The EU Commission’s data collection agency, Eurostat, publishes hourly labour costs on a sectoral basis; including the Food and Accommodation sector. For the latest year, this is what they found:
Ireland is in the bottom half of the EU-15 league table – 6 percent below the average of the other countries. This was in 2008 – the last year of rising personal income. In 2009 and 2010, Irish labour costs in this sector have fallen further behind the EU-15 average.
Caution is needed here: the EU labour cost index has a different methodology and is not seasonally adjusted. But the general trend is corroborated by other indexes – the EU Ecfin Directorate and the OECD.
If the above holds, then we should expect hourly labour costs to be approximately 9 percent below the EU-average in 2010 – falling even further behind this year and next.
By all means, lets have debates about whether increasing or cutting low wages is the best direction to take.
But let’s start that debate from verifiable facts. And the fact here is that hourly labour costs in the hospitality sector are below the EU-15 average.
I look forward to seeing Mr. Fallon’s evidence and sources to the contrary.
1 comment:
The problem is that we can be certain that the lie will be repeated time and time again. The problem is compounded in that other fairy stories are presented with the same regularity. The outcome is not just that we are poorly served by journalists but that citizens are hindered in coming to judgement on matters of public controversy. That is to say, journalists who allow or facilitate such nonsense are doing harm. We need to have reform such that a citizen can complain formally about a broadcast lie. Then journalists will know that if they allow lies to pass, at the very least they will have to explain why. Have a look at this:
http://colummccaffery.wordpress.com/2008/08/16/let-the-active-citizen-publicly-complain-about-lies-in-the-media/
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