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Labour to propose legislative protections for workers with uncertain hours

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Senator Ged Nash
Senator Ged Nash

The Labour Party has said it will propose legislation to give greater protection to workers with uncertain hours of work, The Irish Times reports.

Senator Ged Nash, the former business and employment minister, said he believed workers were being exploited under “if and when” employment arrangements, where companies are under no obligation to provide work and employees are under no obligation to accept it.

He told The Irish Times: “Some of these uncertain-hours practices have escaped Ireland’s suite of employment rights protections, such as the Organisation of Working Time Act. I believe workers are being exploited because of the deficits which currently exist.”

Provisions in Senator Nash’s proposed legislation will include:

  • New rules whereby periods of “lay-off” between fixed-term contracts would be deemed to represent continuity of service, rather than broken service;

  • Where an employee is registered under the PAYE system, they would be regarded as continuing in employment until the date specified in a notice to Revenue of cessation of employment;

  • Measures to include casual work in the calculation of continuous employment;

  • An entitlement to request the employer to correct the employment terms so that the stated particulars of weekly hours of work reflected the pattern of work actually done a week in the previous six months;

  • A Workplace Relations Commission complaints procedure to ensure fair and equitable application of cases under the legislation;

  • An anti-victimisation measure protecting workers who invoke their rights under the legislation;

  • An exemption from the legislation in cases where employers and trade unions have negotiated sectoral employment orders or registered employment agreements, or where an employment regulation order has been signed as the result of a Joint Labour Committee initiative.

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