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THE LOW PAY Commission has recommended that sub-minimum wages for teenage workers be abolished by 1 January next year.
The Commission, an independent statutory body tasked with making recommendations to Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment Peter Burke on the National Minimum Wage, as well as other issues relating to minimum wages, delivered its recommendations today.
The current minimum wage is €12.70 per hour but the National Minimum Wage Acts allow for lower (sub-minimum) rates for those aged under 20.
The minimum wage for those aged 19 is 90% of the current rate, for those aged 18 it is 80% and for those aged 17 and under it is 70%.
Today’s recommendations are for sub-minimum wages to be abolished for each of those age groups.
Alongside those recommendations, the Commission also said that after these rates have been abolished for two years, a study should be conducted to evaluate if there have been “adverse consequences”, in particular for those aged under 18.
“Should a significant adverse outcome be identified, the study should review the full range of policy options available to Government,” the report said.
It said a subsequent follow-up study should be commissioned four or more years later as well.
It further recommended that consideration is given to how employers with “a substantial proportion of young workers in receipt of sub-minimum wages” can be supported during and after the abolition, if the Department does in fact follow through with its proposal.
Responding to the report, Minister Burke thanks the Low Pay Commission for its “considerable work” and said “this is an important and complex issue that will require detailed examination by Government”.
He said his department would now commission an economic impact assessment and seek legal advice regarding recommendations, adding that a decision would be made “in due course”.
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Are first year construction apprentices included or are they being left on sites using kangos breaking their backs for 8 euro an hour? Great learning there. Don’t tell me that doesn’t happen because I used to be one.
@Dan The Man:
I worked for 12c a day at 9 years old, a long time ago. It thought me the value of my labour. Kids need to be given their worth, pay them extract the worth
@Keith Rankin: I did 16 hours a day in the coal mines and only got porridge every second day.. I was only 8 years old. We lived in a shoe box. Bloody unions came along and ruined it all.
@Keith Rankin: There is no value in working at 12c a day, there’s a word for that, slavery.
@Fr. Fintan Stack: Luxury. We worked 23 hours a day and got stones and mud to eat- and were bloody grateful for it.
@Benny Mchale: Stones! What we would have given for a stone. We used to have to get up an hour before we went to bed and work 27 hours a day down’t pit and then pay the pit owner for letting us work there.
@Fr. Fintan Stack: luxury
@John Brennan: Depends on who we’re talking about. For an Employer, you better believe that there’s value, in it.
@Fr. Fintan Stack: sure my dad was a chimney sweep and couldn’t afford the brushes so he used to sellotape me to the kitchen brush and refused to get my hair cut so he could ram me up and down the chimney stacks all day long. What went into my mouth would have to do me for dinner!
@Dan The Man: You lucky, lucky, lucky!
@Dan The Man: Yeah, and you were useless, he had to come back and do my my chimney with a dog tied to a pole.
@Dan The Man: I’d say he was a proud member of Fine Gael?
@Keith Rankin: Spoken like a true FG advisor!
You would be a right scrooge to be paying anyone minimum wage ,
@James Moylan: The country was built on that approach. I know many millionaires who made their money off the back of paying pennys to workers.
Wait!! wont businesses want to use this to pay undocumented workers? Seems harsh \s
Min waģe too low compare to cost living why loads young people will leave . Know older people too considering it . Hope gets better Ireland a great country
Father Mahoney used to pay us in penny sweets to cresuit the parish fence. The joys of being seven, taken away from reading and writing and upto your tonsils in paint fumes and being promised front spot at the parish alter if your section of fence had the best finish, last place got the hurley stick. Who got to ring the bell for communion got the special prize. Would have loved my mam who wasn’t married to see me ring the bell that one single time but Father Mahoney said she wasn’t allowed out of her cell.
A bit soul destroying when people with families and mortgages work in the very same low paid jobs as 17 year old, doing summer work.
Definitely need a higher living wage. Some of these people may also be carers, have no option but to do these low paid jobs because of the hours allowed.
i see dumb hole hunter gee bag of the world has been found guilty…….
@Eric Gaffney: Gunter Biden
@Eric Gaffney: Pretty grand title for a nobody
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