SIPTU - The Union for All Workers - Printer Friendly Style

Migrant workers suffer most because of poorly resourced labour inspectorate

Date Released: 28 Oct 2004

"All workers suffer as a result of the absence of a properly resourced labour inspectorate - but non-nationals are particularly affected because of the other obstacles they encounter in relation to language, culture and their unfamiliarity with local custom and practice", declared SIPTU General President, Jack O'Connor.

"SIPTU has gone on record on a number of occasions in recent years as to the abysmally inadequate arrangements for the enforcement of protective legislation in this country.

"Essentially when it comes to accessing the meagre resources of the labour inspectorate, migrant workers have to join a very long almost endless queue - which is frankly totally unacceptable for a country which likes to proclaim itself as a world leader in many other respects.

"We know from our experience that were it not for - in some cases - a very fortuitous contact with a trade union activist or official, many migrant workers would still be being subject to gross exploitation by unscrupulous employers who we discovered were making unauthorised and totally illegal deductions from their wage packets.

"SIPTU officials have encountered these cases in many parts of the country - where we have recovered substantial sums of back pay for workers in these situations. While we like to feel that in exposing these rotten apples we deter other employers from being similarly contaminated, I fear that we may only be scratching the surface - especially considering growing anecdotal evidence of significant employment of non-national workers in domestic service - another of the less edifying consequences of the Celtic Tiger.

"If some of the reports I have heard are typical, then the plight of these particular workers is even more desperate than those employed under the bonded labour arrangements which serve as the current work permits system in this country - since the domestic worker is tied twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week to the employer and may not even leave the house in which they are employed.

"Other migrant workers may have slightly less onerous living conditions imposed on them but nevertheless in being denied any say in where they work and under what terms, they are being treated in my view in a manner which cannot be justified by any objective measures of human decency or even economic necessity.

"I long for the day when anti-racism weeks will be no longer necessary - since we will be enjoying a permanent state of anti-racism, pluralism and multiculturalism both in the workplace and throughout society," he concluded.

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