FULL-TIME STAFF working in the retail sector have seen their earnings fall by about €100 per week as a result of cutbacks in working hours introduced by employers, the biennial conference of the trade union Mandate has been told.
In an address to the conference in Galway yesterday, Mandate’s general secretary John Douglas said some retail firms with extremely healthy profits had attempted to take advantage of the economic downturn by forcing unnecessary redundancies, introducing pay reductions and putting in place inferior terms and conditions for low-paid workers.
Mr Douglas welcomed a clause in the proposed new public service pay deal which, he said, defined lower-paid workers as earning less than €35,000 per year. He said this definition had “to carry equal credibility in the private sector”, as the cost of living was the same for all workers. “Therefore, Mandate will resist any attempt by retail companies to lower the wage levels of retail workers, many of whom earn the average retail salary of €25,000 per year.
“The €35,000 lower-paid benchmark agreed in Croke Park puts an end to calls from greedy business interest groups and some politicians to lower the minimum wage and Joint Labour Committee rates. Low pay is low pay whether in the public or private sector.”
Mr Douglas said the union had seen a profitable firm bring in “a highly questionable redundancy scheme that enabled it to replace workers on a higher pay scale with workers on a much lower pay scale”. In a separate case, he said, a leading grocery and drapery store which continues to be highly profitable pursued suspension of allowances for late night, early morning and overtime work.
Another leading retail outlet had tried to cut wages of staff at the top of their pay scale by 15.5 per cent, with a cut of 25 per cent in public holiday pay and a 25 per cent cut in Sunday allowances.
Besides these specific cases, he said, “the feedback from our members suggests that right across the sector most retail workers have lost approximately 8-12 hours per week as a result of cutbacks from their employers. This has resulted in a reduction in income of about €100 for those working full time in the industry.”
He said the argument often put forward for cutting workers’ pay was that rates were out of line with those of European counterparts.
However, he said a new research document produced for the union, Milking the Recession, revealed Irish retail wage costs were not as uncompetitive as some of the employers’ bodies argued.
“For instance, a report by FGS Consulting for Forfás estimates that the average annual wage for a sales assistant in Dublin in 2008 was €22,000 and in Cork, Galway or Limerick was just €17,500. Despite claims of some industry lobbyists, pay rates in Ireland are not significantly higher than in the UK or other comparative European cities,” he said.