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IRELAND: News that Labour Ministers and TD’s have
been involved in a concerted campaign to attack Richard Bruton’s attacks
on low paid workers through changing the mechanisms of the Joint Labour
Committee has been denied by Pat Rabbitte who has claimed that the
suggestion is “utter nonsense”.
However as today’s Irish Times explains:
“...a number of Labour
backbenchers have expressed concern at the plans to reduce overtime and
Sunday premiums, which would affect 200,000 workers in service areas
like hotels, catering, hairdressing and security.”
In truth there
should be no room for confusion here. Labour TD’s and ministers should
be leading demonstrations of workers and fighting these proposals from
day one. After all, surely the justification for their being in office
in the first place was to defend working people? The Labour leadership
cannot in good faith let the poorest workers in Ireland carry the
heaviest burden. Eamon Gilmore is no Simon of Cyrene.
This issue
highlights a major contradiction however. That is, that the Labour Party
and Fine Gael reflect the class interests of two antagonistic classes
within society, the working class on one hand and the Irish ruling class
on the other. Already long before the election the divisions between
them were clear and all that could be expected once they came into
office was that the contradictions would become far more marked.
Significantly this
situation has arisen within only a few weeks of the government taking
office. Unfortunately for Messrs Kenny and Gilmore all of the Fianna
Fáil chickens are coming home to roost. Neither Labour of Fine Gael have
a clear position as to how to solve the problems of state funding and
the banking system’s black hole, except that is by carrying out
austerity measures against the working class. The coalition will be a
government of crisis. Unfortunately for the Labour leadership in
particular workers will have expectations that they will do precisely
what the promised to do; that is to defend working people.
The Coalition has however the great advantage that it wasn’t in power over the last few years, it may take some time
for the political crisis to reach the same pitch as it did under Brian
Cowen’s government; but sooner or later the general international crisis
and especially the crisis in the eurozone will undermine Fine Gael and
Labour as it did FF and the Greens.
Labour’s left must
get organised and fight to break the coalition. That would open up the
possibility of a Labour and left coalition, but only on the basis of
socialist policies capable of challenging capitalism. The last thing we
need is more empty promises.
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