Workers Solidarity Movement

“Ordinary people are being sacrificed on the altar of international capitalism.  We absolutely must step up the protests against what’s being done to us.” – Gregor Kerr, 1% Network spokesperson

The 1% Network has called on “workers, the unemployed and all who care about any form of democracy or equality” to protest outside the Dáil on Budget night, Tuesday 7^th December.

Workers Solidarity Movement and Free Education for Everyone member Donal Ó Fallúin on the need for students to protest this upcoming, savage budget.

Over 1,500 students from Cork’s various colleges took to the streets to protest the fee increases and cuts to the education system anticipated in the upcoming budget. Students gathered at the UCC grounds, and when the marchers from CIT made it to the university grounds the protest moved off and headed to the city centre by an unusual route via Dyke Parade, the north Leeside quays and Patrick St. to the plaza at Grand Parade.

It has been revealed that the changes in tax credits contained in the IMF/ECB four year austerity plan will hit low paid and average paid workers far harder than the those who earn hundreds of thousands.  A worker on 36,000 a year will pay around ten times as much extra tax as a percentage of their income than a banker earning 300,000 will.  In real terms both pay exactly the same, 1860 euro.  The independent think tank TASC has produced a short report which graphically illustrates the deepening of inequality that is contained in that aspect of the four year plan.