Workers Solidarity Movement

Today’s industrial action builds on the momentum from the education and healthcare strike last month and sends out the message that we mean business. Congratulations to all who have taken part and especially to those who have over the past few weeks and months built for today’s action.

We are relied on every day to run the hospitals, schools, fire service, and all other public services that society depends on to function. Today we have demonstrated that when we withdraw our labour and stand together in defence of our rights we have real strength.

However a one day strike on its own will only express our anger and let off a bit of steam. It is not enough if we want to actually defeat the ongoing attacks on our pay and conditions - attacks which are affecting all workers and unemployed.

Solidarity and support for strike action needs to built across all workplaces unionised or not and in our communities where we are feeling the impact of these devastating cuts on our standard of living if we want to win. In the short-term we need to be organising for rolling strike action including go-slows and ultimately an indefinite general strike. Such action is needed because history shows us that those at the top will concede little of significance without such mass resistance.

We need to build a mass militant campaign which is opposed to all cuts and attacks on services, controlled by rank and file workers and independent of all opportunist political parties who are only interested in elections . A victory on the pensions for public sector workers builds towards the fight needed to win a victory for all workers.

Lobbying politicians and marching from A-B has limited returns and can even add to the pervading sense of powerlessness. Politicians, like our trade union leadership, cannot be trusted and will work to police and sabotage any affective action. Taking back control of OUR unions from below is part and parcel of the fight to defend what we have won over the years.

Stormont offers us no alternative and is part of the problem. Despite their rhetoric and intention to not cross any picket lines, all our local political parties are committed to implementing these vicious anti-working class cuts and the wider neo-liberal agenda of slashing and privatising public services by making us pay for the greed and crimes of the 1%.

In the end capitalism and the state is the problem and we are the solution. As we unite we can become a force that capitalism cannot control, cannot crush. We can create a whole new society that serves the needs of all of us, not a minority.

This leaflet is produced by the Workers Solidarity Movement, a class struggle anarchist organisation in Ireland who are involved in our trade unions and community organisations. We see our role as helping to organise a fightback and discussing how we can begin to build a new society.

If you like what you read and want to find out more about real alternatives why not visit our website at http://www.wsm.ie