HOTEL WORKERS TAKE MINIMUM WAGE STAND
2
Liberty
FEBRUARY 2011
NEWS
Employees taken off work roster over refusal to sign contracts that cut their pay
‘Incredible courage’: On the picket line outside Davenport Hotel, Dublin. SIPTU has warned that other bosses are keeping a close eye on the outcome of the dispute
By PADRAIG YEATES
THE battle to defend the minimum wage has begun. Five SIPTU women members at the Davenport Hotel in Dublin mounted pickets last Thursday (17th Feb) after being taken off the roster for refusing to sign new contracts reducing their national minimum wage rate by almost €1 an hour. When the legislation was being passed, Finance Minister Brian Lenihan gave assurances that existing employees of companies on €8.65 an hour could not have the rate reduced without their consent. However, the workers concerned – all women from Eastern Europe – have been brought into three meetings over the past three weeks and repeatedly told they must sign the new contracts, of which they were given no copies in English or in their own languages, or face being taken off the roster. The women, four from Lithuania and one from Poland, have worked at the Davenport Hotel for between four and six years as accommodation staff, cleaning rooms and corridors and changing linen. They refused to sign the new contracts agreeing to their wages being cut for the last time on 1st February, when the new legislation came into force and have since been removed from the payroll.
series of meetings where they were told they must agree to accept a reduction in pay from €8.65 an hour to €7.79 to ‘support the Government’. If they refused to do so they would be taken off the roster. “The other workers, the vast majority of whom are migrant workers, signed the new contracts. Like the five women, they were not given translations of the document or copies. “I think it showed incredible courage by these women to take the stand they did. “As far as I am aware, this is the first occasion on which the new law has been tested in the industrial relations arena.” Patricia King warned the “stakes are very high” on the issue and that every employer in the low wage economy would be keeping a close eye on the dispute. She On Thursday, 9th December, 2010 during the Dáil Debate on Financial Emergency Measures in the Public added: “If these Interest (No. 2) Bill 2010: Second Stage, Brian Lenihan said: workers “I want to challenge the idea that persons already employed on the minimum wage will see their are effecincome drop automatically. Anyone already working under a contract of employment that sets tively wages at or above the national minimum wage is entitled to continue to be paid those wages unless locked out of their otherwise agreed between both the employer and the employee concerned.” SIPTU served strike notice on the hotel on 9th February over the move which the union regards as an effective lockout. Grazyma Liemen, from Poland, said: “It was a very big shock being told our wages were being cut. It is really hard work and after I pay rent, childcare and food, there is nothing left.” Like the other women, she was nervous going on strike, but two years ago two of her colleagues – Regina Balciuniene and Jolita Nalusiene – joined SIPTU and won a case at the Labour Court after their hours were cut and that gave them more confidence to stand up for their rights. Although the current dispute involves only five people, it has implications for more than 300,000 workers affected by the new National Minimum Wage legislation and related rates of pay in the hotels, contract cleaning, security and other low pay sectors. SIPTU Vice President Patricia King said: “These workers were brought to a
Picture: Tommy Clancy
jobs and penalised for seeking to defend their right to the €8.65 rate, it will signal a new race to the bottom.” SIPTU Sectoral Organiser Pat Ward said: “This is bad for workers, bad for decent employers, including many hoteliers who treat their workers decently and negotiate change with us, as well as for the wider society because it will suck even more money out of the economy and reduce living standards across the board. “It means that the assurances given by Brian Lenihan last November that existing employees would not be forced to sign new low pay contracts were meaningless, as SIPTU and other unions predicted at the time. “If Fine Gael is elected on its own in this election, it is threatening even more draconian measures to undermine minimum rates of pay set by Employment Regulation Orders in other low paid industries.” The Davenport Hotel is part of the O’Callaghan Hotel Group owned by Persian Properties and property developer Noel O’Callaghan, who has been a regular contributor to the Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael war chests over the years.It owns three other hotels in Dublin, the Alexander Hotel, the Mont Clare and O’Callaghan Stephen’s Green. The Group received huge tax subsidies from Fianna Fáil led Governments writing off virtually all capital costs against tax.It also has hotels in Gibraltar and the US. More broken promises: Brian Lenihan