Posts in the "Pay" category
Europe Needs a Pay Rise
Posted on February 28, 2017
ETUC General Secretary Luca Visentinioutlines the reasoning behind the organisation's ambitious new campaign - a pay rise for workers across Europe
Wages in Europe have collapsed in the last decade.
The cause?
Globalisation, the financial crisis and, above all, the austerity measures that followed from the crisis. Wage cuts and the dismantling of collective bargaining and minimum wage systems have been the principle - and badly chosen - tools of economic adjustment.
Today, after almost a decade of pain for workers, we can say in sadness but absolute confidence that it hasn’t worked. Instead of recovery, we still face stagnation, high levels of unemployment, a fall in demand.
Permanent link | Categories: Pay Rise • ETUC
YES EQUALITY!
Posted on March 07, 2016
To mark International Women’s Day, Congress General Secretary Patricia King looks at how far we have to go to achieve real equality
Gender inequality remains a persistent feature of life on this island.
Women are disadvantaged in work and still carry a disproportionate responsibility for unpaid care work. Women are also severely underrepresented in the political, economic and administrative systems.
Women are specifically referenced in the Irish Constitution - but there is no reference to gender equality and no reference to fathers.
The highly controversial 8th Amendment recognises foetal rights as equal to the rights of pregnant women. Consequently, provisions for women’s reproductive health are highly restrictive.
But women are over-represented among people on Low Pay and in precarious work.
Permanent link | Categories: International Women's Day • Equality • Gender Pay Gap
WE ARE IRISH LIFE!
Posted on November 19, 2015
Research Officer, UNITE
Michael Taft of UNITE the union on why Irish Life staff have been forced into a dispute with their employer
Today, November 19 marks the third in a series of stoppages being undertaken by hundreds of Irish Life workers against their employer.
At stake are three inter-related issues:
- the company’s attempt to impose a new pay-bargaining structure,
- the persistence of poverty pay in Irish Life, and
- management’s unilateral attempts to decide which employees it will bargain with and which it won’t.
Permanent link | Categories: Irish Life • UNITE • Pay • diispute
THE HIGH COST OF LOW HOURS WORK
Posted on November 05, 2015
Congress General Secretary
Congress General Secretary Patricia King on the damage done by low hours work practices
Almost as soon as key details from the new study on low hours work found their way onto the front page of the Irish Times, employer and business interests were busy claiming vindication.
No problem with zero hour contracts in Ireland. Case closed, nothing to see here.
In fact, the very morning these details appeared, I attended a gathering at which employer representatives made that very claim.
It was a clever, if somewhat dishonest attempt to obscure a reality that is actually far more troubling and damaging than it may at first appear.
Permanent link | Categories: Low Pay • Low Hours • Zero Hours