Irish Examiner view: Bill to boost rights of hospitality staff is long overdue

Some 40,000-plus workers who left the industry as Covid-19-prevention measures forced many businesses to close. Picture: AP

Anyone who has waited on tables — and there are many of us — will welcome new legislation that ensures tips and gratuities are fairly distributed to staff. The Payment of Wages Amendment Bill, passed by the Oireachtas this week, is overdue, but welcome.

Under its terms, employers will be prohibited from describing mandatory charges as ‘service charges’, unless they are treated in the same way as tips. The new legislation also ensures that hospitality workers get any tips paid electronically, an important clarification given the increasing use of credit cards and reports that some employers used technology as an excuse not to pass on gratuities.

Hospitality workers will be hoping that Tánaiste and Enterprise Minister Leo Varadkar is right when he says that this law will help to “stamp out bad practices”. While unprecedented staff shortages in that sector have made it an employees’ market, to a certain extent, this bill will go some way towards ensuring better conditions.

It may even tempt back some of the 40,000-plus workers who left the industry as Covid-19 prevention measures forced many businesses to close, sometimes permanently. Having said that, ensuring that tips reach their destination will not make up for the uncomfortable fact that service jobs are often poorly paid and precarious.

The pandemic made that clear by exposing the reality of many workers’ lives, not just within the hospitality sector. Meat workers, for example, spoke of the poor health and safety conditions in slaughterhouses and factories. Many of them were migrant workers, who said they feared losing their jobs if they called in sick.

In November 2020, a Migrant Rights Centre Ireland report found that 90% of employers did not offer sick pay. It is a real step forward, then, to see another piece of important legislation come into force: The Sick Leave Bill, also passed this week, gives all workers the right to paid sick leave.

It’s late in coming; we have lagged behind other European countries for many years, but better late than never. Up to now, just half of all employees had access to sick leave, according to estimates. No worker should ever have to go to work when ill, but with Covid-19 still present, that is not only a workers’ rights issue, but a public-health issue.

Speaking of workers’ rights, it is striking to see how union membership has fallen out of fashion. While the Irish roots of Mick Lynch, the popular general secretary of Britain’s rail union, made headlines here as he led workers during a strike in Britain, few younger people are joining unions. Just over 15% of workers under 35 are union members.

That is not just an Irish trend, but a global one, with Amazon workers in the US a rare, and wholly necessary, exception. The idea of holding a union card might seem dated, but it is still true to say that the power of the group is greater than the power of an individual when negotiating a path through the myriad challenges of the gig economy.