Ireland: Industrial relations profile
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Pay and working time developments
Minimum wage
Since 2000 Ireland has had a statutory national minimum wage (NMW). The NMW is currently €8.65. The minimum wage was cut by €1 per hour to €7.65 from 1 February 2011 as part of the Fianna Fail/Green government’s four-year economic recovery plan under the EU–IMF programme of financial support. But a new Fine Gael/Labour government reversed the cut in the minimum wage and restored it to €8.65 from 1 July 2011. The reversal of the minimum wage cut had been a key election pledge by both Fine Gael and Labour.
As the minimum wage varies for different groups of workers, the table below outlines rates that apply in certain circumstances.
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National minimum wage rates of young and less experienced workers |
|
|
% of full adult rate |
Applies to: |
|
90% |
Workers aged 18 years and over in the second year of employment, as well as workers aged over 18 years and undergoing the final third (lasting one month to a year) of a course of authorised training or study. |
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80% |
Workers aged 18 years and over in the first year of employment, as well as workers aged over 18 years and undergoing the second third (lasting one month to a year) of a course of authorised training or study. |
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75% |
Workers aged over 18 years and undergoing the first third (lasting one month to a year) of a course of authorised training or study. |
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70% |
Workers aged under 18 years. |
Pay developments
Most Irish private sector firms have responded to the crisis by freezing basic pay/salary at pre-crisis levels, while extra earnings have been cut. A significant minority have also cut basic pay levels, borne out by IBEC Quarterly Business Sentiment Survey for 2009, showing 56% of employers freezing pay and 25% cutting pay in 2009. A smaller minority had moderate pay increases, mostly under a national wage agreement struck in late 2008 – which most employers did not implement and was eventually abandoned at the end of 2009, ending national wage bargaining indefinitely. In the public service, pay was reduced by a progressive scale of 5–15% in December 2009 and net earnings were also hit by a levy from March 2009, also on a progressive scale of 5–10.5%.
Gender pay gap
According to figures published by the Central Statistics Office in August 2011, the unadjusted gender pay gap in Ireland was 12.8% in October 2009 compared with 12.4% in October 2008. The National Employment Survey 2008 and 2009 found that, in October 2009, men were more significantly represented in higher earnings brackets than women and a far higher proportion of female employees worked part-time than male employees. The latter partly explains the gender pay gap.
Working time
Under Ireland’s Organisation of Working Time Act 1997, 48 hours is the statutory working week.
Working time has not featured for some time under national-level bargaining. The current collectively bargained weekly working time of 39 hours was agreed some time ago under a previous national bargaining round, and has remained unchanged since then.
Working time sometimes emerges as an issue in company-level bargaining, most recently usually relating to short-time working measures in response to the crisis. In the hotel and retail sectors for example, there is evidence of collectively bargained agreements on short-time working since the start of the recession.
A CSO ‘Analysis of Wage Bill Change in Enterprises and Components of Change, Quarter 3 2008 to Quarter 3 2009’ found that during this period of the economic crisis, average weekly paid hours were reduced by more than 2% in 51% of firms.
The average number of actual weekly hours for full-time employees in the fourth quarter 2011 was 31.6, down from 31.4 in Q4 2010 and 32.1 in Q4 2009.
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