Workers Solidarity Movement

A letter accompanied a recent dole payment. It advertised a ‘networking and interview day for Irish Teachers DIRECTLY with UK schools’ (emphasis in original). The exclamation mark in the letter’s heading – ‘Teaching Opportunities in the UK!’ - illustrates neatly how readily, even enthusiastically the Irish state is prepared to export Ireland’s young people in order to preserve the status quo.

The simmering student revolt that started this spring in Amsterdam and spread to the LSE in London has now reached Dublin. Austerity has meant the acceleration of the EU neoliberal plan to turn universities into over packed and pressured factories churning out little human units optimised for industry.

"In the space of 2 weeks a group of EL (English language) teachers joined a trade union, won our pay dispute with the multi-national we work for, and started planning to unionise the EL sector and campaign against zero hours contracts." - We are delighted to bring you this account from Aideen Elliott of her and her colleagues' recent victory against proposed wage cuts at EF Language School in Dublin.

In 2012 the attempt by the government to Quebec to introduce a 75% fee hike was defeated by the organisation of a mass student strike that lasted over 6 months.  That fee increase was part of the global process of imposing the privatisation and commodification of education.  Since the victory, organisers of the strike have been being doing speaking tours to aid the process whereby "youth and students everywhere are becoming increasingly conscious of the need to organize as a means to defend education as a social right".  In September this tour reaches Ireland where we need to hear how a sustained and militant student movement that can win is built. 

[PDF of leaflet about the tour to download and distribute]

[JPG of the tour poster] 

Sample audio from the tour (actually from our launch dinner & discussion on feminist organising in the strike)

Quebec Strudent Mass Strike 2012 - sampler from tour around Ireland with Vanessa by Workers Solidarity on Mixcloud

Some great news for International Womens Day. The students of NUI Galway have voted Yes in a pro-choice referendum by close to a massive 70%. The wording (below) was very clear and included a mandate for action. Well done to all who campaigned in this referendum. 

A Rally of education workers to call for a rejection of the Croke Park 'extension' deal will be held in the Gresham Hotel, Dublin, on Saturday next 9th March at 12 noon.  The rally is bring organised as a result of an initiative from 5 branches of the Teachers Union of Ireland which called an organising meeting last week. This meeting was attended by over 60 union members, mainly branch and district officers, from the 4 teaching unions (TUI, ASTI, INTO and IFUT) as well as representatives from SIPTU's Education branch and from some other public service union.

It’s a strange anomaly that anarchism is so marginal an idea in academia despite it being a major influence on contemporary social movement praxis, as well as having been the dominant proletarian ideology worldwide for decades leading up to the Russian Revolution.

This college year has seen a large increase in the number of students taking out loans in order to go to college. As part of an aggressive advance into the student debt market, Bank of Ireland has already agreed schemes to provide “discounted loans” to students in DCU and Trinity, and to postgraduate students across the country (in this case the scheme was negotiated directly with theState) .BofI is also said to be in “advanced discussions” with over 10 other 3rd-level institutions.

Despite increasingly desperate attempts by the government to extract their pound of flesh from householders,the Campaign against Household and Water Taxes (CAHWT) continues to rack up victories.