Union questions wage rate research
Research which claims there is no evidence that wage rates in Ireland are being undermined through the exploitation of foreign nationals is based on seriously flawed data, according to the country’s largest trade union.
SIPTU has warned that the conclusions drawn in a study jointly published by the ESRI and a Swedish research institute about the supposed lack of growing wage degradation in Ireland are totally unsupported by the figures.
“The CSO data used as the basis for this study comes with such a massive health warning as to make it all but useless for the particular exercise being undertaken by the ESRI and its Swedish partners,” said the Union’s Head of Research, Manus O’Riordan.
The ESRI report found the influx of over 185,000 workers from EU accession countries into Ireland since 2004 has not displaced Irish jobs with up to 90% of adults from accession states taking up jobs compared with 62% for Irish nationals. It stated the majority of immigrants from the accession states usually work in the construction, industrial and hospitality sectors.
But Mr O’Riordan warned the building industry in particular is the sector of the economy where most concern has been expressed about the impact of wage exploitation.
“The new study takes the CSO’s figures on earnings in construction at face value – even though they only apply to directly employed workers and do not include the earnings of the vast bulk of new employees in the construction industry who are being employed by sub-contractors and from whom no data is being collected,” he said.
“The study makes a similar error in relation to the hotels and restaurants sector by giving too much credence to CSO earnings data – even though it explicitly excludes information on part-time employees who are the most highly exploited workers in the industry. Likewise the CSO’s survey of weekly earnings for all full-time employees working 30 or more hours a week remains totally ignorant of just how many more hours a week are in fact being worked.”
Mr O’Riordan said the most glaring deficiency in the study relates to the one sector of the economy where good earnings statistics are in fact produced - manufacturing.
He added: “The study refuses to face up to the implications of the rapid deceleration in year-on-year earnings increases from a rate of 4.7 per cent in March to a mere 2.1 per cent in December, or just half of the rate of pay increase provided for under Sustaining Progress.
“This is a cause for major alarm as to the depression of labour standards that requires urgently attention.”
