Key to achieving a ‘living wage’ is reducing high living costs

Jim Power (Irish Examiner, July 24) describes the Low Pay Commission’s proposal to increase the national minimum wage by 50 cents per hour as “not a good idea”, given that many retail and hospitality businesses outside Dublin are still struggling.

Fortunately, employers can apply for a temporary exemption from the increase, under the ‘inability to pay’ provisions.

This is a basic provision, which employers have used in the past, in other parts of our wage-setting mechanisms.

This means that only employers who can afford to pay the increase will be required to do so immediately.

In the medium term, the key to implementing a living wage, apart from increasing the statutory floor, is public interventions to reduce high living costs.

Public policies, such as affordable childcare, reduction of high rents, and reduction of public transport fares (through higher public subventions) will reduce the calculation of the living wage, while providing people with the public services that people in other European countries enjoy.

One-in-five people at work live in conditions of deprivaton, according to the Central Statistics Office.

While Unite is disappointed that the Low Pay Commission did not recommend a €1 hourly increase, as per our submission, we see this as the first step in ensuring that all workers receive a wage that is sufficient to protect them from poverty and deprivation.

Jimmy Kelly

Ireland Secretary

Unite the Union

Middle Abbey St

Dublin 1