EMPLOYEES at small firms earn an average of just under €35,000 per year, with one-in-four companies saying they plan to cut pay this year.
Almost half of small firms – companies with less than 50 employees – said they cut pay last year by an average of 20%. Just over two-in-five firms cut staff numbers last year.
This year the one-in-four firms that are planning pay-cuts are expecting wage levels to be cut by close to 14%. Almost one in five anticipate reducing staff numbers in the year.
The Small Firms Association (SFA) annual pay survey also found that one-in-10 employees earn less than €25,000, with close to one -in-seven taking home more than €45,000.
A third of small firms surveyed do not have a pension or sick-pay scheme, while two out of five have health insurance schemes.
One-in-five, meanwhile, pay maternity benefit above Social Welfare, while the average mileage allowance is 72 cent per mile at small firms. Employers said that their main business concern for this year is labour costs.
SFA director Patricia Callan said: "Jobs must now become our top priority, both the maintenance of existing ones and the creation of new ones.
"To deliver this, pay moderation must become the norm as small businesses, who employ half the private sector workforce – some 700,000 people – struggle to regain cost-competitiveness and thus ensure their business survival.
"It is better to have more people at work on reasonable pay than many on the Live Register, with the privileged protected few on artificially high rates of pay.
"All must accept that there can be no return to the Celtic Tiger days of pay increases without productivity gains, as this simply makes us a high-cost location vis-a-vis our international competitors and ultimately ensures a lose-lose scenario for all involved."
The 16th annual SFA pay and conditions survey shows that the typical employee of a small firm earns €34,422 per annum, works between 37.5 (salaried) and 39 hours (manual) per week and has 21 days holidays per year. They have a 67% chance of being part of a company sick-pay scheme and 60% chance of being in a company pension scheme.
The rate of pay for entry-level grades decreased across almost all job categories, reflecting the softening of the labour market. The average rates of basic pay varied from €365.10 per week for a cleaner to €957.42 per week for a craft charge-hand.
a d v e r t i s e m e n t
This appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Monday, March 22, 2010
