A public meeting was held in Wynn’s Hotel Wed 16th Oct under the banner of Unite in the Community against Low Pay in the Hospitality Sector. Speakers include Joan Collins TD, Senator Paul Gavan, Martin Mahony (Mandate), Cieran Perry (CALP) and Julia Marciniak (Unite). There was a packed attendance. Julia outlined her treatment while working in the Ivy Restaurant and express some disappointment about the lack of hospitality workers at the meeting. Unfortunately as was pointed out, workers in this sector are under huge pressure from their bosses and taking the time or even been seen at meetings like this are very disadvantage to their employment prospectus. Cieran Perry give an outline of how CALP was formed. Joan Collins pointed that this is a five billion euro sector and the high percentage of workers are living in poverty and its mainly young women employed in the business.
Martin Mahony also give some facts regarding the various contracts that workers work under in this sector and Paul Galvin outlined the rage of abuses that workers work under all the way up to physical abuse with this sector and spoke about the difficulties in bringing legislation into the Dáil. One of the two very important issues raised at the meeting was the Abolishing the 1990 Industrial Relation Act and that in future meetings could be arranged under the banner of the Dublin Council of Trade Unions( One rep from DCTU was at the meeting). The Chairperson Brendan Ogle said he would write to the Unions again to ensure that this will happen. In was mentioned that an Irish Times reporter was going to produce a serious article on the conditions on how workers were being treated in this sector. The article appeared in the Irish Times on Saturday 26th October. It was damming and the comments from the the Minister for Employment Regina Doherty who stated on National Public Radio that ” that employers in the hospitality sector, in the main treated their staff the way one would like member’s of one’s family to be treated” . This summed the breath of empathy the Minister thinks of workers mainly women workers in this area.
