislative package that “will protect and enhance workers’ rights” through a number of measures, such as ending the “abuse of ‘if and when’ contracts; combatting bogus self-employment; protecting workers in ‘informal’ insolvencies and collective redundancies”, among other measures.

Letter

In his letter, Mr Howlin says the motion was drafted with polices pursued by the other parties during the election in mind.

“It is unfortunate that commitments around the advancement of the employment rights agenda are almost entirely absent from the Fine-Gael-Independent Alliance Programme for Government,” he said.

“Workers’ rights have been one of the first notable casualties of this new administration.

“In the context of the new dynamic in the Dáil, there is a genuine prospect that the progressive proposals we are putting forward in the motion could actually be adopted and that these measures could become a reality.”