Written Answers. - Basic Minimum Income.
Ben Briscoe
Question:
47
Mr. Briscoe
asked the
Minister for Social Welfare
in view of his suggestion regarding the introduction of a basic minimum income, the point or time at which he would consider employers are not attaining their supposed social obligations with respect to employee wages; the further action, if any, he proposes to take regarding this matter; and if he will make a statement on the matter.
[1223/96]
One of my objectives as Minister for Social Welfare is to build a social welfare system which is truly "work-friendly" in the sense that it not only provides an adequate minimum income for people without other adequate means of support, but enables such people to take up any employment opportunities which may arise for them.
With this aim in mind, I have been reviewing the various obstacles facing unemployed people who are presented with job opportunities. I am intending to make a number of significant reforms which will, I hope, make it much more worth while for unemployed people to take up work opportunities in the future. I hope, for example, to make it less risky for them to do so, particularly if they have families to support, by enabling them to retain certain welfare payments until they get a firm foothold in the labour market, or until their income exceeds levels that put them out of danger of poverty. In this context I made a speech last October in UCD in which I pointed out that these types of measures to encourage unemployed people back into the workforce can be seen as representing a form of subsidy to employers towards the cost of hiring labour. Already that subsidy is considerable. Therefore, making the social welfare system even more friendly and generous towards employment means, essentially, providing an even greater subsidy to Irish business than is already the case.
I see a move towards decent, acceptable wage levels in all industries and occupations as the employers'quid pro quo for the social welfare and tax changes which the Government is introducing to improve the net return from work, especially low-paid work. In statements which I have made, I have urged IBEC and other employers' organisations to begin to consider how, in the light of other pro-employment changes in the tax and welfare areas, the problem of low pay can best be addressed.
The suggestion I made was that we could build on the rudimentary system of "sectoral minimum wages", as represented by the legally-binding Joint Labour Committee rates in a number of industries and the Registered Employment Agreement provisions of the industrial relations legislation (which altogether cover around 150,000 workers). I would like to see an extension of the JLC arrangements to other industries and occupations; and the system developed to cover all sectors in which low pay is actually a problem. Even now considerable progress on dealing with low pay could be made under the existing JLC and Labour Court arrangements if the social partners, particularly employers, were agreeable to it.
Low pay is not a problem in all industries and sectors, so I do not see that we need to address all sectors immediately.
