When 10 new EU members join on May 1st their citizens will have the right to work here. But will they want to? Chris Dooley, Industry and Employment Correspondent, looks at increasing complaints from foreign workers here.

They are already here in their tens of thousands, many filling jobs that the increasingly affluent Irish no longer want to do. From May 1st, when the EU expands from a club of 15 to 25, the number of migrant workers entering the State is set to increase, despite the decision last week to restrict welfare entitlements for citizens of the 10 accession countries.

As one of the few existing EU members offering them full rights to work, the Republic will still be an attractive location for job seekers from the east. There is increasing evidence, however, that working in the State is far from a positive experience for many immigrants.

Organisations expressing concern include the Equality Authority, which says there has been a "remarkable growth" in the number of complaints made to it about race discrimination in the workplace.

"At the heart of this growth is a range of difficult experiences of migrant workers, including excessive working hours, discriminatory dismissal, being paid less than their Irish counterparts and not being given access to leave entitlements," the authority said in a recent submission to the Forum on the Workplace of the Future.

Anna Mikhailova, a 26-year-old Estonian who returned home before Christmas after three years in Ireland, believes there is nothing exceptional about her story. In one job, in a fish-and-chip shop in the south-east, she was paid below the minimum wage until she challenged her boss, who immediately conceded the point and increased her pay.

She also spent several winter months living in accommodation, provided by her employer, which had no heating. When she asked to be allowed to work nights so that she could attend English classes, she was told: "You came here to work, not to study. If you're not happy, you can go."

"Irish workers get treated better than foreign workers. I don't say this about all employers, but some take advantage of foreign workers who can barely speak English and don't know their rights," she says.

Whether she is right or wrong, it is the view of the Republic that Mikhailova has taken back to Estonia, where she intends to complete her business studies.

Erasmus Ras, a South African who has been living in the south-east since last April, claims there is a growing, disaffected community of young foreign workers in Ireland who will return home with even more negative views than those expressed by Mikhailova.

"I mix with a lot of non-nationals," he says. "They tell me 'I love Ireland, I hate the f---ing Irish.' That is the message that goes out all over the world." The treatment of non-EU workers is "unfair and wrong", he says, before adding: "The thing is, everybody knows it's unfair, but nobody does anything."

The image of the Republic, he argues, is suffering as a result. Many of the young workers in low-grade, poorly paid jobs here today, he points out, are the future middle classes and opinion formers of their home countries. One day they will go home with an enduring bad taste in their mouths.

Ger Kennedy, an assistant branch secretary with SIPTU based in Limerick, says he receives three or four new approaches every week from foreigners claiming to have been exploited by Irish employers. Many are referred to him by local clergy or groups in the community and voluntary sector.

One approach last year was by two Czech women, Marketa Opicova and Lenka Mindakova, who worked at Fitzgeralds Woodlands House Hotel in Adare.

Hired as waitresses on salaries of €231 a week, the two were promised a €25.40 a week "loyalty bonus", to be added to the basic wage and paid in a lump sum after 10 months. Instead of being credited with a bonus, however, they found that €25.40 was deducted from their basic pay. "I am not stupid," says Mindakova. "I know what is one and one, and it is not minus one."

Woodlands House admits the bonus was deducted in error from the pay of both Opicova and Mindakova but says the mistake was corrected when SIPTU drew the matter to the attention of management last summer.

The women's employment contracts should have stated €231 a week "including" the bonus, rather than "plus", it now says.

The hotel also admitted, in correspondence with Kennedy through a human- resources consultant last summer, that staff had not been getting their legal minimum breaks between shifts.

"Breaches of the Organisation of Working Time Act in terms of breaks at the end of one shift and commencement of the next will be discontinued, even in cases where the employee requests otherwise," wrote the consultant, Tom Smyth.

His letter also acknowledged there had been problems regarding deductions from employees' wages. The hotel "has now accepted", he said, that certain deductions should be made separately "in order to strictly conform with the Payment of Wages Act".

Fitzgeralds Woodlands House Hotel makes a lot of deductions from the pay of its staff. Its employee handbook, a copy of which is given to each new staff member, spells them out: €127 house deposit, in instalments of €12.70 over 10 weeks; a uniform deposit of €38, collected in instalments over six weeks; €12.70 for the front-door key of the staff house; €6.35 for the back-door key; plus €1.50 a week for social-club membership, which is "compulsory", the handbook states.

Staff sometimes stay at the hotel, when an early shift follows a late one. For this, they are charged €5. The hotel defends the practice, saying the charge merely covers the cost of servicing a room. "Whilst the hotel could apply the rate that guests pay, we merely perceived this as an added benefit for our staff. In fact we would be one of the few hotel operations in the country that would offer this benefit to employees."

Opicova says she was never made aware of any social club activity during her four-and-a-half months at Woodlands House. The hotel's general manager, David Fitzgerald, says there is a year-round programme of events and that all 150 employees, including himself, pay the €1.50 a week fee.

