‘Minimum wage is a fortune to newcomers’
Under the most recent increase announced by the Government, workers on the minimum wage here will by law have to be paid €7 per hour from this Sunday, giving a full-time employee monthly earnings of almost €1,100.
That works out at five times the amount on offer to workers in Poland and Hungary who earn just €201 and €212 per month respectively under their countries’ minimum wage provisions.
The Maltese fare best among the accession states, getting €535 per month, which puts them on a par or even marginally above existing EU-member countries, Greece, Portugal and Spain.
Slovenia is also at the higher end of the scale, offering about €450 per month, according to the survey carried out by the Warsaw School of Economics in Poland, but that is still less than half the Irish equivalent.
The stark difference in relative pay across an enlarged Europe is not only evident among minimum wage workers. The same study also showed that average annual earnings among all classes of workers in the accession countries lag far behind most of the existing 15 members.
In Poland, annual earnings average out at €6,734 compared to €9,928 in Greece, €10,688 in Portugal and €19,307 in Spain.
Average earnings in Ireland are around €28,000, putting the country in a middle-ranking category that includes Austria, Italy and Finland, while average earnings in Luxembourg, France, Belgium, Sweden, Germany, Britain and the Netherlands are all recorded as above €30,000.
Ireland’s minimum wage, however, is the third highest in the EU after Luxembourg and the Netherlands, making it an attractive option for hard-pressed workers from the accession states.
The Irish Congress of Trade Unions has vowed to prevent unscrupulous employers taking advantage of the pay gulf to lure workers from the new member states into Ireland with below minimum wage pay.
However, a separate study shows that many of the potential migrant workers have little experience of trade union representation, raising questions about how likely they are to blow the whistle on an Irish employer breaching minimum wage legislation.
The study by the EU body, the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, found that while 65% of Maltese and 70% of Cypriot workers were in trade unions - higher than the EU average and above the Irish level of 44.5% - the numbers in Hungary, Lithuania, Poland and Estonia ranged from just 20% down to 15%.
