The SIPTU union Vice President, Des Geraghty, has called on the trade union movement to set a minimum wage of £5.00 an hour - significantly above the £4.45 proposed by the Government for April next year. He was speaking during a debate on low pay at the Congress of Trade Unions conference in Killarney.
The Director General of the employers' organisation, IBEC, today urged union leaders to be very sure of an alternatives before discarding social partnership and centralised pay bargaining. John Dunne told the conference that he believed social partnership had worked, even if it was not perfect. Mr. Dunne is the first leader of the employers' organisation to address the conference.
A senior union official said earlier that employee share ownership plans and profit-sharing schemes must form part of any new national agreement. The comment was made by Shay Coady, the Deputy General Secretary of the public service union, IMPACT. Mr. Coady said that share ownership plans in particular were more than simply reward mechanisms for staff. He said that studies showed that companies with significant plans of this sort had high productivity and enhanced share values.
IBEC has already made the case that the best way to increase the pay in workers pockets has been through tax reductions. However, that has been rejected by union leaders as only half the pay and taxation formula set out in Partnership 2000. Companies who have so far been reluctant to enter into profit-sharing arrangements, have already been warned at the conference that their attitude threatens the very process which has been the best guarantee of their success.
