SIPTU workers protest at greedy luxury Davenport Hotel attack on low pay

dublin | worker & community struggles and protests | news report

Sunday February 20, 2011 21:40

by Trade Union TV

tradeuniontv at gmail dot com

The bosses have started to attack low paid workers already on low wages. Greedy luxury hotelier at Davenport Hotel force workers to earn less than €8 per hour. Watch the video here with two of the women workers from Lithuania.

'SIPTU members at the Davenport Hotel in Dublin mounted pickets this morning after being taken off the roster for refusing to sign new contracts reducing their national minimum wage rate by almost €1 an hour. When the legislation was being passed, the Minister for Finance, Brian Lenihan, gave assurances that existing employees of companies on €8.65 an hour could not have it reduced without their consent. However, the workers concerned, all women from Eastern Europe, have been brought into three meetings over the past three weeks and repeatedly told they must sign the new contracts or face being taken off the roster. They were not given a copy of the new contract, either in English or in their own languages.

The women, who are from Lithuania and Poland and have worked at the Davenport Hotel for between four and six years, refused to sign the new contracts on 1st February when the new legislation came into force and have been removed from the payroll ever since. SIPTU served strike notice on the hotel on 9th February over the hotel's decision which it regards as an effective lockout.'

More details here:
http://www.siptu.ie/PressRoom/NewsReleases/Headline/Nam....html

Caption: Video Id: N-rlWUQTlZQ Type: Youtube Video
Davenport Hotel strike

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Hotel staff to have pay restored

by pat c

Mon Mar 07, 2011 19:45

The Labour Court has found that five housekeeping staff at the Davenport Hotel in Dublin, who have been at the centre of a dispute over pay cuts for the past month, should be returned to the roster on their original rates of remuneration.

In a recommendation issued today, the Labour Court also said that the hotel staff should be paid all the monies they would have earned had they not been removed from the work roster in early February.

Both management at the hotel, which forms part of the O’Callaghan Hotel Group and the trade union Siptu, which represented the staff, had agreed to be bound by the finding of the Labour Court. The hotel is operated by a company known as Persian Properties.

The dispute at the Davenport Hotel was believed to be the first over attempts by a company to reduce pay for existing personnel since the out-going Government cut the National Minimum Wage rate in February.

In its recommendation the Labour Court found that the workers involved in the dispute were accommodation assistants who had been paid the previous National Minimum Wage rate of €8.65per hour...

Labour Court deputy chairman Brendan Hayes said that in the absence of any financial or trading information that would justify the need for a pay reduction or the availability of fair and reasonable procedures for securing worker’s approval thereto or for resolving disagreement with the proposal, the Court found that the Employer’s actions were “not fair and reasonable in all the circumstances of this case”.

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SIPTU workers protest at greedy luxury Davenport Hotel attack on low pay

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