The Expansion of Wage Theft Legislation in Common Law Countries—Should Ireland be Next?

Abstract

While employment laws exist to protect workers from the unfair exploitation, evidence suggests that wage theft is a prominent practice. Wage theft has received considerable public policy attention in several common law countries leading to the introduction of new legislation on the basis that existing legal regulations were inadequate and because the effects of wage theft are particularly deleterious for low-wage workers. Wage theft though remains underexplored in an Irish policy context. This article examines whether Ireland needs stronger laws to address wage theft by assessing if existing minimum wage and working time employment legislation provide an effective remedy for workers. The analysis finds that Irish laws already contain many provisions which new wage theft laws in other jurisdictions have introduced, suggesting radically new legislation is not needed. Several features of existing laws though obstruct workers in seeking remedy for underpayments and require amendment. Changing legislation, however, will likely be insufficient for an effective enforcement regime and it must be supplemented by statutory support for collective representation and enhancing labour inspectorate capacity to act on workers’ behalf.