Green Party Senator, Deirdre de Burca has today strongly criticised Lisbon No campaigners who have promoted “false and misleading” claims about an alleged threat to minimum wage levels in Ireland if the Lisbon Treaty is ratified.
Senator de Burca says that many young people she is meeting during her canvassing for the Lisbon Treaty have expressed serious concerns about the information on some of the No to Lisbon posters that concern the minimum wage. “Many of these young people rely on minimum wage employment to support them during their college years, and when they are employed during holiday periods” says de Burca.
“I believe therefore that we have to publicly reject the false and misleading information about possible threats to minimum wage levels that groups desperate to de-rail the Lisbon Treaty are disseminating” says de Burca. “People need to be reassured that the Irish minimum wage level, at a healthy 8.65 per hour, can only be changed by a sovereign decision of the Irish government and that the EU has no competence in this area at all”.
The Green Party Senator points out that No campaigner are also mis-representing some of the judgements from the European Court of Justice (ECJ) with regard to worker’s rights in an attempt to frighten the public. “Most people at this stage have heard of the Laval, Viking, Ruffert and Luxembourg cases which the No side are using to try to convince Irish people that the EU is ‘anti-worker’” she says.
“Nothing could be further from the truth. Most of the postive employment and equality legislation that we have in this country is due to our membership of the European Union. The ECJ rulings that are being bandied about by No campaigners are in the first place just a small number of rulings from a Court which has produced a huge body of rulings that strongly uphold worker’s rights. Secondly in the case of three of these specific rulings, the problems that arose were linked to inadequacies in the way that the EU Posting of Worker’s Directive has been implemented by the Member State governments” she says.
“Under the Posting of Workers Directive, when a company brings workers from another Member State to a host Member State to work there, the laws of the host Member State appy to the workers regarding terms and conditions. However the responsibility lies with the Member States to set down these terms and conditions in either national law or applicable national collective agreements”.

Senator de Burca says that she raised the issue of worker’s rights directly with the President of the European Commission last weekend when he visited Limerick. “President Barroso publicly assured me that he will oversee the introduction of a new Regulation that will address the problems that have arisen with regard to the implementation of the Posting of Workers Directive” she says. “This is very good news and should put any fears that people have with regard to the possible undermining of worker’s rights to rest.”

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Press Release by Deirdre