The small firms lobby group, ISME, renewed its call for full social partnership status yesterday after claiming that the indigenous sector, which it represents, is being ignored in the national wage agreement structure. ISME, the Irish Small and Medium Enterprises Association, published a wages survey showing disparities between the official figures used in partnership negotiations and wages paid by indigenous businesses. Members of ISME said yesterday that the term "social partnership" implied inclusion but its members were being prevented from representing the indigenous small business sector.
Mr Frank Mulcahy, the ISME chief executive, said his survey of 6,940 employees showed wage inflation for small manufacturing companies, for example, of 5.4 per cent, and skills and labour shortages affecting small businesses. "Any significant shift in labour costs has, therefore, a disproportionate, negative effect on the indigenous sector." He said that ISME had met the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Ms Harney, last July, but had yet to receive word from the Government parties that they would honour the commitment, given while in Opposition, to give it full social partnership status,
The ISME survey shows that the average wage in the indigenous sector is £10,500, 25 per cent less than the Central Statistics Office average industrial wage figure of £14,100. Mr Mulcahy said that the demand by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions and SIPTU for a £5 minimum wage was based on the £14,100 figure.
An ISME council member, Mr Seamus Butler, of Butler Manufacturing Services, Longford, added that successive governments had "perverted and polluted" the labour market through the social employment and social welfare systems.
"There is also evidence that their focussed support of the multinational corporations has distorted the ability of indigenous companies to attract skilled and graduate workers," he said.
He said that decisions by ISME members and their profits were made in Ireland. The group was looking for parity, he said, so "that a job in the indigenous sector is as valuable as the job in a multinational".
