‘Super exploitation’ as 15,000 young people legally paid less than minimum wage, Dáil hears

Around 15,000 young people are legally paid less than the State minimum wage in what was described as the “super exploitation” of young workers, the Dáil has heard.

Currently, the State minimum wage is €12.70. However, this applies to those who are 20 years or older.

The minimum wage for those who are 19 years old is €11.43 or 90pc of the minimum wage, while the minimum hourly wage for those under 18 is €8.89.

During leader's questions this afternoon, People Before Profit TD Paul Murphy asked Justice Minister Helen McEntee when the government would end sub-minimum wage rates.

“You minister, are the Minister for Justice. You know that it is illegal to discriminate based on age, but that there was a legal exemption built in to allow young people to be paid less, despite doing the same work as their colleagues in the same workplace.

“It is legal, but it is definitely not just,” Deputy Murphy said.

The TD said despite his party bringing forward an equal pay for young workers bill over a year ago, the government response at the time was that a report was underway by the Low Pay Commission.

“It's now a year later, the Low Pay Commission has reported, and this report was very clear. Sub minimum wage rates should be abolished.

“So, the government has no place left to hide,” Mr Murphy said.

In response, the justice minister said the government was in support of workers but also businesses and that without employers, there can not be employees.

Minister McEntee said it was also important that the government do not take measures that will negatively impact businesses in industries that are already under pressure.

“What the government is doing now and what the minister will do is examine the report, will take into consideration as I said, all of the factors that are impacting on business.

“The report before Christmas clearly set out that there were pressures on certain sectors, pressures because of the increase in costs, pressures because of external factors, and we need to make sure that we don't do anything further that might impact those sectors in particular,” the minister said.

However, Mr Murphy hit back at the minister and said her response to a question on low pay for young people, focused a lot on government support for business.

“There is legalised super exploitation of young workers taking place right now. You have a commission report, which looked into all the things you're talking about.

“It looked into the impact on employment, it said there's no real impact on employment. It looked into the impact on businesses, so there's no real impact on business. It looked into these things and it made a clear recommendation,” Mr Murphy said.

The People Before Profit TD said the government was more open with their support of businesses and assuring them around concerns concerning issues like sick pay.

“You weren't slow to say ‘don't worry, we're going to delay on the sick pay days’. Don't worry signaling we're not going to increase minimum wage. ‘Don't worry, we're going to increase the PRSI thresholds to benefit employers’,” he said.

The justice minister said though the government did support businesses, they had also introduced other measures like parental leave and domestic abuse leave which supported workers.

“What [the Minister for Enterprise] said very clearly is that we cannot take any further actions that could potentially impact on an industry that we know from the information and the facts that we have gathered prior to Christmas, that we know is already under considerable strain,” Minister McEntee said.

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