Irish Hotels Federation High Court Challenge Successful
The Irish Hotels Federation’s action in challenging in the High Court was successful this morning when the State conceded that we would have been successful on a procedural ground if the legal proceedings had continued. The Employment Regulation Order of 16 November 2007 (against the implementation of which we already had an injunction) has been quashed. Therefore, the Hotels JLC will have to meet again to review wage rates. There is a commitment from SIPTU built into the settlement that the “double whammy” method of adjusting wage rates at the time changes in the National Minimum Wage (”NMW”) Rate will not apply in future. In future, the provisions of the National Wage Agreements will be applied to JLC rates and only in the event of the resulting rate falling short of the NMW rate should they be adjusted upwards to the NMW rate. Our objection to this process been taken in the past was the primary reason for our taking the High Court Proceedings.
I would like to congratulate John Power and Michael Vaughan for taking this action on behalf of the Irish hotel industry .