Interview with SIPTU representative Michael Browne

Michael, the first question: how many Polish people from Carlow and the vicinity come to you?

10 percent of people that we represent are migrant workers, non-nationals, and the vast majority of those would be Poles. Most of them are in construction or construction-related industry.

SIPTU can guarantee professional services to non-nationals like translating etc. What does it look like?

We have gone further than just employing translators. We have employed Poles who are now working full-time as trade union organisers. Plus all the literature that we produce, we also produce that in Polish, i.e. all the booklets and all the union information are also in the Polish language.

Does it mean you can guarantee full professional services to anybody who comes to you?

Yes

That’s very important to us. What kind of problems do the people have?

The people are already members of the union. There aren’t that many difficulties as, for example, when we have members working in factories, they have the same terms, conditions, pay etc. But people who are not members of trade unions, the people that I meet every week have problems like: they’re not getting holiday pay, they’re not being paid the proper rate of pay and they’re not being paid for overtime.

And they accept those rules that the employer offers...

Sometimes, if they ask, they’re told: ‘if you don’t like it, you can leave.’ But we do have claims for outstanding wages, you know, people that haven’t been paid the proper rate, who are owed money. What we can do is take cases to the Rights Commissioner or the Labour Court.

What’s the difference in problems that the Polish and Irish people have?

The problems of some Polish people is that they don’t know what they’re entitled to. They don’t know that if they work on a Saturday, they should be paid overtime. But they’re afraid to ask because they might lose their job.

How do you solve such problems?

Well, if the people are already members of the trade union, we will have a system in that job where we can make representation. As I’ve said earlier, if the people are members of the union, there is no difference between the Polish or Irish. The big problem is that people are not involved in trade unions. We had a Polish person last week who was being paid 6 Euro per hour, far below the minimum wage. I have written to that employer and asked him to pay the money that’s due. If the employer says ‘no’, we will sue them. Under the law, we can take the case for that worker. Whenever we happen to need legal assistance, we have legal departments. They have solicitors that work for us. So, if the person is a member of the trade union, they have access to all those services. I have some information in Polish that can be useful to you.

It’s a very common problem amongst the people I know. They have problems with their employers...

They do but in this country, we have the constitution that guarantees the right to join a trade union.

What do you think is the future of non-national workers on the Irish market as well as the European market?

Ireland is dependent on them now. The economy is dependent on workers coming in but a lot of employers see them as cheap labour and they use them. The difficulty that we have is that employers are paying them just the minimum rate. The long effect of that is that wages are going down and we have to stop that. The policy is that everybody must get the same rate of pay as the Irish worker. If not, everybody will suffer.

Have you had any other claims from Polish workers?

There’ve been an awful lot of them. I’ve had a recent claim, I won’t mention the company, where Polish workers were employed to work on an evening shift. In this country, if you work on an evening shift, you get more than the minimum rate. So, we said the Polish workers should get more money for this but the employer said ‘no’.  And the Irish workers in the company said that the Poles must get more money. We took the claim to the Labour-relations commission and the Polish workers got more money. The main problems, however, are that people are not paid for holidays, they’re paid the wrong rates and the employers deduct more from people’s wages than they should. A really big problem is that people are not getting payslips or contracts, so they don’t know what rate they’re paid.

What message would you like to send to all migrant workers?

The message is that they should organise themselves into trade unions. This is the way to keep the standards that we have managed to achieve over the last hundred years in this country.  

What can you say about cooperation between the Polish trade unions and SIPTU?

All unions have signed a cooperation agreement with the Polish trade unions and my understanding of it is that the Polish trade unions are now advising those leaving the country to join a trade union when the get here. And another important thing is that we have people here from Poland working with SIPTU who understand better the needs of Polish people.

To sum up, if a migrant worker has a problem with their employer, they can come to SIPTU as their local representative and get help here?

Yes. We have union representatives for every job and another thing that we are working at now is encouraging Polish workers to come forward as union representatives.

Michael, thank you very much.

Thank you.