The Department of Enterprise, Trade, and Employment was the scene of a demonstration by migrant healthcare assistants (HCAs) demanding immediate changes to the work permit earnings regulations that they claim are causing them to spend more time apart from their families, reports RTE.
Many migrant HCAs now make less than the salary requirement that would enable them to seek for permission to bring family members to Ireland.
Shiji Moncy, an HCA in Dublin, is a member of the Unite labour union.
For the past three years, she has been away from her family.
“Our role as healthcare assistants is physically and mentally exhausting, and at the end of each shift we return to an empty home,” said Ms. Moncy, reports RTE.
“Our message to the public is simple: we look after your parents and grandparents as though they were ours – but we only get snatched video link moments with our own families. This Valentine’s Day we are asking the Government to have a heart and let us bring our families to live with us,” she added, reports RTE.
Employees have also pointed out a discrepancy in which migrant HCAs with contracts before to January 1st make less money than those with more recent contracts.
For HCAs on new contracts, the government-mandated minimum wage went up in January, reports RTE.
Unite claims that migrant HCAs on current contracts were left out of last month’s raise due to a lack of retroactive analysis, putting them on minimum wages of slightly more over €27,000.
HCAs on current contracts are therefore not only making less than the family reunification level, but they are also getting paid less than new hires who are doing the same work, reports RTE.
“Migrant HCAs look after some of the most vulnerable members of our community and the care sector would stop functioning without them,” said Unite’s Irish secretary Susan Fitzgerald, reports RTE.
“Compared to all other categories of workers in Ireland under the work permit system, HCAs are the lowest of the low in pay terms – even after the recent increase for new entrants. It’s long past time to start paying HCAs a decent wage, stop discriminating between workers, and stop separating workers from their families,” she added, reports RTE.
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