It is not a large sum for any worker, he insists. For their first four weeks at the hotel, however, while they were paying emergency tax, Opicova and Mindakova were in receipt of take-home pay of between €61.81 and €71.74 a week. They were also provided with meals while on duty and accommodation about three miles from the hotel.

Nowhere in documentation supplied to staff, such as contracts of employment and pay slips, does Woodlands House state how much is deducted for board and lodgings. A legally binding agreement between unions and employers, registered with the Labour Court, allows it to deduct €54 a week where full bed and board is provided. Figures supplied by the hotel to The Irish Times showed that in some cases this sum is calculated as an addition to basic pay, in other cases it is deducted.

There is no suggestion that Woodlands House, which employed 47 people on work permits last year, treats its migrant workers less favourably than Irish staff. Despite her good English, however, Opicova felt at a disadvantage when she tried to get explanations for certain deductions. She was told, she claims, that she "wouldn't understand them". "This was the answer to everything. 'This is Irish law. This is the Irish way.' I was thinking, this Ireland is a very different country." The hotel says its deductions are clearly explained in the staff handbook.

The hotel rejected claims about excessive hours made by Opicova and another former employee, Adam Kulpinski. From Poland, he worked as a kitchen porter at Woodlands House for almost six months until last December. There is no dispute, however, that in November and December he worked seven Sundays in succession, in spite of a legal requirement for hotel workers outside Dublin and Cork to be given every second Sunday off outside the peak season. Michael Magnier, the hotel's business development manager, says some staff prefer to work Sundays, as it allows them to accumulate successive week days off. Some also find Sundays off "boring", he asserted.

Kennedy claims Woodlands House is by no means the only hotel that employees have complained about. The majority of complaints made to him about alleged exploitation concern the services sector, including hotels, catering, contract cleaning and security. These are traditional low payers, he says, and therefore more likely to be dependent on migrant workers.

The chief executive of the Irish Hotels Federation, John Power, rejects the claim, pointing out that if staff are disgruntled they are unlikely to provide a good personal service to customers. The industry, he says, neither condones nor tolerates exploitation of workers, from Ireland or abroad, and the federation would not seek to defend it. He supports Woodlands House's claim that it is a fair employer with a long track record and good reputation in the business.

In a statement, Fitzgeralds Woodlands House Hotel said it had been in business as a hotel for 21 years and for 10 years before that as a guest house. It was extremely proud of the fact that almost 40 per cent of its staff had been with the company for more than three years, and some had been there for 20 years. It had not exploited, mistreated or discriminated against any of its employees.

Whether the hotel sector is a particular offender or not, migrant workers remain more vulnerable to exploitation than their Irish counterparts. The State's response to the problem has been deemed by some to be hopelessly inadequate. Mike Jennings, a SIPTU regional secretary, says the Government is "simply not serious" about the issue when it continues to be satisfied with having just 17 labour inspectors for the State.

Labour inspectors are charged with enforcement of all employment rights legislation. Their number was increased from 11 to 17 when the minimum wage was introduced four years ago. Since then, however, the number of work permits issued by the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment has risen nearly eightfold, to 47,000 last year.

Permits are issued to workers from outside the European Economic Area (comprising the EU plus Norway, Liechtenstein and Iceland). Despite the rapid rise in the number of migrant workers from outside these countries, and the obvious increased potential for exploitation, no additional inspectors have been appointed.

"For all the Government's talk about fair play and respecting the dignity of the workers, it's just hypocrisy as long as there's no intention to increase the number of inspectors," says Jennings. "If unscrupulous employers think the regulations are not going to be policed, they will not abide by them."

Jennings was among the first to raise the particular problems caused by the work permit system, which was likened recently to "bonded servitude" by the former president and UN commissioner for human rights, Mary Robinson.

Permits give employees permission to work for specific employers only, restricting their freedom to seek alternative employment if they are ill-treated.

The Department, however, dismisses the bonded servitude comparison as "nonsense". Last year, it points out, 3,500 people on work permits - or about 70 a week - were allowed to change employment. "We have always adopted a pragmatic approach and facilitated people who had problems with their employer," says a spokesman.

In any event, the Department points out, employers' dependence on work permits should be greatly reduced from May 1st, when they can begin recruiting freely from the 10 EU accession countries.

This will not bring an end to exploitation, however, for at least three reasons. First, only 40 per cent of the permits issued last year went to workers from the 10 accession countries. While the new regime may bring an increase in workers from those states, thousands of others will still require permits.

Second, removing the permit requirement will not change several of the factors that leave non-national workers vulnerable to exploitation. Many, for example, have poor English and lack the wherewithal to determine, never mind pursue, their legal rights.

Finally, there is the danger that the current permit system will be replaced by cut-throat competition from migrant workers for the lowest-paid Irish jobs. Unscrupulous employers may well be able to exploit this situation.