Sir, – In her article "Only unscrupulous employers need fear Bill", Opinion, December 21st, Minister for Employment Regina Doherty fails to acknowledge the role of the Labour Party and the wider labour movement in bringing the issues of low-hour, precarious work to the fore.
The issue of zero-hour contracts is something that Labour Youth has been campaigning on for many years, along with Senator Ged Nash, and we’re happy to see that Fine Gael has caught on to the prevalence of precarious working conditions that affect so many people trying to earn a decent living.
It was Ged Nash as Minister of State for Business and Employment who commissioned the UL report to examine the prevalence of zero-hour contracts and we note that the heads of the Bill includes many of the key recommendations that were proposed by Senator Nash.
Ms Doherty seems to conveniently forget that it was the Labour Party and the trade union movement that pushed the Government in the right direction on this issue. – Yours, etc,
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PATRICK AHERN (Labour Youth Chairperson), CHLOE MANAHAN, KEVIN DONOGHUE, GRACE WILLIAMS, JACK EUSTACE, CIARÁN GARRETT (former Labour Youth chairpersons),
Dublin 2