SIPTU’s Manufacturing Division committed the Union to campaigning to bring the maximum level of statutory redundancy from €600 to more than €1000 per week with a unanimous vote at its Biennial Delegate Conference in Galway on 24th October.
Proposing the motion to improve the level of statutory redundancy, SIPTU Shop Steward and Vice President of the SIPTU Pharmaceutical, Chemicals and Medical Devices Sector, Pamela O’Donnell, said: “It is not acceptable that employers who continue to grow large profits, which are paid out in dividends, still enforce a statutory redundancy cap, of a maximum of €600 per week, on their workforces, rather than pay out the full week’s wages for those who are being made redundant.”
She added: “We are calling on the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Peter Burke, to review the statutory redundancy payment and call for the cap to be virtually doubled, which would bring the entitlement closer to wages in manufacturing in Ireland according to Central Statistics Office figures.”
SIPTU Manufacturing Division Organiser, Neil McGowan, said: “In November 2004, the then Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment signed a Statutory Instrument setting the statutory redundancy weekly calculation at €600. According to the Central Statistics Office, the average industrial wage was €645.62 per week in 2004. At the start of 2024, according to the Central Statistics Office, the average industrial wage was €969.12. When wage rises during 2024 are factored in, the average industrial wage is now more than €1,000 per week.
He added: “It is obvious that the statutory redundancy weekly calculation is completely out of sync with the average industrial wage and is severely disadvantaging workers who are losing their jobs and being made redundant. That the level of statutory redundancy has not risen in 20 years is something our Union will no longer accept.”