Employers breach Minimum wage Rule.

Uncle Ben

NERA's latest report from Jan to Oct 2012 highlights the fact that almost 50% of all workplaces inspected were found to be in breach of the Minimum Wage Rates. NERA inspected 1064 employers and of these 530 were not complying.

The inspections resulted in the recovery of approx.€264k in unpaid wages.
http://www.siptu.ie/media/pressreleases2012/featurednews/fullstory_16834_en.html

Lumbo

If certain organisations had their own way, all employees would be paid below the minimum wage rate.

femur61

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_in_Europe_by_minimum_wage

France and Luxembourg have are the only two countries that are higher. In my opinion it is far too high. No wonder basics like a cup of coffee or a haircut are so high when the staff working on the min wage have to be paid 350/wk. It is the start of the chain of how our cost of living is so high. Before people start complaining we need a high min wage to protect the vulnerable just think about why everything else is so expensive. Employers have to meet their costs in order to afford to pay someone who is 16 to give you a cup of coffee.

Sleepy

Would I be right in thinking that NERA only inspect workplaces based on complaints received? In which case the statistic could be more accurately described as "over 50% of reports of employers paying below minimum wage were malicious"...

ChRoMe

Sleepy wrote: »

Would I be right in thinking that NERA only inspect workplaces based on complaints received? In which case the statistic could be more accurately described as "over 50% of reports of employers paying below minimum wage were malicious"...

Malicious? Hardly malicious to report workers being exploited.

antoobrien

ChRoMe wrote: »

Malicious? Hardly malicious to report workers being exploited.

Perhaps fairer to say that the complaints were made by workers not knowing that the minimum wage is not universal.

Sleepy

ChRoMe wrote: »

Malicious? Hardly malicious to report workers being exploited.

The point stands: In over 50% of the cases, it was found that workers weren't being exploited...

ChRoMe

antoobrien wrote: »

Perhaps fairer to say that the complaints were made by workers not knowing that the minimum wage is not universal.

I cant see anything in that story that says the inspections were only due to complaints.

FTA69

A classic example of why unions are a necessity, because without them the individual worker becomes vulnerable and powerless and subject to mistreatment by absolute scum such as those mentioned in the article.

Cian92

femur61 wrote: »

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_in_Europe_by_minimum_wage

France and Luxembourg have are the only two countries that are higher. In my opinion it is far too high. No wonder basics like a cup of coffee or a haircut are so high when the staff working on the min wage have to be paid 350/wk. It is the start of the chain of how our cost of living is so high. Before people start complaining we need a high min wage to protect the vulnerable just think about why everything else is so expensive. Employers have to meet their costs in order to afford to pay someone who is 16 to give you a cup of coffee.

Surely it would be the well paid who benefit from having this lower minimum wage? There money would go further. Those on minimum wage would probably have their spending power reduced.

Uncle Ben

femur61 wrote: »

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_in_Europe_by_minimum_wage

France and Luxembourg have are the only two countries that are higher. In my opinion it is far too high. No wonder basics like a cup of coffee or a haircut are so high when the staff working on the min wage have to be paid 350/wk. It is the start of the chain of how our cost of living is so high. Before people start complaining we need a high min wage to protect the vulnerable just think about why everything else is so expensive. Employers have to meet their costs in order to afford to pay someone who is 16 to give you a cup of coffee.

Employers should pay the recommended/legislated wage. Furthermore, I hope there is some cross-compliance with other state agencies when these breaches are found, i.e Revenue etc.
Here is another interesting read; Ireland's population of low-earners amongst EU highest.
http://businessetc.thejournal.ie/ireland-low-earners-eu-724301-Dec2012/?utm_source=shortlink

donkey balls

I work in the transport industry and know for a fact that some employers pay their staff a daily rate which when you break it down for the hours worked is anything from €5/8 per hour,There is no shift allowance or O/T just a basic rate of pay and yet these people are classed by the RSA/Gardai as professionals.

Itchianus

donkey balls wrote: »

I work in the transport industry and know for a fact that some employers pay their staff a daily rate which when you break it down for the hours worked is anything from €5/8 per hour,There is no shift allowance or O/T just a basic rate of pay and yet these people are classed by the RSA/Gardai as professionals.

Have you called NERA?

I'd have thought haulage would be fairly industry to catch out non-compliance - don't all the vehicles/drivers have times & distances etc recorded on tachographs? Cross-check a decent sized sample of tachograph records (or whatever other records of trips/deliveries are maintained) with the payroll records and bob's your uncle. But a whistleblower always helps.

femur61

Cian92 wrote: »

Surely it would be the well paid who benefit from having this lower minimum wage? There money would go further. Those on minimum wage would probably have their spending power reduced.

