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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
— November - December 2009
Frank Connolly
ICTU leads protests against cuts in
wages, social welfare and services;
redundancies and NAMA.
the Irish Congress of Trade Unions
(ICTU) on workers to support a national day of
protest on th November – on a working day –
will be a crucial test of the ability of the trade
union movement to mobilise its members in
strength. Following the successful march
by more than , workers in Dublin in
February in protest against the government’s
imposition of the pension levy, the national cam-
paign by ICTU was suspended when its leadership
entered talks with the ‘so-called’ social partners.
Another national demonstration set for the end
of March was cancelled, despite a ballot for strike
action by many unions, as their leaders entered
protracted and, ultimately, unsuccessful talks
with the Government. The talks effectively col-
lapsed in June when the Government refused to
entertain a union proposal for a € billion jobs
stimulus and guarantees that public-sector pay
would not be further cut and that pensions and
homes would be protected.
Instead, Finance Minister, Brian Lenihan,
mooted a cut to the minimum wage while his
department’s austerity wish-list in the form of
the McCarthy ‘Bord Snip’ report was published
and included, among other swingeing cuts, the
loss of jobs each in the education and health
services. Social-welfare rates will almost cer-
tainly be targeted in the December budget, while
the Government has resisted calls by ICTU gen-
eral secretary and president, David Begg and Jack
O’Connor respectively, for a relaxation of the
planned € billion in public spending cuts this
year and similar measures between and
. Their suggestion that the austerity pro-
gramme should be stretched to to reduce
its likely devastating impact on Irish public serv-
ices was immediately rejected by Lenihan as unac-
ceptable to our European partners - even though
the French Government has adopted the exact
course suggested by the two ICTU leaders.
The Government’s determination to proceed
with pay, social welfare and public-service cuts,
and with the – potentially disastrous – NAMA
plan to pay substantially more to banks than the
market value of their toxic assets despite reser-
vations across the political and ideological spec-
trum, has further alienated the trade unions,
and much of the wider public, from its chosen
economic policies. In response, the unions are
mobilising for the ICTU national day of protest,
which will involve hundreds of thousands of pub-
lic and private sector workers demonstrating in
Dublin city and other regional centres. Unions
like SIPTU and IMPACT are also balloting their
members for industrial and strike action parallel
to November’s day of action. In the case of SIPTU,
this means that members will be asked to man-
date the union to take strike action in workplaces
where employers intend to enforce wage cuts and
redundancies without consultation.
SIPTU’s public-health and local-authority
sectors have lodged claims for the .% first
round increases envisaged under the agreement
- unless their respective public sector employers
negotiate an acceptable alternative. Public-
sector union, IMPACT, is balloting for strike
action in the event of further cuts to public
servants’ pay. Gardaí, nurses, prison officers,
fire and ambulance crews and other public-sec-
tor groups have united in a Frontline Alliance to
resist cuts to their members’ pay, while teach-
ers have already commenced industrial action.
These claims and the threatened industrial and
strike action across the country have provoked
an almost hysterical response from sections of
the commentariat and some employer organi-
sations. Predictably, the Sunday Independent
has led a campaign of demonisation against the
union officers it accuses of national sabotage for
defending the hard-won wages and conditions
of their members.
A virtual tsunami of abuse has been directed
through print and broadcast media against pub-
lic-sector workers in particular, with a barely dis-
guised attempt to pit them against their private
sector colleagues in a clas-
sic ‘divide and rule’ strat-
egy. State-paid executives
at the Central Bank and the
ESRI have been wheeled
out to defend reductions
in social-welfare and pub-
lic-sector pay, even though
some of their own econo-
mists have contested the
level of income reductions
across the private sector.
Much of the ill-informed
debate is aimed at fright-
ening workers and their
families from participat-
ing in the planned protests
including the day of action
on
th
November. Unless ICTU can mobilise num-
bers similar to those that came out earlier this
year, it will be interpreted by ‘the other side’ that
the unions are a soft touch to carry the burden
of a crisis created by reckless bankers and devel-
opers, “look the other way” regulators and self-
interested politicians.
Frank Connolly is Head of Communications at SIPTU and is
writing in a personal capacity.
“…talks effectively collapsed
in June when the Government
refused to entertain a union
proposal for a €1 billion jobs
stimulus and guarantees that
public-sector pay would not be
further cut”
,
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