Minimum wage calls made at school dedicated to working class champion

IF Dr Peter Bacon and Finance Minister Brian Lenihan felt no sense of shame in seeking to undermine minimum wage protection, they might at least have had a sense of occasion at the bitter irony of making such statements at a summer school dedicated to the memory of Patrick MacGill, that “graduate” of Ulster’s hiring fairs and Scotland’s navvy camps.

The school’s own website boasts how “as organised labour was becoming a force in the land, here was a powerful voice on behalf of the working class” who had himself shared its hardships, and it expresses pride in MacGill’s “relentless criticism of the local merchant, the gombeen man”.

MacGill would have been more appreciative of an observation by Minister Lenihan on June 25 that “the availability of cheap labour after 2004” had been a key factor in bringing about our economic crisis.

Why, then, suggest curing the disease by overdosing on the same virus?

The minimum wage has actually been frozen at its July 2007 level while, in the two years since then, the price of lamb has soared by 10%, bread by 15% and milk by 23%.

Butter prices have also risen by 15%. But there is little point in seeking refuge in margarine, which is dearer by 12%. Admittedly, potato prices have fallen by 11%.

So perhaps we should view the establishment message as a package: cut the minimum wage, switch to a pre-famine diet of spuds and be grateful that potato blight is under control.

Patrick MacGill, eat your heart out.

Manus O’Riordan

Head of Research

SIPTU

Liberty Hall

Dublin 1