Mandate activists yesterday enthusiastically backed a decision of the union's leadership to withdraw from social partnership in order to pursue a "go-it-alone" pay strategy.
Delegates to the union's biennial conference in Killarney, Co Kerry, unanimously supported a motion declaring that partnership had exacerbated a widening pay gap between the public and private sectors.
Mandate is not party to the current talks on a successor to Sustaining Progress as a result of a decision taken last year by its national executive. The union is among the largest in the State and represents workers in the bar and retail sectors, many of whom are low earners.
Mandate general secretary John Douglas told conference delegates that claims for a minimum increase of €1 an hour would be immediately served on employers in the sectors in which Mandate operates.
"Believe it or not, this meagre increase would go some way towards addressing low pay and poverty among service workers."
Explaining the decision to withdraw from partnership, Mr Douglas said that Mandate, as a point of principle, was not prepared to take part in a process "which continues to condemn thousands of our members and families and other workers to poverty".
He added: "Lower-paid, private-sector workers, particularly in profitable sectors, are no longer prepared to accept the crumbs from the negotiating table. Ask yourself, is it fair, in a sector which generates multi-billion profits each year, that the average wage of retail workers is €9 an hour?"
Mandate national official Linda Tanham said new research, commissioned by the union, showed that retail workers' incomes were falling behind those of employees in other sectors.
The research, which was conducted by business consultants Farrell Grant Sparks (FGS), showed that since 1998 the wages of full-time equivalent workers in the wholesale and retail sectors grew by 34.7 per cent, "a full 10 per cent behind the average in the economy of 44.8 per cent", Ms Tanham said.
"Indeed, the increase in retail and wholesale workers' incomes was the second lowest in the economy and came behind other sectors such as construction, which experienced a 56.4 per cent increase in incomes, hospitality at 51.4 per cent and financial services at 40.8 per cent."
Ms Tanham said that the performance of the retail and wholesale industries was not the reason workers' incomes in these sectors were losing ground. "The FGS research shows that profits in our sector have increased dramatically. In the 10-year period between 1995 and 2004, the incomes of retail workers increased by 126 per cent, while profits increased by 338 per cent," she said.
"Indeed, this industry is the one where the difference between growth in profits and in compensation of workers has been the greatest."
The research vindicated the union's decision not to participate in the partnership talks, she said. "In our judgment, the modest pay increases being proposed by the Government and employers . . . will not adequately compensate lower-paid workers for significant price increases which bear disproportionately on people on lower incomes."
Conference delegates backed the leadership's stance. Con O'Donovan, of the Cork branch, said that successive national partnership deals had been a "passport to poverty for the low-paid". The Irish Congress of Trade Unions, he added, bore a "big responsibility" for this.
A motion endorsing the decision of the union's national executive to withdraw from any future partnership talks was passed unanimously.