Worker exploitation will influence vote

A recent report headlined ‘Firm hires migrant workers to keep manners on Paddies’ (July 3) said that a bin collection firm in Carrick-on-Suir that hired workers from eastern Europe had been hit by a strike by 27 Irish workers, some of whom were told to work longer hours and take a 49% pay cut – or walk.

It was the Nice Treaty and the Fianna Fáil-led government that facilitated large-scale economic migration from eastern Europe after May 2004.

Foreign workers themselves are being exploited through work conditions that are below the norm for Ireland.

This is helped by the Laval and Ruffert judgments from the European Court of Justice – relying on the so-called charter of fundamental rights which copperfastens the exploitation of foreign labour and the displacement of Irish workers from their jobs.

Does this failed government seriously think any of these Irish workers in Tipperary – or those, for instance, from Irish Ferries who lost their jobs to cheaper east European labour – will vote Yes to Lisbon and give more power to the European Court of Justice which gave us the Laval judgment, etc.

I suspect these Irish workers will all vote No.

Ted Neville

‘Turnberry’

Carrigaline Road

Douglas

Co Cork