Irish Ferries dispute - Row exposes widespread problem

Irish Ferries has presented its employees with an extraordinary predicament which, understandably, has led to threatened strike action over the company’s naked attempt to replace them with lower paid workers.

Because there are so many people involved - 543 workers - this situation has dramatically highlighted a general problem which has insidiously existed for some time and which the Government, employers and unions have chosen not to address properly.

This is the question of low pay which is undermining the minimum rate, a concept introduced to ensure that workers generally could at least expect to get a recognised official hourly rate.

For it to be equitable, foreign workers validated to work here should be entitled to that rate. Instead, it would appear that some employers are quite prepared to circumvent the minimum rate to gain a profit advantage.

In the case of Irish Ferries, both the Government and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions have offered to intervene in the threatened strike at the ferry company and it would be injudicious were it to ignore such overtures.

It is a reasonable request from Minister for the Marine Pat ‘The Cope’ Gallagher that the company defer its decision while the Government considers a report from the Irish Maritime Development Office looking at more support for the shipping industry.

The sea-faring workers are faced with the stark choice of either accepting redundancy or lower pay, options which could hardly be described as amounting to an offer.

The company, which is profitable, is attempting to secure its economic viability into the future through cheap labour on a huge scale.

It has offered a voluntary redundancy package and compensation packages for loss of income and time off for anybody who chooses to remain.