Union: Hotel staff ‘removed’ in wage row
SIPTU members yesterday mounted a picket at the Davenport Hotel — part of the O’Callaghan chain of properties in the capital.
The workers, who are from Lithuania and Poland and have worked at the hotel for between four and six years, say they have been removed from the roster because they refused to sign new contracts reducing their minimum wage by almost €1 to €7.79.
The wage reduction followed the Government’s decision at the end of last year to reduce the minimum wage from €8.65 to €7.65.
SIPTU is pointing out that following that move, Finance Minister Brian Lenihan gave assurances that existing employees of companies on €8.65 per hour could not have their wage reduced without their consent.
It said in spite of that stipulation, the women involved in the dispute at the Davenport Hotel had been brought into three meetings over the past three weeks and repeatedly told they must sign the new contracts or face being taken off the roster. The union added that they were not given a copy of the new contract, either in English or in their own languages.
“The women refused to sign the new contracts on February 1 when the new legislation came into force and have been removed from the payroll ever since,” SIPTU said.
“The union served strike notice on the hotel on February 9 over the hotel’s decision which it regards as an effective lockout.”
The union claims that while the dispute involves only five people, it has implications for more than 300,000 workers affected by the new national minimum wage legislation and related rates of pay in the hotels, contract cleaning, security and other low-pay sectors.
“As far as I am aware, this is the first occasion on which the new law has been tested in the industrial relations arena,” said SIPTU vice president, Patricia King.
“The stakes are very high. Every employer in low wage sectors of the economy will be watching this dispute. If these workers are effectively locked out of their jobs and penalised for seeking to defend their right to the €8.65 rate, it will signal a new race to the bottom.”
The O’Callaghan Group owns four hotels in the centre of Dublin, the O’Callaghan Alexander, Davenport, Stephen’s Green and Mont Clare.
It also owns to apartment complexes, the O’Callaghan Court and O’Callaghan Cathedral Court apartments. The group also owns the O’Callaghan Eliott Hotel and Penthouse Apartments in Gibraltar and the O’Callaghan Annapolis Hotel in the US.
The hotel group was unavailable for comment on the situation at the Davenport Hotel yesterday.
