Workers Solidarity Movement

Issue 129 of Ireland's anarchist Paper Workers Solidarity.  This issue was produced for the 13 April 2013 CAHWT demonstration and the May day marches in Dublin, Belfast, Cork, Derry and elsewhere in Ireland.  If you live in Ireland and would like to distribute copies contact us.

Since the foundation of the Campaign Against Household & Water Taxes, WSM members have been pushing for a strengthening of grassroots democracy in the campaign, and we believe that the more democratic the campaign is the more likely it is to succeed. In this article, Brian A., a WSM member involved in the campaign in Kildare, outlines his experience of being involved in building the campaign in his local area.

We will be launching issue 7 of the Irish anarchist review as part of this dynamic discussion on the Role of Radical media/publishing and how radical publications on the left can facilitate the building of a grassroots movement in the current climate - and reach, engage and assist with the politicization of many alienated and disenfranchised public.

The topic of this talk (audio link below) was on organising unions in non-unionised workplaces, and possibly re-invigorating places where unions are ostensibly still organised. Our labour market locally is increasingly casualised, de-skilled, and less well paid. “Flexible” arrangements between employer and employee are the current code word for the slashing of security of contract and the threat of relocation of capital. Unions have historically been the only means of lower paid workers countering trends like these, so the question as to how workers organise and fight back is coming back into focus more and more. This talk intended to address just that, and the speakers put forward arguments for an alternative to the top-down trade unionism that evidently isn’t working today.

hell has admitted that on Monday, the 8th April, they had to vent all the nitrogen currently in the gas pipes at the Bellanaboy refinery, after they mistakenly cut a gas pipe. Shell claim the reason for this was the gas pipe was mistaken for a water pipe in the refinery and was cut.  The gas pipes on the refinery site are currently filled with nitrogen to inhibit corrosion.   The incident only came to light because a local resident contacted Midwest Radio with details of the incident.   Shell confirmed the incident took place one week after the event. 

Public service workers proved in the Croke Park vote that we are capable of getting organised to defeat the careful plans of the government to make us swallow yet another round of cuts.  This despite the fact that the leadership of the two biggest public sector unions were working with the government in trying to get us to accept that plan.  And now they are in a panic because the No vote to Croke Park represents a massive refusal of their claim that austerity is the solution to the crisis.  Almost 300,000 workers have declared that Enough is Enough, add in our immediate families and this is probably quarter of the population.

This doesn't mean the fight is over, the No vote is only the start of defeating austerity.  Public Service Workers are not alone, 400,000 households have not registered for the Property Tax.  Across society ordinary working people are saying Enough, that is one of strengths.  We think we can beat any attempt to unilaterally oppose pay cuts around the points that follow

It's 21 years since the X Case, when the Supreme Court ruled that abortion is legal if pregnancy poses a risk to a woman's life – including by suicide. (X was 14 and suicidal because she was pregnant due to rape).  Despite the death of Savita Halappanavar, the government continues to delay legislating to allow abortion if pregnancy poses a risk to a woman's life. Action on X have called a protest at City Hall (Dublin Castle) Monday, 29 April 2013 at 18:00

Protest against Cuts to Further Education and increases to Pupil Teacher Ratio -

The anti-choice movements have been repeating over and over the message in recent months that 'abortion is never a treatment for suicidality' This is frequently coupled with citing the realtively low current rate of suicide among pregnant women.  But like other myths of the anti-choice movement it has emerged that until abortion became accessible to Irish women, through travelling to the UK, 10% of suicides of women in Ireland were of pregnant women, a figure far in excess of the general population.