Workers Solidarity Movement

300,000 public service workers may shortly be forced to strike, something that may very well transform the potential for radical politics in Ireland.  The purpose of this Open Letter is to provide information for activists who are not working in Public Services in order to explain the importance of the No vote to Croke Park. It is important in terms of the general struggle against austerity and we want to suggest some ways you can help make sure this fight is won, in particular by coming to a discussion of just that on Wednesday 8th May at 7.30 in the Teachers Club. (RSVP on Facebook)

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

Unless you're a economics geek you've probably never heard of Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff. But that doesn't mean their work isn't affecting your life. A paper by these two prestigious Harvard economists has been a key justification for post-2008 austerity policies, with its oft-repeated claim that a national debt level of over 90% of GDP is fatal to growth. Yesterday we found out that paper was based on a spreadsheet that doesn't add up. Epic maths fail.

Five years into an austerity program that is only working to make the rich richer, most of us are very unhappy about the lack of resistance from the unions. During the Croke Park campaign the SIPTU National Executive Council released a statement that included: "There is, of course, a wider issue of fairness in the Country as a whole because the wealthy are not contributing to the degree that they can or should. This is a consequence of the political choices made by the voters at election time.”

The austerity policies of the latest phase of capitalism have wreaked havoc on the lives and living standards of working class people across Europe and beyond.  The struggles in which communities find themselves as they attempt to resist these policies have a lot to learn from each other.  As we strive for a better world and to build communities free from poverty, exploitation and hopelessness we need to find time and space to listen to each other, to find common cause and to support each other’s struggles.

This Saturday morning Cypriot people woke up to the news that they were about to be robbed. In a pre-planned ambush scheduled to coincide with a local bank holiday weekend, Eurozone apparatchiks threatened to bankrupt the Cypriot banking system by immediate withdrawal of the ECB liquidity support.

The "deal" forced on the Cypriots by Frankfurt means a "bail-out" of the banks to the tune of 17 billion euros, roughly equivalent to the annual GDP of the Republic that makes up the EU-recognised part of this divided island. But only 10 billion will be provided by the ECB and IMF, the other 7 billion will be taken by a combination of a 1.4 billion privatisation programme, but in bulk by robbing anyone with a bank account in Cyprus.

In Sydney's Sun Herald there's a graph of unemployment in Europe with the title "Painful Recovery" it has percentages from Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland and the overall EU.It says "Monthly unemployment. Ireland's unemployment is no longer surging but that is largely because 1600 people emigrate every week to find work". So apparently all that guff about how generous social welfare is in Ireland is a lie, as thousands seek work elsewhere and quite a few in Australia. (Sunday March 10th page 29).

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.

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.