My opinion (theory) it sets the barometer for all other wages in society. If a waitress is getting €350/wk, a shop assistant gets €400/wk, an accounts will get more etc. then as a society we can't complain when a guard/teacher /nurse takes home €700-1,000/wk. These are only rough figures but we are setting our wage standards high at the bottom rung of the ladder then we can only expect those at the top to receive very generous wages.

If the country is bankrupt and we have to borrow to fund the day to day services why are we setting the standard of wages to start with so high.

antoobrien

donkey balls wrote: »

I work in the transport industry and know for a fact that some employers pay their staff a daily rate which when you break it down for the hours worked is anything from €5/8 per hour,There is no shift allowance or O/T just a basic rate of pay and yet these people are classed by the RSA/Gardai as professionals.

So what if they do? The minimum wage does not apply across the board!

Without knowing the facts of the above situation I can give you a few exceptions to the rule:
Trainees are not entitled to the full minimum wage.
To be entitled get the minimum wage, one has to have two years of working experience and be over 18.
Food & lodgings supplied by the employer are taken into account when calculating wage payments.

For more information about minimum wage: http://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/employment/employment_rights_and_conditions/pay_and_employment/pay_inc_min_wage.html

Afaik shift allowance & overtime are not requirements (especially if its not in the contract) - we do not get overtime in my (IT) company (written in our contracts).

goose2005

femur61 wrote: »

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_in_Europe_by_minimum_wage

France and Luxembourg have are the only two countries that are higher.

Not really; in many countries it varies by sector and is likely to be higher in Denmark

In my opinion it is far too high. No wonder basics like a cup of coffee or a haircut are so high when the staff working on the min wage have to be paid 350/wk. It is the start of the chain of how our cost of living is so high. Before people start complaining we need a high min wage to protect the vulnerable just think about why everything else is so expensive. Employers have to meet their costs in order to afford to pay someone who is 16 to give you a cup of coffee.[/QUOTE]

The factors which govern cost of living are much more complicated than just minimum wage. Cutting minimum wage would cause real hardship and only save businesses a tiny amount (not to mention reducing consumption when those workers have all their wages cut)

femur61 wrote: »

My opinion (theory) it sets the barometer for all other wages in society. If a waitress is getting €350/wk, a shop assistant gets €400/wk, an accounts will get more etc. then as a society we can't complain when a guard/teacher /nurse takes home €700-1,000/wk. These are only rough figures but we are setting our wage standards high at the bottom rung of the ladder then we can only expect those at the top to receive very generous wages.

Why? Where does it say that?

Scortho

Personally any employer who is illegally paying below minimum wage, or paying cash in hand should have massive fines imposed on them.
It would only need a few high profile companies to have these fines imposed before others get there act together!
The black economy is having a detrimental effect on the viability of companies operating within the law and reducing the countries tax take which is costing compliant taxpayers more!

johnnyskeleton

Cian92 wrote: »

Surely it would be the well paid who benefit from having this lower minimum wage? There money would go further. Those on minimum wage would probably have their spending power reduced.

Irrespective of who benefits in the short term from reduced minimum wage, what sort of a society do we have where approximately 1 in every eight adults of employment age are not doing anything productive?

So if a barrier to higher employment is the minimum wage, should we not explore reducing it? If this means that the higher paid get a disproportionate benefit, is that not better than having a massive section of the country living off handouts?

Especially since the sw and min wage rates were set in 2007/08 ie after the peak and as we started to go downhill. I mean, cutting the rates to below what they were in 2006 would be reasonable since everyone else has, through tax increases, pay cuts, job losses etc, been put back to a level before 2006, so why should the lower end of the job sector be any different?

Particularly since that is the part of the economy where we are failing in international competitiveness. No one is suggesting that we compete with china (his is a big red herring in the minimum wage debate) on their terms, but we should be competing with Poland for the likes of dell jobs.

krd

johnnyskeleton wrote: »

Irrespective of who benefits in the short term from reduced minimum wage, what sort of a society do we have where approximately 1 in every eight adults of employment age are not doing anything productive?

Who are you talking about there?.......Rentiers living off the rents of Buy To Let properties?

So if a barrier to higher employment is the minimum wage, should we not explore reducing it?

Why is it always this one barrier that's picked on? There are many barriers to higher employment. Many businesses can't employ more people, and are even closing because of the rents they have to pay.

