People working in the Irish hospitality sector are underpaid, overwhelmed and forced to work longer hours to cater for the demands of an increasingly impatient public, an Oireachtas committee has heard.
A lack of collective bargaining has left many working in tourism without a voice while others have taken the decision to leave hospitality altogether because of the demands placed on them in the post-pandemic period, the Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport and Media was told.
Presenting research conducted on the perspective of employees in the hospitality sector, Dr Deirdre Curran of NUI Galway pointed to a “chronic labour shortage” and outlined the reasons why people in the sector were despairing and disillusioned.
She pointed to low wages and antisocial hours and said Ireland was at “a unique tipping point” after the pandemic had “facilitated a ‘pause-for-thought’ for hospitality workers, employers and their representative bodies”.
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She noted many of the employee challenges she had identified as part of her research “far outdate the pandemic and yet for decades little or nothing was done to address them” and she suggested the shortage of staff had “forced employers to pay attention to long-standing issues”.
She cautioned against “short-term, fracture-filling, quick fixes which will, at best, deal with an immediate crisis of labour”, in particular the “mass production of permits to allow for the importation of non-EU labour”.
Dr Curran warned that following that approach without addressing the “challenges of breaches of employment rights, ill-treatment and lack of opportunities in the sector, we would simply be subjecting vulnerable imported labour to conditions as bad, if not worse, than have been endured by our own citizens for decades”.
She said among the challenges she had identified were staff being “overworked and overwhelmed” and an absence of job security in the post-pandemic period. She also cited inflation and “bad customer behaviour”.
Dr Curran noted the high price of hotels in Ireland this summer had raised expectations among hotel guests. She said prices “have gone sky-high so customers expect much higher service and in the context of labour shortages, that places extra strain”. She pleaded with the committee to “find ways for the worker voice to be heard in debates on how the sector can recover and thrive, for the benefit of workers, employers, customers and broader society”.
Robert Kelly of the Unite union, which represents people working in the sector, expressed concern about “the low standards facing workers” employed in hospitality and tourism.
As well as low pay, he identified “tip theft” and said the “fact that some employers would confiscate those tips speaks to the levels of exploitation and disrespect that some workers face”.
Fiona Dunne of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions said the sector was characterised by low wages, increased part-time work and precariousness as well as “bad employment practices, breaches of employment law, exploitation and mistreatment”.
She called for legislation governing the Joint Labour Committee’s system to be rectified to stop employers vetoing the functioning of JLCs and “preventing engagement, negotiation and progress”.
