Some 163,000 people in the State are likely to see their wages increase with the introduction of a national minimum wage.
Making up 13.5 per cent of the national labour force, they are employed in a diverse range of workplaces including petrol stations, hairdressers, hotels, warehouses and contract-cleaning companies.
Figures supplied by SIPTU show the basic rates paid to 31 categories of "unskilled work workers". The lowest amount paid for a 39-hour week is £140.59, or £3.60 an hour which, in October 1999, was being paid to general workers in a warehouse in Walkinstown, Dublin.
Car-park attendants are shown to earn the most in the table, at £198.73 a week, or just over £5 an hour.
Other examples include contract cleaners on £160.58 a week, or £4.22 an hour (for a 38-hour week) and clothing factory workers on £144.05 a week, or £3.70 an hour. A spokesman for SIPTU stressed these were basic rates and did not include overtime or other extras.
However, Mr John King, industrial officer of the women workers' branch of SIPTU, said many of his members did not get anything on top of the basic wage. Though the branch last week agreed a new basic rate of £5 an hour with the Contract Cleaning (City and County of Dublin) Joint Labour Committee, this would not apply to up to 15,000 workers outside the capital.
"At the moment the basic agreed rate is £4.22 an hour in Dublin," Mr King said. "That's a weekly wage of £160.58. Though the agreed £5 an hour, which should come into force either in April or June, will bring that up to £195 a week, outside Dublin wages will still be subject to competition."
He described the introduction of a national statutory minimum wage as "vital", though he added that it was "still not much". "Having said that, there are other categories who are on less, such a hairdressers."
Far from being "vital", the Small Firms' Association regards the introduction of a minimum wage as "extremely worrying". Mr Pat Delaney, director of the SFA, said establishing a minimum wage of, for example £4.40 an hour, would push the national wage bill up by 2 per cent.
"About 14,000 jobs would be lost," he said, "and the potential to create 15,000 more jobs over the next few years would be lost." The jobs would be lost in sectors where people were "at the margins and most need the work".
One of the main reasons factories in the clothing industry were closing, he continued, was that factory-owners could not afford wage costs in this State. Asked whether he felt Irish workers should be on the same rates of pay as clothing workers in the Far East and North Africa, he said "competition is the reality".
"It's all down to efficiency. Are you really suggesting we can afford to lose 14,000 jobs here, because that is what is going to happen if this minimum wage is introduced."