The main barrier is there is not enough money in circulation. Cut the minimum wage there will be less money in circulation.

If this means that the higher paid get a disproportionate benefit, is that not better than having a massive section of the country living off handouts?

Better in what sense?....Some kind of moral sense?

The higher paid do not get their money from some magic money tree, or the intrinsic goodness of their social class. It comes from people spending money. It's trickle up economics - the money from the low waged trickles up into the pockets of people who own all those little monopolies.

Especially since the sw and min wage rates were set in 2007/08 ie after the peak and as we started to go downhill.

You are completely wrong. The social welfare rates have been significantly cut since 08. The minimum wage rate was cut in 2010.

Particularly since that is the part of the economy where we are failing in international competitiveness.

Multinationals are not here for the wage rates - they're here for tax reasons, and also the fact if they offshore everything to China, then the high wage countries will clamp down on their businesses.

The reason many other jobs are here, is because this is where the market is. The markets in China are not so great because most people are on such low wages, they can't buy much stuff. That has greatly changed in the last ten years, but before that, China was one of the most insignificant markets for goods. Everyone used to cycle bicycles and cars were rarities.

No one is suggesting that we compete with china (his is a big red herring in the minimum wage debate) on their terms

We are competing with China, and it's for high and low skilled jobs. There's a myth that we do all the fiddly high-tech stuff and they do the low skilled assembly. It's not true. We've been shipping them our engineering work and instead we've been concentrating on the "people" engineering end of the business.

The reality of how the west got into the trouble it's in. Is offshoring so much to China and India. Making stuff employs people and creates wealth. To fill the void the western countries had little property bubbles. A Ponzi scheme of selling the same brick back and forth between people using money pulled out of thin air. This scheme eventually failed.

, but we should be competing with Poland for the likes of dell jobs.

Many of those jobs will come back. But it wouldn't happen overnight, though it may happen quickly. Wage rates are growing both in China and Poland, and other low waged countries - within a short few years Poland may have caught up with us. The gap between us and China may only be as little as ten years.

johnnyskeleton

krd wrote: »

Who are you talking about there?.......Rentiers living off the rents of Buy To Let properties?

The other poster was complaining about a disproportionate benefit to high earners. My point was that such thinking is irrelevant.

Why is it always this one barrier that's picked on? There are many barriers to higher employment. Many businesses can't employ more people, and are even closing because of the rents they have to pay.

It's not an either or situation. If it is a barrier, it should be addressed irrespective of what other barriers exist. Plus, this thread is about the minimum wage so, here we are then.

The main barrier is there is not enough money in circulation. Cut the minimum wage there will be less money in circulation.

To demonstrate the flaw in this argument, if we increased the minimum wage to three times it's current rate, would that triple the money in circulation. No, of course not. If there are jobs that could be done here at €6 per hour, that would be more money in the economy and would reduce the burden on the government having to pay welfare.

The higher paid do not get their money from some magic money tree, or the intrinsic goodness of their social class. It comes from people spending money. It's trickle up economics - the money from the low waged trickles up into the pockets of people who own all those little monopolies.

Steady on comrade.

You are completely wrong. The social welfare rates have been significantly cut since 08. The minimum wage rate was cut in 2010.

The rate of basic job seekers in 2007 (which is what I was referring to) was €185.80 which is less than it is now. As for the minimum wage cut, this was reversed a few months later, no?

We are competing with China, and it's for high and low skilled jobs. There's a myth that we do all the fiddly high-tech stuff and they do the low skilled assembly. It's not true. We've been shipping them our engineering work and instead we've been concentrating on the "people" engineering end of the business.

I agree with you for the most part but people often say that since we can't compete with china on wage rates, why bother? In reality, we are not going to go from where we are to competing at the Chinese level, but that is no reason why we can't aim to be competitive against Eastern Europe etc.

KyussBishop

johnnyskeleton wrote:

To demonstrate the flaw in this argument, if we increased the minimum wage to three times it's current rate, would that triple the money in circulation. No, of course not. If there are jobs that could be done here at €6 per hour, that would be more money in the economy and would reduce the burden on the government having to pay welfare.

This illustrates the flaw in your own argument though: You won't get more money flowing through the economy by reduced wages, you'll just be redistributing money, as more money can only come from exports or government spending.

