The cost of servicing a £100,000 mortgage used to take one week's wages a month for a couple on the average industrial wage but is rapidly moving towards two weeks' wages, SIPTU regional secretary Mr Jack Nash has told the union's conference for Dublin private-sector members. "If this continues we will very quickly be the new working poor of Europe".
He said a working couple would need to be earning £50,000 each to afford a three-bedroom semi-detached house in Dublin and the average earnings of workers in manufacturing and services in the city was £20,000. "There is no way we can support a market that fleeces us like that."
On employment, he said latest figures from the Economic and Social Research Institute showed at least 160,000 immigrant workers would be needed to sustain growth over the next six years. "No one can say we covered ourselves in glory in our dealings with asylum-seekers and foreign workers," he said. "We must combat racism in the workplace wherever we find it. Genuine trade unionism and racism cannot co-exist in the workplace."
He said SIPTU had recruited "more than 2,000 non-nationals in a very short time". "Let us hope that number will increase by many thousands," he said.
Dr Bill Roche, of the Smurfit Business School in University College Dublin, said that trade union "density" had fallen in the Irish workforce to around 25 per cent. He said the time was coming when Ireland could no longer be described as highly unionised.
He attributed the decline to many factors, including changing technologies, a less benign public perception of unions and the policies of some employers not to countenance unions.