Around €2.5 million in unpaid wages were recovered last year for workers who were found to have been paid less than their statutory minimum entitlements following investigations by the National Employment Rights Authority (NERA).
In its report for 2009, NERA said that over 6,000 workers received money back on foot of its investigations with about €410 being received on average per employee.
The report showed that in the catering sector only 21 per cent of employers inspected by NERA were found to be compliant with industrial relations and other legislation governing pay and conditions.
It said that following inspections by NERA over €736,000 had been recovered for workers in the catering sector.
The report said that there was a compliance rate of 27 per cent in the hotel sector, 28 per cent in the retail and grocery area and 27 per cent in electrical contracting.
Around 7 per cent of employers inspected were found to be in breach of the national minimum wage legislation. As a result of such inspections nearly €200,000 was recovered for workers.
However, it also emerged today that the number of inspectors available to NERA to police such legislation is falling as a result of cutbacks and the Government’s moratorium on recruitment.
NERA director Ger Deering said that there were now 69 inspectors working in the agency, down from 80 in 2008.
The Minister of State for Labour Affairs, Dara Calleary, said that the low compliance rates in certain sectors were of concern.
However, he said that in 2009 NERA had entering into partnership arrangements with a number of sectoral bodies such as in catering and construction and had gone out to spread the information about obligations under the legislation. He said that this was the way to go.
“In 2010 NERA is going to drill the figures down further to give us an idea of the extent of the compliance breaches. Some of them will be very minor and can be rectified easily. Some of them, as is evident from the annual report, are more serious. I think that when we have those figures we will have a better understanding of the challenge we face”, he said.
Asked about the reduction in the number of inspectors, the Minister said that the fall was only from 80 to 69.
“Mr Deering said that even though the resources are down he and his team have been working a lot smarter during 2009 and plan to do so in 2010 by using information technology and using the partnerships (with the sectoral bodies) and they still have a budget of €7.9 million in 2010,” he said.
Mr Deering said that lack of compliance by employers with statutory record keeping was a common breach of the legislation detected by NERA.
“The keeping of employment records is not simply a bureaucratic requirement. Proper record keeping plays a key role in ensuring that employees get paid for the hours that they work and that they receive their minimum holiday entitlement.
Lack of statutory records can also have very serious consequences in terms of pension, social welfare and redundancy entitlements.
Whilst NERA regularly detects minor and sometimes inadvertent, infringements by employers in relation to record keeping, in some cases poor or false records are used to mask underpayment of employees or breaches of other statutory entitlements," he said.
Mr Deering said that in addition to proving compliance and simplifying the inspection process, good record keeping could also protect employers from false or vexatious allegations. He said that in the case of complaints investigated by NERA where the employer was found to be compliant, the records maintained by the employer were crucial in demonstrating compliance.”
Mr Deering warned that where employers refuse to cooperate with their inspectors or supply the necessary records, NERA had no option but to initiate a prosecution. He also stated that in order to further assist employers meet their obligations under law in relation to records NERA proposed to develop and distribute a guide to keeping records in 2010.