All countries are in trouble now and less likely to look for imports, so any gains from increased exports will be very limited; recovery is going to have to come from government spending.

johnnyskeleton

KyussBishop wrote: »

This illustrates the flaw in your own argument though: You won't get more money flowing through the economy by reduced wages, you'll just be redistributing money, as more money can only come from exports or government spending.

The theory is that reduced wages will lead to greater competitiveness. We would be returning to a position similar to where we were in the early 1990s with not only a good tax incentive for multinationals to locate here, for start ups to establish themselves here and for domestic/existing companies to stay, but we would also have a well educated workforce that is cheaper and harder working than those of many other countries.

All countries are in trouble now and less likely to look for imports, so any gains from increased exports will be very limited; recovery is going to have to come from government spending.

More government spending in itself doesn't promote growth. The spending has to be on necessary projects that increase wealth and provide jobs. If they cut welfare in half and used the other half to build better public transport etc it would be better than what they are doing now. That, combined with a reasonably competitive minimum wage could incentivise greater investment in the economy.

Mr. teddywinkles

Did anyone stop to think maybe wages across all sectors are too high not just the min wage? I remember people saying that e25000 a year was great money in the early noughties now people just snivil at it.

KyussBishop

johnnyskeleton wrote: »

The theory is that reduced wages will lead to greater competitiveness. We would be returning to a position similar to where we were in the early 1990s with not only a good tax incentive for multinationals to locate here, for start ups to establish themselves here and for domestic/existing companies to stay, but we would also have a well educated workforce that is cheaper and harder working than those of many other countries.

Better competitiveness doesn't do us any good as a solution though, because other countries are also cutting spending and thus not looking to import more.

The planet is a closed system, and net exports of all countries has to equal net imports of all countries; if every country is trying to export more than they import, then obviously not all of them can successfully do that.

When the entire planet is suffering an economic crisis, everyone trying to increase exports does nothing, except create a race-to-the-bottom in quality of life and wages in general.

johnnyskeleton wrote: »

More government spending in itself doesn't promote growth. The spending has to be on necessary projects that increase wealth and provide jobs. If they cut welfare in half and used the other half to build better public transport etc it would be better than what they are doing now. That, combined with a reasonably competitive minimum wage could incentivise greater investment in the economy.

Certainly, any spending would need to be on necessary expenditure, but then that government spending would promote economic growth.

Investing in infrastructure projects like public transport, as you say, is precisely one way that can get us out of this recession, which would be the basis of a job guarantee program; with EU help through money creation, we don't even need to cut unemployment or minimum wage, we could fund the job guarantee infrastructure projects and use fiscal policy to manage inflation.

krd

johnnyskeleton wrote: »

but we would also have a well educated workforce that is cheaper and harder working than those of many other countries.

That's one of the truly disgusting things about the boom. That well educated cheap workforce did not see the benefits of their hard work. Instead, the most ignorant and backward, but well in with the bank managers, made fortunes gouging through the property bubble.

The people who rule Ireland are the ignorant paddy whacks. The property bubble was to give these boys free money - to gouge it off the well educated but low paid.

I would be rich too, if I had big fat head, and the bank manager felt I wasn't one of those quare fellas who read books.

Failure in Irish capitalism is cultural. Thick backward people are the great fellas. Anyone with an education or any sign of intelligence is not to be trusted - not a safe pair of hands. So it's self fulfilling, the thicks get to march around with their pockets bulging with money - the intelligent are broke and get run out of the country.

Rural bank managers are suspicious of anyone who is not backward conservative and stupid. Urban bank managers base their credit worthiness on social class and family connections - they like conservative stupidity too. What use is education? If only to become a slave one way or another for the fat fools.

Farmer Pudsey

The minimum wage is not a barrier to employment rather the issue is that for a large section of unemployed they are way better off on welfare rather than being employed at the minimum or even at 50% above it in some cases.

For couples or family's that are low skilled if one is unemployed both are as well of being unemployed. The loss of medical cards, rent allowance, fuel allowance, back to school allowance, supplmentry welfare take a lot of rish from being unemployed.

Even take a sinlgle person on the standard rate welfare this equate to 188/week to a person earning 350/week before tax this person will bring home 322/week so they have 134 euro/ week for working or 3.44/hour. This 134/ week has to cover transport to and from work, and other ancillary work expenses such as workclothes, footware and lunch etc. The minimum cost of working expenses would be in the region of 50/week so our worker is back to about 2/hour for working not much of an incentive.

johnnyskeleton

Mr. teddywinkles wrote: »

Did anyone stop to think maybe wages across all sectors are too high not just the min wage? I remember people saying that e25000 a year was great money in the early noughties now people just snivil at it.

