Minimum wage defence launched

THE minimum wage is now in the Irish Government’s firing line but last Thursday, ahead of events to mark International Workers’ Day and in front of the Dáil, Sinn Féin TDs Martin Ferris and Aengus Ó Snodaigh launched Sinn Féin’s national leafleting campaign to fight what they called “another disastrous governmental attack on the low-paid”.
The Sinn Féin TDs said:
“Cutting wages will not help the economy but will force more struggling families onto supplementary welfare. Indeed, the state, through Family Income Supplement, is, in effect, subsidising low wage employers.
“In the prevailing economic debacle created by the same government, they have the audacity to prop up a zombie bank with the sacrifices demanded from working people on the lowest rung of the pay ladder. Sinn Féin will oppose this move with a national campaign launched today and prominently featured on the May Day march. We will also be opposing legislative attempts to allow employers to cut wage rates by claiming an ‘inability to pay’.”

Trade union leaders lead the Dublin May Day march. The main speaker was former president of the National Union of Mineworkers, Arthur Scargill (second left)