Workers Solidarity Movement

It is quite incredible that the majority of the union leadership had the nerve to stay in the Croke Park talks and return to us, the members, asking us to vote for such a terrible deal.  All of the unions should have had a ballot before entering into negotiations and we should have voted to refuse to enter discussions at all as long as a billion euro of cuts was a precondition of talks.  Once we entered on that basis, nothing good could come out of talks.  And after making the mistake of entering on that condition, all the unions should have had a change of heart and walked out once the reality of what would have to be accepted became clear.

We have to ask ourselves how we have found ourselves in unions where the leadership was allowed take such an approach.  And we have to work out how we create unions that we control and which will help us organise together to defend our common interests.

The Campaign Against Household & Water Taxes has produced this useful FAQ on the new Property Tax that answers basic questions about the tax that will be of interest to those determined to resist it.

The following text was sent to us by a reader who works in a social welfare office. It illustrates just one aspect of the human cost of the Croke Park agreement and of the furhter deterioration that will occur under the "extension", if it is passed. 

Life in a social welfare office can be heartbreaking sometimes. Sitting there, behind the glass, you have a very limited range of available responses available to a broad expanse of problems. As the crisis deepens, people’s problems become more serious and varied and our responses and the time available to respond narrow.  

The new Croke Park deal is a vicious attack on the pay and conditions of all Public Sector workers and their families by the Government. Shamefully our Trade Union leaders have allowed it to tear up an existing agreement that was due to run until June 2014 and have agreed to another one, which is significantly worse.

It is no great surprise that the SIPTU NEC have recommended acceptance of Croke Park II. But in their statement they admit far more than the should have and point not only to why it should be rejected but also what is needed to win.  That is the willingness to threaten effective industrial action aimed at bringing down the government if they attempt to impose Croke Park II after we vote no.

In an act of mass civil disobedience directly challenging the legitimacy of the state to regulate women’s reproduction against their own will, over 100 people in Northern Ireland under the banner Alliance for Choice have signed an open letter declaring they have taken, or supported others to take, a pill to induce an abortion.

The government says if we Vote no to Croke Park they will impose it anyway.  Many of the union leadership try and scare us into voting Yes with this threat and by saying the only alternative is strike action.  Both are right.  If we just vote no than the government will attack us. And when they do the only way we can win is if we are willing to fight back - that will mean industrial action.  It will almost certainly mean at least the credible threat of an indefinite strike.

INTO (Irish National Teachers Organisation) general secretary Sheila Nunan and other union leaders have said that the Croke Park extension deal is “the best deal available through negotiation” and that the negotiators “left nothing at the table”.  And they are probably right.  But saying that this is the best deal available through negotiation is not quite the same as saying that it is the best deal achievable.

Early yesterday morning, the leadership of the public sector committee of ICTU emerged from talks with the government claiming they had achieved the best possible outcome from the negotiations. The best possible outcome in question involves extra hours at work, cuts in overtime rates and allowances for unsociable hours, delayed increments and revisions to flexitime arrangements and work-sharing patterns. 

"We are living under extraordinary circumstances and people are suffering extraordinary miseries.” – Jack O’Connor on Today FM’s The Last Word.  There’s more misery to come.

The latest Spotlight poll indicating the vast majority of Northern Ireland voters would reject Irish unity highlights the need to build a different type of politics which is not rooted in tribal loyalties, but  based on class and revolutionary transformation of society.  While some republicans may say the poll is not representative and that real opinions can only be revealed by an independent referendum north and South of the border, the reality is polls  over the years have consistently indicated minority support for a United Ireland. (1)