SFA Calls For Pay Freeze To Stem 'Out Of Control' Redundancies

An organisation representing small Irish businesses is seeking a pay freeze to limit the high level of redundancies, which it describes as: "spiralling out of control."

New figures released by Small Firms Association (SFA) show there has been a 36% increase in redundancies from January to August with 23,545 jobs lost to date, which equates to the "worrying figure" of the economy losing an average 680 jobs every week.

Patricia Callan, SFA Director: "These figures should serve as a wake-up call that good quality jobs are going to the wall in all sectors of the economy and across all regions, due to the cost pressures that small businesses find themselves under."

Ms Callan called on unions and small business owners to reduce their costs to tackle the economic downturn to remain "agile, innovative and competitive".

Although Ms Callan put forward the better use of technology, improvements to innovation, and productivity levels as a way forward through the economic squeeze, an emphasis on pay freezes was at the centre of her solution.

"In particular, in the current pay negotiations, there must be an acceptance on all sides that if we want to maintain high levels of employment for all, then pay moderation is the only game in town," she said.

Dublin suffered from the vast majority of the redundancies with 8759, while Leitrim managed to escape with the lowest level of 100.

Over 68% of all job losses were suffered by males, which usually suggests the construction industry was the main focus of the job losses; however, the statement by the association said the services Industry was hardest hit with 7,148 redundancies to date.

Ms Callan said: "This clearly shows that the construction industry contraction is now affecting all other sectors of the trading economy, as there is less surplus cash to spend on domestic services."

(DW)