Work inspectors won’t speak Chinese

A NEW wave of multi-lingual work inspectors will visit workplaces next month for the first time — but they won’t speak Chinese, which is used by thousands of staff in pubs, shops and restaurants across the country.

More than 100,000 Chinese live in Ireland, many working in retail and service areas.

Up until now inspectors monitoring conditions for foreign workers, particularly in the construction industry, have used interpreters.

Mounting pressure by trade unions over their treatment of foreigners by employers, coupled with increased migration, has forced the Labour Inspectorate to recruit multilingual speakers.

The first batch will begin work in the coming weeks.

Polish, Latvian, Lithuanian, Czech, Russian will be among the new languages used by inspectors. By next week, it is expected there will be 82 inspectors under the inspectorate, two of whom will be multilingual. By February, there will be eight more multilingual inspectors.

But the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment confirmed none of the new inspectors will speak Chinese.

The recent census found there are just 11,000 Chinese living in Ireland, but it is widely believed the figure is actually as high as 100,000, with thousands working illegally in jobs, having stayed on after student visas ran out.

Trade union leaders warned last night that leaving a large portion of Ireland’s new residents facing potential exploitation in ‘the grey’ was irresponsible and potentially damaging.

The leading union for employees in shops and pubs, MANDATE, said at least 10% of multilingual inspectors needed Chinese.

General secretary John Douglas argued: “If they (Chinese) are confined to a life in the shadows, they lose out in education and what about the second generation?” he asked.

Mandate has already handled cases of Chinese workers forced to give up their pay packets for lodgings in flats only to find they end up working every hour in the week with little to show.