Together we can beat Irish Ferries

national | worker & community struggles and protests | opinion/analysis

Wednesday December 07, 2005 12:00

by DC - WSM

Friday’s demonstration is an opportunity for all Irish workers to show our support for and solidarity with Irish Ferries workers in their battle against job displacement and exploitation. Their fight is our fight because if the company is successful in defeating the workers’ resistance it will open the floodgates for employers throughout the economy to slash wages and attack working conditions – a process which is already well under way.

At the last Dublin demonstration

Workers in Irish Ferries have shown the way in which employers’ attacks can be resisted. Their response to the attempts at bullying by management and their hired thugs was immediate and direct. They didn’t wait around but took immediate direct action to protect their livelihoods and force the management on the defensive. It was this action which forced the issue of job displacement on to the national political agenda and which forced the leadership of the trade union movement to take the issue seriously.

Industrial Relations Act must be smashed
Today’s demonstration is a welcome opportunity for all workers to demonstrate our support for Irish Ferries workers. But it does not go far enough. The most effective way in which all workers could show the bosses and government we intend to do more than complain would be through a national work stoppage. This would involve challenging the 1990 Industrial Relations Act which makes solidarity action unlawful.

The leadership of the trade union movement have however shirked the opportunity to challenge this anti-trade union law. Instead of issuing a direct call for all workers to walk off the job to support today’s demo, they have “requested” member unions to “maximise the participation of their members”.

Instead of this shilly-shallying, Congress should directly challenge the Industrial Relations Act. It is the strength of our numbers which would allow us to do this. If all workers across all unions took simultaneous action, it would render the law ineffective and would demonstrate clearly our potential power. If Congress are afraid to issue this call because of fears that the assets of the unions would be placed in jeopardy, why don’t they ask us – the members – what we think. After all the unions belong to the members, we should be allowed to make that decision.

Legacy of “partnership”
It is clear however that the leadership of Congress do not want to challenge the Industrial Relations Act because ideologically they are unwilling to challenge the government. This is the legacy of 18 years of so-called “social partnership” – a “partnership” which is so meaningless that employers in Irish Ferries, An Post and elsewhere can simply tear up their side of the deal at will.

It should surely be clear to everyone now that the ‘Race to the Bottom’ will only be halted by a strong fighting trade union movement. Far from “social partnership” being a means of preventing exploitation and job displacement, it has actually provided the cover which is allowing this to happen. Agreement to contracting out some work is actually part of ‘Sustaining Progress’.

It is time now that “social partnership” be consigned to the dustbin of history. We need now more than ever a trade union movement which will make a reality of the slogan of an injury to one being the concern of all. We need a trade union movement which will set itself the task of organising the unorganised, of recruiting into membership workers across all sectors of the economy who are being ruthlessly exploited. Gama, nursing homes, meat factories and many more have shown this exploitation. “Outsourcing” and other forms of exploitation will be defeated by recruiting the “outsourced” and exploited workers into the unions and fighting alongside them against that exploitation.

Seize control
All of us as trade union members must rally to this cause. We need to seize back control of our unions and we need to make those unions into fighting bodies which will stand up for the vulnerable and exploited and which will show clearly our strength in numbers.

The direct action of Irish Ferries workers has shown the way. The challenge to all of us is to ensure that their action is the spark which ignites a fight back and which demonstrates to government and employers that we will no longer tolerate the exploitation of our fellow workers

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Comments (2 of 2)

The floodgates have been opened - from within the city

by FG

Wed Dec 07, 2005 20:46

What is this gung-ho? Multiplied on the Galway posting. Have you not been reading the omens on Indymedia? Yesterday the executive of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions endorsed the statement of the National Implementation Body with the support of SIPTU.

A resolution based on the National Minumum Wage of €7.65, rather than €3.50, an hour for relacement seafarers is on the way.

Go back now and read everything said about the need to win this at all costs, about this being the test of what kind of a society we'll have, about 'do or die' time for the trade unions. The trade union bureaucracy has already, days before Friday, accepted the turfing out of union members and unfortunate people working for half their wages in their place. Ferries sailing without unions as the redcircling runs down.

It happened in the Independent newspaper. It could happen anywhere now. The union leaders have given the green light to the race to the bottom.

Take your workplace. Management offer big lumps with a deadline. Many or most accept. New workers are brought in on half the wages (the National Minimum Wage). The union says this is a disgrace, we'll strike, we'll blockade, we'll call the entire country out.
Management, the members, the media, trade union members all over the country say, but you had all this, you had December 9th, and YOU ACCEPTED IT IN IRISH FERRIES!

Defeat. Time for those with a head on their shoulders to regroup.

worker-peasant unity

by jon

Thu Dec 08, 2005 02:57

When outsourcing and downsizing occurs, there needs to be a shift of workers from the cities to the country side where organic agricultural communes are ready and available to the fellow workers, so the bosses cannot starve them into submission, which has been their traditional method of destroying the workers opposition. This means that preparative work must already be done, so the transition causes no hardship to the abused and unemployed workers from the trade union based city sites. Communes not prisions.

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Together we can beat Irish Ferries

Comments (2 of 2)