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Indymedia Ireland is a volunteer-run non-commercial open publishing website for local and international news, opinion & analysis, press releases and events. Its main objective is to enable the public to participate in reporting and analysis of the news and other important events and aspects of our daily lives and thereby give a voice to people.
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Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16Trade unions and business leaders have accepted an invitation from the Taoiseach to take part in talks on a new national agreement on economic recovery and unions have deferred planned national strike
www.ireland.com
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the financial bank accounts and interests of the likes of Beggs and other executives of the trade union leadership has spoken. are you seriously asking people who will now experience poverty who have become redundant to take the union leadership seriously with the income they recieve per anum
Beggs income is 150;000 what has he got that can relate to people facing redundancy, people on low paid economy
trade unions are people on the ground in the workplace especially were people are been exploitated by greed. been on the ground that is where the struggle is. another friend of the elite is a senior trade unionist within BATU whose wages are obscene.
time will tell when the reality of the six billion in cutbacks are felt around the years of 2011 2012.
whose side will people be on.
one again tighten our belts as the fat cats of AIB, Denis O Brian. Dermot Desmond, John Magner, jp mc Manus become fatter. anyone got a belt for Harney so we can hang her.
If you pay peanuts you get monkeys.
The Irish worker is represented by the best paid monkeys in the business.
Capitulation. Utter capitulation. How they must be laughing in IBEC and the Government.
...with the Merchants of Menace.
Photo by Michael Gallagher is free to use by activists, indymedia, etc.
The ICTU and the different unions have called off the strike on March 30th to enter talks with the government. No commitment has been made to withdraw the pension levy and the votes of thousands of workers who wanted strike action against the levy has been cast aside..
The aim of the union leaders is to get back into social partnership with the most right wing government in Europe.
The FF-Green government see wage cuts as its main strategy for dealing with the crisis and are using the pension levy to launch a frontal attack on the wages of all workers.
So why doesn't the SWP march anyway?
I'm sure if its opinions are so popular with workers, and those of Begg and co., so unpopular, hundreds of thousands will turn up.
Or is this another case of "the working class", "democracy" etc letting down those who have their real interests in their hearts?
Truely, verucca you are a boil that must be lanced, alongside your mates McClone, Begg, et al.
"Or is this another case of "the working class", "democracy" etc letting down those who have their real interests in their hearts?"
Well, the overwhelming majority of workers in trade unions who took part in the democratic voting process were in favour of strike action. So they haven't let anyone down, especially not themselves. The ICTU leadership called off the strike without any mandate from their members. Everyone knows the SWP doesn't have the capacity to organise a national strike - it's a small left-wing group with limited resources and membership - and you're just trying to divert attention from the main issue. Workers join trade unions and pay their dues in order to build the kind of organisation that can call a national strike and make it happen. They've been comprehensively let down by the ICTU leadership, which will receive nothing from IBEC and the Government of any substance.
The most recent commentator is correct in that the workers are not to blame but not only because the majority voted for strike (even IMPACT were only short of 0.66% according to their own special requirements of 66.66%). Let's not forget that a figure in excess of 140,000 (estimates vary) came out to demonstrate in Dublin weeks ago. The civil servants have been demonstrating and calling one-day strikes and the busworkers are coming out on total strike from next week (although perhaps one-day strikes would have been a better tactic for them too). They have been let down by the trade union leadership, not for the first nor for the last time.
When someone hurts us, the first question might be "Why are you doing this to us?" However, the second question should be: "Why are we letting you do this to us?" A credible non-sectarian organisation in which active trade unionists (or wannabe activists) and non-aligned socialists can begin to organise serious opposition is missing and who is to blame for that? All the attempts that I have seen in that direction have degenerated into in-fighting between the bigger (a relative term!) groups who were involved or into recruitment drives for one or the other of them. The suggestions of the few non-aligned people who attended were sidelined.
For example, when I suggested at one such meeting late last year that mobilisation against the level at which the wage increase was set was probably too late and that we should be building a longer-term organisation to struggle against the further attacks to come I was told that "we'll face that when we come to it". Well, here we are, facing it -- but with what?
When I went to vote in the last general election I don't remember Begg, McLoone, or the honchos from IBEC being on the ballot paper.
Thirty years ago Bishops McQuaid, Lucey, and Newman wern't on the ballot paper either, but these same gents had a veto over civil legislation. No sooner had we prised our democracy free from the clutches of the RC bishops than we give it away to the goons who divvy up the national cake for us under the guise of "social partnership".
Isn't it about time that the people we elected to govern, governed.
ICTU/IBEC should be told to eff off and the elected government should make the decisions that need to be made without the crutch of the so-called "social partnership". And if we don't like their decisions we can vote them out at the next election. Instead, irrespective of whom we elect we still get ICTU/IBEC.
