Madam, – I can feel the cold winds blowing again. Now we have an attack on the subsistence minimum wage (“Minimum wage levels may need adjustment, says Lenihan”, July 22nd).
I can still see my father going down to the union hall in 1958 to get the fare for the heaving cattle boat to Liverpool. We can’t let this happen again. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Ireland has the “second highest” minimum wage in Europe. But our politicians are among the highest paid in Europe. The debate on wage reduction is disproportionately focused on cuts at the lower end of the wage spectrum. Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin needs to reduce his own inflated salary before he can engage in “legitimate” discussion about how to reduce costs in our economy (“Wage issue for ‘Labour Court’,” July 24th). – Yours, etc,
Madam, – If Dr Peter Bacon and the Minister for Finance felt no sense of shame in seeking to undermine minimum wage protection, they might at least have had a sense of the bitter irony of making such statements at a summer school dedicated to the memory of Patrick MacGill, that “graduate” of Ulster’s hiring fairs and Scotland’s navvy camps. The school’s own website boasts how, “as organised labour was becoming a force in the land, here was a powerful voice on behalf of the working class” who had himself shared its hardships, and it expresses pride in MacGill’s “relentless criticism of the local merchant, the gombeen man”.
MacGill would have been more appreciative of an observation by the Minister on June 25th that “the availability of cheap labour after 2004” had been a key factor in bringing about our economic crisis. Why, then, suggest curing the disease by overdosing on the same virus? The minimum wage has actually been frozen at its July 2007 level while, in the two years since then, the price of lamb has soared by 10 per cent, bread by 15 per cent and milk by 23 per cent. Butter prices have also risen by 15 per cent. But there is little point in seeking refuge in margarine, which is dearer by 12 per cent.
Admittedly, potato prices have fallen by 11 per cent. So perhaps we should view the establishment message as a package: cut the minimum wage, switch to a pre-Famine diet of spuds, and be grateful that potato blight is under control. Patrick MacGill, eat your heart out! – Yours, etc,