Union warns pay gap could widen

WOMEN workers are increasingly being seen by unscrupulous employers as cheap labour and a means to increase profits, a leading trade union leader warned last night.

SIPTU general secretary Joe O’Flynn also said Irish workers were facing a serious crisis, as ruthless business interests pursued an agenda of maximising profits by driving down labour costs.

“No one is feeling this more than women and ... migrant workers, many of them concentrated in atypical sectors and seen as a source of cheap labour by the most unscrupulous employers,” he told the SIPTU National Women’s Forum in Killarney.

“Despite the many gains of recent times, we have to accept that, 30 years after the first equality legislation was introduced, there is still a 15% gender-based pay gap in Ireland,” he added.

Mr Flynn said there was a danger the gender pay gap could widen. The warning signs were there, he pointed out, such as the appalling conditions under which migrant women were being forced to work. He said the mushroom industry had provided some of the worst examples, with workers kept physically and socially isolated on farms and earning as little as €2.50 per hour.

But, SIPTU will shortly be concluding the terms of a draft Employment Rights Order with the mushroom growers’ group which represented around 80% of producers in the country.