Irish Congress of Trade Unions shameful sell-out
The Day of Action called by the Irish Congress of Trade Union’ (ICTU) of or Monday 30 March has been called off without the slightest act of consultation. Rank and file militants from every sector of the trade union movement are furious with the gross act of sabotage by their ‘leaders’. Their excuse – the Irish Business and Employers' Federation (IBEC) and Taoiseach (PM) Brian Cowen have offered to resume talks with the ICTU. So cheaply are these people bought!
Read more - http://www.fifthinternational.org/index.php?id=193,1544...0,1,0
Waterford Occupation goes down to defeat
According to articles in the Irish Times and the Irish Independent it seems the magnificent eight-week occupation by workers at Waterford Crystal has ended in defeat. According to the Times headline workers were "left bitter and resentful after calling off action" The Independent reporter says they were "ashen-faced yet simmering, (as they) left a long and "angry" meeting of Unite union members.
Read more - http://www.fifthinternational.org/index.php?id=193,1545...0,1,0
An interesting post (as ever) over at the Cedar Lounge on the National Strike that wasn't...
And Darren if you go to the following link
http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=17468
You can read an article in the Socialist Worker called 'Defiant Waterford Crystal occupation secures 176 jobs'. In the article it says "This is less than the 250 promised at an earlier stage, but is 176 more than were available when bosses attempted to lock workers out in January."
It seems that the SWP think this is a victory. The Unite leadership are to blame for the defeat. From the beginning Jimmy Kelly Unite Irish Regional Secretary and ex-Waterford Glass worker focused the campaign on getting a private buyer. It was inevitable that a multinational taking over this company was going to screw the workers, yet the Unite leaders only raised nationalisation the way that a trade union official sings the Red Flag on May Day after a few pints!
Only nationalisation could have saved the company and the jobs and pensions.
The SWP called for nationalisation if a private buyer couldn't be found. That was the Unite leaderships position and looked where the workers have ended up now!
Thanks for posting the link MMcK. When we wrote the article above we were looking for reactions from the rest of the Irish left but surprisingly there was none. The British SWP are predictably putting a positive gloss on the defeat because their sister group in Ireland are compromised by their close relationship to Jimmy Kelly. The SP still haven't produced an assessment of the defeat.
Like you say, the principled and determined stand of the Waterford Crystal workers was undermined by a UNITE leadership who never seriously placed public ownership on the agenda. The 176 jobs "won" by the leadership are only guaranteed for 6 months and its highly unlikely that the state will step in to save the employees pension scheme.
The SWP trail behind the UNITE bureaucracy and refuse to scrutinise their role in the dispute. At the current occupation of Visteon in Belfast, UNITE are again putting the demand for nationalisation behind craven appeals to Ford to intervene. Unless we draw lessons from the Waterford dispute, then: "History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce." (Karl Marx)
The left in the unions should demand their leadership calls for a nationwide mobilisation in solidarity with the Belfast occupation. If they refuse, then we should follow the example of the Dublin airport workers and seek to take the initiative ourselves. Its now time we build rank-and-file committees in the unions and take control of our own struggles.
"It was inevitable that a multinational taking over this company was going to screw the workers" - MMcK
This comment is not very logical given that Waterford Chrystal was itself a multinational - one renowned as a good employer moreover. In general multinational firms have better wages and conditions than national one. Also it’s not clear that taking the rump of the firm into State ownership would achieve much. If people don't want to buy the products now how on earth does taking the firm into State ownership change anything? The company would be a subsidy junky making stuff people don't want. New firms are born and unsuccessful ones fold up. That's the way the cookie crumbles. I wrote at the outset here that the occupation was futile. So it has proven.
Sceptic what you have said couldn't be further from the truth. You claim that Waterford Crystal was a good employer. So your definition of a good employer is one that shuts down a profitable company, sacks 700 workers, leaving them with no pension and no redundancy payments!
Waterford Crystal was a profitable company. Tony O'Reilly and his mates bled Waterford Crystal dry and used it as collateral for massive loans that they took out to then buy other high profile brand names. There is a demand for Waterford Crystal internationally. If there wasn't then that division of the company wouldn't have been in profit plus KPS wouldn't have bought the right to the brand name.
You assertion that companies come and go and we should just except that is not just wrong it is sickening. It isn't all right for multinationals to set up in a country, exploit the local workforce and then bugger off when they have a better option; Dell and lower wages in Poland or SR Technics or as in the case of Waterford Crystal strip a company of its core and sell it to vulture capitalists who will then employ glass workers in Eastern Europe or Asia on slave wages but continue to charge high prices for the crystal, because it bears the name of Waterford and what they represents, high skilled craftsmanship which has been dumped onto the dole!
If Waterford Crystal was nationalised it would have saved all of the jobs and the other jobs which will now be lost in the Waterford region and it would have been a successful profitable company without parasites like Tony O'Reilly or KPS.