Mandate Trade Union and its predecessors have been representing retail workers in Ireland for over 100 years. While change has been a constant over that period, the pace and the nature of it over the last 30 years has been revolutionary for the trade.
One of the biggest trends has been the increasingly casualised nature of the workforce. This change really took hold from the mid-1990s with the introduction of widescale Sunday trading and much longer opening hours. To manage these new conditions, employers sought to do away with premiums for Sunday, bank holiday, late night and early morning working. In addition, they put more and more staff on short-term contracts with part-time hours.
These trends in retail have not been welcomed by long-serving full-time staff many of whom had family and caring responsibilities and, as a result, a large part of this cohort have drifted away. Many workers now entering the sector no longer see retail as a career, most of whom are young students.
The other key trend has been the impact of technology on retail and the move away from traditional ‘bricks and mortar’ shopping – a trend which has accelerated since the COVID pandemic. We now have online shopping as well as click and collect options for customers. In store, we have self-scanning, self-checkouts and now robots are doing stock counts and ordering. Automation clearly is a significant challenge for retail workers.
So, over the last 30 years we’ve seen retail employment go from being largely full-time with many workers staying with the same employer for their whole working lives to one that is now overwhelmingly part-time and short-term.
Research published by Mandate in 2023, ‘Smoke and Mirrors’, shows that nearly two-thirds of retail workers in Ireland are earning less than €451 per week.
The biggest challenge facing these workers in terms of earning decent incomes shown in the report is the number of hours worked in the sector. While hourly rates have been improving, this hasn’t been fully reflected in weekly earnings because of the relatively low number of hours being worked by retail workers.
In July 2022, Mandate conducted a survey amongst 3,000 of its members and the feedback showed that:
The data above doesn’t fully capture the impacts of the low hours, low income reality for retail workers and their families. To give you a sense of that here are two case studies that capture the experience of thousands of retail workers in Ireland.
Maria is a mother of a primary school going child who has been working for one of the major retailers in an East Coast town for nearly two years. Her initial contracted hours were 10 to 15 hours per week but despite this she was consistently working full-time hours for her first 15 months working in this store.
Because her child goes to a homework club after school Maria has been in a position to work these full-time hours so a few months ago she — along with some other colleagues — asked her employer for a contract that reflected the hours she had actually been working. A key driver for this request is the fact that Maria and her husband are saving to buy a house and the full-time hours contract would help financially and with getting mortgage approval.
Unfortunately, while the law enables Maria and other employees to submit a request for extra hours it does not oblige employers to offer contracts in line with employees’ actual work patterns. This explains why her employer has only offered her a 20 to 25 hours per week contract which is 15 to 20 hours per week short of her actual work patterns.
In cash terms, this will leave Maria in the region of €200 per week poorer which is over €10,000 per year — not helpful at all to her and her husband’s efforts to save for their dream home. While Maria loves where she works – and gets on well with her colleagues and the customers – she is now actively looking to find another job where the hours she works and wants to work are actually reflected in her contract.
David has been working in a Dublin grocery store for nearly five years and for most of that time he has been working full-time hours with a lot of overtime as well. His commitment to the store was such that he often worked an evening shift as Duty Manager and would come in the following morning at 5am to manage goods inwards.
However, late last year David realised that he needed to get a contract that reflected these hours so that he would have predictability in relation to his work patterns. This would help him plan in terms of the use of his own time – as he has effectively been ‘on-call’ for the last five years – and enable him to manage his finances better so that he could pay off his car loan and get a place of his own.
With this in mind, David approached the company for a full-time hours contract – one that matched the reality of what he had actually been working. However, he has only been offered a contract with 26-30 hours per week and since his request for a full-time contract his working hours have in fact been cut back by his store.
The failure to offer David a contract that reflected the hours that he had been working and the subsequent reduction in hours has meant a loss in take home pay of over €100 per week – around €6,000 net per year. The store’s actions make no sense to David as he is eager to work full-time and has been doing so for nearly five years.
The company’s decision to refuse him a full-time contract and to reduce his hours has been very disappointing for David given his energetic and enthusiastic service – a reality borne out by his promotion to managerial roles in the store. Given his situation, David feels that he will have no option but to try and seek employment elsewhere.
So how do we tackle this issue of low working hours and low incomes for retail workers who want to work longer hours?
While the 2018 Employment (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act – for which Mandate successfully campaigned – has brought about welcome improvements to workers’ lives the banded hours provisions have tended to act as a ceiling on working hours rather than a floor. To improve the situation we’re proposing the following amendments to the 2018 Act:
Banded weekly hours’ table under Section 18A.(14) currently reads as follows:
| Band | From | To |
| A | 3 hours | 6 hours |
| B | 6 hours | 11 hours |
| C | 11 hours | 16 hours |
| D | 16 hours | 21 hours |
| E | 21 hours | 26 hours |
| F | 26 hours | 31 hours |
| G | 31 hours | 36 hours |
| H | 36 hours and over |
Mandate is proposing that the current Table should be replaced by the following Table:
| Band | From | To |
| A | 11 hours | 16 hours |
| B | 16 hours | 21 hours |
| C | 21 hours | 26 hours |
| D | 26 hours | 31 hours |
| E | 31 hours | 36 hours |
| F | 36 hours and over |
2. A reduction from 12 months to six months for the reckonable calculation period.
Section 18A.(14) of the Act currently reads:
“In this section ‘reference period’ means a period of 12 months after the commencement of employment with the employer and immediately before the employee makes a request under subsection (2), and a continuous period of employment with that employer occurring immediately before the commencement of section 18A shall be reckonable for the purposes of this section.”
Mandate is proposing that it be replaced by:
“In this section ‘reference period’ means a period of six months after the commencement of employment with the employer.”
3. When an employee works in excess of their band over the reckonable calculation period the onus should shift from them having to seek a revised contract to the employer being obliged to offer a revised contract based on the hours worked.
In this regard, a number of changes to Section 16, Banded Hours of the 2018 Act are required.
18A.(1) currently reads:
“Where an employee’s contract of employment or statement of terms of employment does not reflect the number of hours worked per week by an employee over a reference period, the employee shall be entitled to be placed in a band of weekly working hours specified in the Table to this section.”
Mandate is proposing it be replaced by the following:
“Where an employee’s contract of employment or statement of terms of employment understates the number of hours worked per week by an employee over the prescribed reference period, the employer is automatically obliged to offer that employee a revised contract of employment to reflect these additional hours worked in a (or ‘the appropriate’) band of weekly working hours specified in the Table to this section.”
4. An employer should be obliged to offer additional hours when they become available particularly to part time employees.
Section 18A.(2) of the Act currently reads:
“In accordance with subsection (1), where an employee believes that he or she is entitled to be placed in a band of weekly working hours, he or she shall inform the employer and request, in writing, to be so placed.”
Mandate is proposing that it be replaced by the following:
“In accordance with subsection (1), where an employee becomes entitled to be placed in a different band of weekly working hours the onus rests with the employer to automatically offer a revised contract of employment which reflects such changes.”
Make Work Pay 