Well, sooner or later it had to come. As we have been saying recently sooner or
later the bourgeoisie, and not just the Irish bosses, would come for their
pound of flesh. After all, someone is going to have to pay for the crisis and
it doesn’t take Einstein to work out that it’s us.
So the government is looking for €2bn worth of cuts and that means pay cuts for
public sector workers. As Batt O’Keeffe the education minister pointed out the
government “would have to govern”. Strange that they choose exactly the same
policy that the British and American governments used in the 1930s. The same
policies that helped deepen and prolong the slump. The question must be; in
whose interests are the Fianna Fáil ruling? Not ours, for sure.
Lessons of Thatcherism
More recently we need only look over the water to see what happens when the
bosses let their dogs off the leash. The British bourgeoisie launched a series of
vicious attacks on the working class under Margaret Thatcher. All this was
carried out under the slogan that “there is no alternative”. This wasn’t helped
by the attitude of the British trade union leaders who insisted in large
measure of “turning the other cheek”. Hiding your head in the sand is no
option.
How are the Irish unions going to respond?
The crisis is very deep and the government is on the horns of a dilemma, sooner
or later they will be forced to attack workers living standards one way or
another, after all the bosses won’t pay. But it’s not as straight forward as
that the boom years have strengthened the working class and despite recent
redundancies the trade unions are still more or less intact.
Under these conditions the best way to fight fire is with fire. We need a
coordinated campaign to oppose every cut and every job loss. We can’t afford
the bosses crisis. It’s of their making not ours. The leaders of the Trade
unions are correct to campaign against wage cuts and it’s important to raise
the threat of strike action as Jack O’Connor has done. But the campaign has to
be taken to every workplace and every branch, already we’ve seen the (12 hour)
occupation of the Swissco factory and it’s likely that we could see a whole
series of defensive struggles over the next months.
We must have the full support of the Trade Union leadership for every struggle
and have to demand the full support of the Labour TDs in the Dáil.
• Make the bosses pay for the crisis
• Not a second on the day, not a cent off the pay
• No wage cuts, No redundancies
• Nationalisation of any company announcing redundancies under Democratic
workers control and management
Here is the recent SIPTU press release putting the position of the union
leaders:
SIPTU President says Government can only resolve economic crisis with all
sectors of society contributing their fair share
Date Released: 10 Jan 2009
Responding to remarks attributed to the Minister for Finance, Brian Lenihan in
this morning’s Irish Independent, implying pay cuts in the public sector by the
end of this month, SIPTU General President Jack O’Connor, who is also Joint
Vice President of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions said that, “The scale of
the figures presented by the Department of Finance yesterday are truly
horrendous and they have enormous implications for our society and our economy.
They are a consequence of the reckless agenda pursued by the PDs and the right
wing of Fianna Fail between 2002 and 2007, during which our tax base was
dismantled in the interests of the well off, capital taxation was all but
abolished and top tax rates were reduced to a degree unparalleled in any
developed western European country. All of this was camouflaged by the credit
led property bubble it generated, which has now exploded against a background
of an international depression, to the detriment of everyone in Ireland. It
will require an unprecedented national effort, to which all sectors of society
must contribute, to stabilise the economy over the next five to seven years.
“But the remarks attributed to the Minister suggest that he intends what we in
SIPTU feared all along, i.e., trying to solve the problem at the expense of
working people and the less well off in society. We believe that the unilateral
imposition of cuts in rates of pay will meet with stout resistance from trade
union members generally. If the Government sets about it in that way we in
SIPTU, and I believe everyone else in the trade union movement as well, will do
everything we possibly can to mobilise such resistance. The only way to
successfully tackle the issues confronting us with any prospect of success is
on the basis of all sectors of society contributing, and with those best able
to do so, contributing the most.
“Equally, just as we have a responsibility to mobilise as much resistance as we
possibly can against attempts to tackle the crisis at the expense of workers
and the less well-off, we believe we also have a responsibility to provide
leadership in circumstances where other sectors of society declare their
willingness to contribute on a scale which reflects their capacity to do so. In
such circumstances we in SIPTU are fully prepared to discharge our
responsibilities and we believe that everybody in the trade union movement will
be prepared to do so as well. The choice rests with the Government.”
