Hotel challenges laws used to set minimum wage

THE outcome of a High Court challenge to the constitutionality of laws under which a statutory minimum wage and working conditions were fixed for 25,000 hotel workers outside Dublin and Cork will have significant implications for 250,000 workers whose wages and conditions are fixed under the same laws.

Mr Justice Bryan McMahon yesterday began hearing the challenge by a Co Clare hotel operator and the Irish Hotels Federation to the constitutionality of industrial relations laws under which a statutory minimum wage was fixed last November by the Labour Court, on foot of proposals from the Hotels Joint Labour Committee, for workers in hotels outside Dublin, Dún Laoghaire and Cork.

It is claimed the laws are “coercive” of employers and unconstitutional because they impermissibly delegate the state’s law-making powers to the Labour Court.