Petition is successful with 4,185 signatures
To: All TD's and Senators in Leinster House
Secure Hours Now
This campaign has ended.
Workers like me need legislation that would give us secure hours and incomes.
Politicians from every political party supported Dunnes Stores workers when we took a stand for secure hour contracts that would allow us to plan our lives from week-to-week.
Two and a half years later and we’re still waiting on the government to pass legislation that would ban zero hours and 'If and When' contracts and allow all workers a secure income
We are calling on all TD’s and Senators to support and sign our Secure Hours - Better Future charter.
Why is this important?
I’ve been working for Dunnes Stores for 8 years now, and I still don’t know what my wages will be from week-to-week. On any payday, a Dunnes workers' wages can be slashed by up to 60% (more than €200).
This makes it impossible for my family and I to plan our lives, and we’re not alone.
There are almost 10,000 workers in Dunnes Stores who have the same worries I do. Most of us are low paid. Most of us are women. And most of us are on 15 hour contracts.
So some weeks we will work 40 hours, but when a local manager takes a dislike to us, they can slash our hours to 15.
And there are hundreds of thousands of workers across the country in a similar position.
We don’t know from week-to-week whether we will be able to pay our bills. We can’t get loans or mortgages because the banks look at the lowest hours on our contracts and see how insecure our wages are.
It’s impossible to have peace of mind.
That’s why in April 2015, two and a half years ago, 6,000 of us went on strike to win secure hour contracts. After the strike, management targeted us. They sacked some of us, slashed the hours of others, changed our working patterns and generally made our lives hell.
They use the allocation of hours as a control mechanism over us.
So we now have to rely on politicians to legislate in order to make sure every worker in Ireland is protected from zero hour and “If and When” contracts.
There have been several opportunities to pass legislation in recent years, which would have ended zero hours and ‘If and When’ contracts, but the government has delayed and postponed and are now preparing their own legislation which we believe will not benefit low hour workers.
Our Union, Mandate, believes the government are going to leave loopholes open so that employers can still exploit workers like me.
But if all TD’s commit to support the Secure Hours – Better Future charter, we can make sure no worker is exploited and workers like us can plan our day-to-day lives, provide for our families and pay our bills.
Please sign this petition and call on your local representatives to support the Secure Hours – Better Future charter today.
How it will be delivered
We will be hand delivering this petition to all TD's and Senators on the week of 13th February - when the Bill is due to be published