Yes, that's true, but it can also be used as a distraction.

For example:

person a - let's look at a specific problem, the minimum wage.

Person b - but why cut their wages when there are others whose wage needs to go down.

Result - issue is distracted, nothing gets done.

So while wages overall are quite high in Ireland and need to come down, the market will take care of that. But the market can only deal with a minimum wage that is too high by ignoring it or not employing people.

donkey balls

What happens in some transport companies is that the employee is giving a daily rate of pay anything between €70/90, Now as a truck driver you could start work at 0600 and finish at 2100 which is considered a normal days work but when you break down the daily wage on average the person is getting anything between €4/7 an hour.
Also most companies paying this sort of wages mainly hire eastern Europeans so more than likely these people won't know their employment rights etc, I can honestly say that the industry is fooked and that there are only a hand full of employers that actually pay a decent wage for the hours worked.
Myself and a few lads that I use to work with were chatting the other day about the wages currently been paid by certain companies, We reckoned that none of us could be bothered in going through the process of getting the various different licences including the tanker one which could easily set you back 4/5k in total.
Then to be paid the min wage or less with the responsibility of driving a truck worth €160k we all agreed that it would be better to work stacking boxes in a warehouse with little or no responsibility.

krd

johnnyskeleton wrote: »

person a - let's look at a specific problem, the minimum wage.

Person b - but why cut their wages when there are others whose wage needs to go down.

Result - issue is distracted, nothing gets done.

Person a - let's pick on the mud people who earn minimum wage, as a distraction from all the gougers and fat parasites who are all great fellas.

Person b - but that's just a distraction. These are not the people who created all the problems.

Person a - I know but I'm going to keep hammering away at the point until I have the mud people eating grass. And being grateful for that grass. And shut up about our wealth creators - they're all great fellas.

Result: through constant repetition the people on minimum wage are finally gouged - while major obstacles like greedy landlords escape unscathed.

So while wages overall are quite high in Ireland and need to come down, the market will take care of that.

Like the market took care of all the useless developers, bankers and estate agents?.......A mud person on minimum wage makes a small slip or doesn't show enough social deference to their employer, it's a boot out onto the street. Whereas the stupids, salt of the earth types get bailed.

Market my arse. You have people from the upper chameleons of Irish society, who would have no other avenue to earn a living being paid well over any market odds (there is no market for their services anywhere else), by NAMA, or the banks, or some other government subsidised fat arse saving measure.

But the market can only deal with a minimum wage that is too high by ignoring it or not employing people.

Market my arse. Burger King, Grafton Street's biggest problem is not the minimum wage. It's their gouging landlords. If you remember last year the banners on Grafton street - high rents are killing our jobs. Shops are shutting down all throughout the city centre, not because they can't pay the minimum wage, it's because the gougers won't drop the rents.

It's risible to bellyache about the lack competitiveness of Ireland's minimum wage, when we still have some of the highest commercial rents in the world - in the whole bloody world.

Let's examine how the property is acquired. I'll explain this in terms of a dialogue.

Fat Micky PiddlyPants, from a good family, who own a big farm, walks into see his bank manager; Paddy O'Whackery.

P - "Ah hello, Micky.. What can I do for you"

M - "I want to buy 5 pubs"

P - "What do you know about pubs, Micky"

M - "Nothin. but I won't be runnin dem or workin in dem. Workin is for the minimum wage cattle and the people banks won't give free money to. I'm going to rent dem out and sit on me hole while the money rolls in"

P - "That's great Mickey. I'll give you millins of euros of free money, and you can buy the pubs. And then get the people I won't give free money to, to do all the work and you can sit on your hole and get a free pub and lots of money. And sure if anything goes wrong, we won't take your farm from you or anything else. We'll even help drive down the minimum wage so there's more money to pay off the loans - so you'll get to keep your free pubs."

M - "Paddy, gesh us out them forms so I can have me free money. And I can go home and sit on me hole.

P - "Mickey, the PiddlyPants are one of the finest families in the whole of Ireland. Working their fingers to the bone creating wealth and jobs"

M - "Jaysus, Paddy. It's something you never get any thanks for, because of all the begrudery in this country. I give these people jobs, and what do I get in return. Jaysus, Paddy, I ask myself every day, why do I bother"

johnnyskeleton

Krd, if you think that a minimum wage that makes us uncompetitive is a good thing for ether the country for those who work at the unskilled end of the workforce you are very much mistaken.

