Covid-19 TULF View

The Covid-19 pandemic represents a crisis of unprecedented proportions for the working classes and yet the response of the leadership of the large trade unions has been lacklustre to put it mildly. In an Irish Times article co-authored with SIPTU General Secretary Joe Cunningham (“Social solidarity must be central to post-emergency” April 20th), and again in a lengthy article on Fórsa’s website (“Ireland, the Pandemic and the EU Recovery Plan”), Fórsa’s General Secretary Kevin Callinan has articulated a vision for the way forward based on social partnership (re-packaged as “social dialogue”) at both Irish and EU level. The Trade Union Left Forum — which includes activists from different unions and seeks to build a radical alternative to the failed policies of social partnership — disagrees with this approach for a number of reasons.

 

 

We know from the experience of the bailout that the EU’s agenda is one of austerity, privatisation and attacks on the pay and conditions of workers, especially lower-paid workers, and as such it is futile to look to the EU for answers. If there is any international interest served by the EU, it is the interests of international business, and certainly not those of labour.

 

The prospects for social partnership at national level are not much better. The role fulfilled by trade unions under social partnership is basically equivalent to an advocacy or charity organisation. Even if social partnership were capable of delivering gains,  the fact that this takes place through the process of lobbying rather than mobilisation of rank-and-file members raises the question as to what incentive an individual worker has to join a trade union in the first place. Therefore it is no surprise that the years of social partnership saw a dramatic fall in trade union density, which halved from over 60% in the 1980s to just over 30% in 2009 (“Rising to the Occasion? Trade Union Revitalisation and Migrant Workers in Ireland” M. Hyland, 2015).

 

 

The top-down and fundamentally bureaucratic nature of social partnership also saw a general hollowing out of the rank-and-file activist base even of unions that did recruit large numbers of members during this period. This was severely exposed by the 2008 crisis and subsequent bailout, when unions were at a complete loss as to how to respond.

 

The end of social partnership formally came in December 2009, when, in the midst of an orgy of media vilification of public servants, the Government reneged on a deal with unions to bring about “savings” of €1.3 billion in public-sector pay and instead unilaterally imposed pay cuts. Union leaders cried foul at the Government reneging on the deal, yet the deal they supported — essentially to have their members furloughed without pay for two weeks each year — would have cut their members’ pay anyway, and the fact that they were prepared to agree to this says more about the bankruptcy of social partnership than anything else in the preceding 20 years. However, some unions took a more radical stand than others. When the Government announced plans to extend the pay cuts to workers in semi-states, the unions in that sector threatened “unholy war” and the Government backed down.

 

 

As we face into another recession, unions must realise that the only means through which to protect their members is by organising from the ground up and targeting the structural obstacles to inter-union solidarity, such as the 1990 Industrial Relations Act, rather than by pinning their hopes on external sources, whether that is the Government, the EU or the electoral process. As Frederick Douglass noted, power concedes nothing without a struggle.

 

 

The Covid-19 pandemic represents a crisis of unprecedented proportions for the working classes and yet the response of the leadership of the large trade unions has been lacklustre to put it mildly. In an Irish Times article co-authored with SIPTU General Secretary Joe Cunningham (“Social solidarity must be central to post-emergency” April 20th), and again in a lengthy article on Fórsa’s website (“Ireland, the Pandemic and the EU Recovery Plan”), Fórsa’s General Secretary Kevin Callinan has articulated a vision for the way forward based on social partnership (re-packaged as “social dialogue”) at both Irish and EU level. The Trade Union Left Forum — which includes activists from different unions and seeks to build a radical alternative to the failed policies of social partnership — disagrees with this approach for a number of reasons.

 

 

We know from the experience of the bailout that the EU’s agenda is one of austerity, privatisation and attacks on the pay and conditions of workers, especially lower-paid workers, and as such it is futile to look to the EU for answers. If there is any international interest served by the EU, it is the interests of international business, and certainly not those of labour.

 

The prospects for social partnership at national level are not much better. The role fulfilled by trade unions under social partnership is basically equivalent to an advocacy or charity organisation. Even if social partnership were capable of delivering gains,  the fact that this takes place through the process of lobbying rather than mobilisation of rank-and-file members raises the question as to what incentive an individual worker has to join a trade union in the first place. Therefore it is no surprise that the years of social partnership saw a dramatic fall in trade union density, which halved from over 60% in the 1980s to just over 30% in 2009 (“Rising to the Occasion? Trade Union Revitalisation and Migrant Workers in Ireland” M. Hyland, 2015).

 

 

The top-down and fundamentally bureaucratic nature of social partnership also saw a general hollowing out of the rank-and-file activist base even of unions that did recruit large numbers of members during this period. This was severely exposed by the 2008 crisis and subsequent bailout, when unions were at a complete loss as to how to respond.

 

The end of social partnership formally came in December 2009, when, in the midst of an orgy of media vilification of public servants, the Government reneged on a deal with unions to bring about “savings” of €1.3 billion in public-sector pay and instead unilaterally imposed pay cuts. Union leaders cried foul at the Government reneging on the deal, yet the deal they supported — essentially to have their members furloughed without pay for two weeks each year — would have cut their members’ pay anyway, and the fact that they were prepared to agree to this says more about the bankruptcy of social partnership than anything else in the preceding 20 years. However, some unions took a more radical stand than others. When the Government announced plans to extend the pay cuts to workers in semi-states, the unions in that sector threatened “unholy war” and the Government backed down.

 

 

As we face into another recession, unions must realise that the only means through which to protect their members is by organising from the ground up and targeting the structural obstacles to inter-union solidarity, such as the 1990 Industrial Relations Act, rather than by pinning their hopes on external sources, whether that is the Government, the EU or the electoral process. As Frederick Douglass noted, power concedes nothing without a struggle.