Shipping companies pay staff €1.31 an hour

LEADING shipping companies regularly operating on the Irish Sea are paying staff members as little as €1.31 an hour.

That is according to the International Transport Federation which has claimed it has information on all the major culprits. It will soon launch a campaign exposing the rogue employers, several of which are Irish companies.

Ken Fleming of the ITF said: “We have had intensive looks at many vessels and have a good database of what is going on and it does not make good reading. I have the contracts. This is not disputable. It is being managed from a country in the Mediterranean by one of the big shipping managers in the world. They know what the industrial relations laws are like in the UK and Ireland and think we cannot do anything. We are devising ways that we can do something about it.”