Workers Solidarity Movement

Ireland's anarchist paper Workers Solidarity, Issue 101 January - February 2008

When Irish Ferries launched their new €50million vessel in Dublin Port on Tuesday 29th January, 400 guests from the tourism, freight and shipping sectors attended the naming ceremony. How many of them, I wonder, took a moment as they quaffed their champagne and nibbled on their canapés to ponder on the news revealed by International Transport Workers Federation inspector, Ken Fleming, that the workers who would be manning the ferry will be paid as little as €4 per hour?

In response to growing discussion of ‘zero growth’ ideas among some environmentalists, Alan MacSimoin asks Is non-extraction the answer?

In recent years, with climate change dominating headlines regularly, it has become popular among some environmentalists to propose non-extraction of fossil fuels as a viable way to reduce the effects climate change. But if this idea was taken up what would be the result? Less oil & gas being processed means what is available will rise in price. That’s the logic of capitalism. And having to pay even more for home heating and cooking is not going to change the habits of the wealthy but would have a big impact on most of our pockets. Making things even more expensive than they are at present will not exactly endear environmentalists to most people.

With women’s control over their own fertility still denied in Ireland North and South, Ciaran Murray drags up a story from the not so distant past, where direct action, literally got the goods.

Christmas has increasingly become a matter of spending money on presents, rather than spending time with your loved ones. Where this might be hard for some, it can be financially unbearable for others. In order to meet the expectations from the society and avoid humiliation, we take up loans to get through family events such as Christmas.

In early December classroom assistants in the North returned to work after a series of strike actions which had gone on since September. This action by the classroom assistants showed in stark form the two faces of the trade union movement. On the one hand there was the tremendous bravery and solidarity shown by the workers themselves in standing up to attempts to bully and harass them back to work. On the other hand was the duplicitousness and skulduggery of some trade union bureaucrats who not alone did their best to undermine the dispute but actively worked with management and politicians to betray the workers.

Porsche has given a bonus to its entire full-time staff. The 11,000 people who actually build cars got €5,200 each. The six person management board, none of whom has ever built a car, awarded themselves a whopping €113 million.

Union leaders, employers and the government will soon be sitting down to negotiate a new pay round as part of the Towards 2016 ‘partnership’ agreement. It doesn’t take a crystal ball to see that the bosses will be insisting on wage increases of no more than a few percent. They will troop into TV studios to tell us that anything better is – take your pick - impossible, irresponsible or unaffordable.

Remember the good old days - before the election - when the Green party used to be in favour of the anti-war cause and used to support the searching of CIA ‘rendition’ planes passing through Shannon? Remember how the Greens used to believe that the reason why the then Fianna Fail/PD government wouldn’t sanction the searching of these planes was because they were in George W Bush’s pocket?

After a month of fooling around, the government has finally declared that they will implement water charges for schools, backdating them to 2007. These charges come as a serious blow to Irish schools, which are already among the worst funded in the OECD. In many schools, funding does not cover basic requirements such as computers or gym equipment, forcing them to fundraise among parents of students.