However, the fact that you did exactly what I predicted would happen, the old distraction by analogy, in a way proves my point. I you want to talk about other sectors of the economy you can do that in another thread.

krd

johnnyskeleton wrote: »

Krd, if you think that a minimum wage that makes us uncompetitive is a good thing for ether the country for those who work at the unskilled end of the workforce you are very much mistaken.

Can you prove your point? For the minimum wage to make us uncompetitive, minimum wage jobs would need to be concentrated in the export sector. They generally are not.

There are lots of other points to this - if the minimum wage was cut in half. And companies flew into Ireland at light speed (not taking into account how much time lag between planning, decision and presence) and hired hundreds of thousands of people - within a short time they'd lose the advantage of a low minimum wage as they would have to compete for workers as there would be more demand for workers. The law of supply and demand.

Companies who are after a really low wage tend pick locations where that wage will stay permanently low - or that their presence will not effect the low base.

I worked for a company, who had a fetish for low wages. They had locations all around the world. They would pick sites located in areas with very high unemployment and no great prospects for improvement. The arse end of West Virginia, the back hole of Scotland. They would only pick places where they expected there would be chronic unemployment and the people would have no other choice but to work for them - for the lowest wages possible.

It was a perverse fetish - a unexpected Tesco opened in the black hole of Scotland town they'd based an operation, and they were in a panic because Tesco were paying 25 pence per hour above the minimum wage. They were nearly going to shut the operation down because of this. They could easily afford the 25 pence per hour - it was just £1.88 extra per head per day. Over 50 workers less than 200 quid a day. It was not something that was either going to break them or have a major impact on their profit.

Minimum wage is more of a cultural thing than a skills thing. Many minimum wage jobs, such as in things like catering are skilled jobs. Even to work the deli counters in Spar they want people with years of experience and even catering qualifications.

In these instances, what minimum wage is really about, is not the person does not have skills, but that person who does these jobs is from a lower class of people - a mud person - and they only deserve the most minimum of wages.

There are many well paid jobs - usually in the bureaucracy of a medium to large sized company, or state or semi-state, that don't really require any skills. Payroll clerk is an example. It's automated these days, but companies still hire people to specifically do this job. I have done it, it requires zero skills - even before automation. On average, many payroll clerks get paid 45k or over. It's a cultural thing not a skills thing - smartly dressed young woman paddling around very careful never to speak to or acknowledge the existence of anyone on low wages. They'd have nothing near the skills of a trainee chef or a hairdresser. And there are loads of "managers" around the place with the same skill level as our payroll clerk.

However, the fact that you did exactly what I predicted would happen, the old distraction by analogy, in a way proves my point. I you want to talk about other sectors of the economy you can do that in another thread.

No, you are trying to place minimum wage in the abstract, not in its' true context.

The same false argument gets trotted out again and again. Like the argument that the high minimum wage is driving the high price of a pint in Ireland, and making us uncompetitive in tourism. What's driving the high price of a pint is the massive rents

And it's funny how you'll never see the same "competitiveness" argument targeted at farmers. The average Irish farm is 40 acres. The same farmer could easily farm something twice that size, and probably ten times that size. A 4,000 acre farm might only need 3 or 4 full time staff.

There's a story, an American immigration lawyer told me. He said in the 50s, the American government offered Ireland an open door immigration policy. The Irish agricultural government refused, on the basis that all the cheap labour would run away from Ireland. The cattle people would escape.

fly_agaric

femur61 wrote: »

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_in_Europe_by_minimum_wage

No wonder basics like a cup of coffee or a haircut are so high when the staff working on the min wage have to be paid 350/wk. It is the start of the chain of how our cost of living is so high.

If min. wage (which OP suggested is not being enforced too strongly anyway) is cut, can the working poor get a bit more "tlc" from mother state (maybe childcare, better heath services that are free/amost free etc) the way they do in some of those other western European countries with lower minimum wage than us? Whose going to pay for it though? "Fat Micky PiddlyPants" would be happy with the tax consequences of more stuff from the state for his charges in return for the lower minimum wage.

FTA69

Also this notion that minimum wage cuts will increase competitiveness is a load of nonsense. First of all those industries that pay minimum wage aren't ones that can transfer abroad. Pubs, restaurants, clubs and shops aren't going to "pack up" and relocate abroad because they are rooted to the areas in which they are now. Secondly it's a bit rich for the entertainment and hospitality industries in the services sector to lecture anyone about conditions considering they are the types of business who have been systematically found to be paying the lowest and engaging in the worst forms of exploitation we have today.