Hotel Workers battle to defend minimum wage

Ireland: Hotel workers battle to defend minimum wage

Members of the IUF's Irish affiliate SIPTU at the Davenport Hotel in Dublin have mounted protests after being taken off the roster for refusing to sign new contracts reducing their national minimum wage rate by almost €1 an hour.

The outgoing Irish Government pressed through legislation allowing for the minimum wage to be reduced, but gave assurances that this could not happen without the consent of workers affected.

However, at the Davenport Hotel workers have been brought into three meetings over the past three weeks and repeatedly told they must sign the new contracts or face being taken off the roster. They were not given a copy of the new contract, either in English or in their own languages.

The women, who are from Lithuania and Poland and have worked as cleaners at the Davenport Hotel for between four and six years, refused to sign the new contracts on 1st February when the new legislation came into force and have been removed from the payroll ever since. SIPTU served strike notice on the hotel on 9th February over the hotel’s decision which it regards as an effective lockout.

Although the dispute involves only five people it has implications for over 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.

Visit www.iuf.org for further details and how you can show your support- thanks everybody.