It is time to end the “really outrageous discrimination and exploitation” caused by Ireland’s lower rates of minimum wage for young people, according to Dublin TD Paul Murphy.
The People Before Profit representative has tabled a new bill that would see workers under the age of 20 entitled to the same minimum wage as their elder colleagues.
Currently the minimum wage in Ireland stands at €10.50 per hour; however, there are lower levels on offer to younger age groups.
People aged 17 and under face a minimum wage of €7.35, while 18-year-olds can be paid €8.40 and 19-year-olds can be paid €9.45.
On The Hard Shoulder this evening, Deputy Murphy said it is time to “outlaw this discrimination against young people”.
“There are over 10,000 young workers who are legally being paid less than the minimum wage at the moment,” he said.
“They don’t get a discount on their energy bills, they don’t get a discount in the grocery store, they don’t get a discount from their landlord. They have to pay full cost for everything.
“They are doing the same job as their co-workers who are 20-plus and therefore entitled to the minimum wage so it is a really outrageous discrimination and exploitation of young people that should be immediately done away with.”
He suggested that if workers were being discriminated against on any other grounds, people would be “rightly up in arms and saying it is completely wrong”.
“The idea that is somehow OK to discriminate on the basis of age, I don’t see why that should be the case,” he said.
Also on the show, Neil McDonnell, CEO of the employer’s group ISME said there is nothing discriminatory about the system – noting that the public service has an increment-based pay system.
“The issue here is it reflects people who haven’t entered the normal work force yet,” he said.
“They are effectively minors and they lack the experience of other workers. If we price them at the same price as adult workers ,what will simply happen is there won’t be employment opportunities for them to learn and grow.”
He said abolishing the age difference will “put downward pressure on the number of younger people that get into the workforce”.
“Faced with two workers, one of whom has more experience that the other, the employer will naturally gravitate towards the older one or the one with more experience,” he said.
Deputy Murphy said employers are using the system to reduce wages for everyone.
“They say to an older worker you are going to have to accept the minimum wage because actually, I could employ someone for less than the minimum wage, rather than accepting that work wages should be higher,” he said.
“So for us, this is a measure to raise the wages of those who are under 20 immediately but also it is something that would benefit all workers by saying the floor of the minimum wage is a floor for everybody.”
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