Community groups face claim for wages deducted from FÁS workers

Date Published: 30-Mar-2011

FÁS workers who had their weekly allowance cut over the past 18 months may have a strong case to have the money paid back to them – but cash-strapped community groups fear that they will personally have to find the funds to meet the back pay.

And that could amount of over €1,000 per worker, leaving community bodies with claims they simply cannot pay.

One Connemara-based community development company has already been summoned to the Labour Relations Commission to explain the methodology used to cutback the allowance being paid to FÁS workers under its jurisdiction.

The state cut pay for those on FÁS schemes when the dole payments were cutback in 2009. Sponsoring bodies such as the Connemara West company – and voluntary community councils in some cases – had then to cutback the allowance to the FÁS workers accordingly. Now in a bizarre bureaucratic tangle it appears that the community company – and other sponsoring bodies – are regarded as the employer.

SIPTU has raised questions about how the cut was effected; they claim that an employee’s wages cannot be arbitrarily cut by employers under the terms of the Wages Act of 1991.

Johnny Coyne, manager of Forum a northwest Connemara based community support agency says that the sponsoring bodies are caught in a trap.

“You had no choice but to cutback; the State paid you the money to pay out to the people on the scheme…and you paid out what you got in. It was all done in good faith”.

See full story in this week’s Connacht Tribune.