Mar
04

RIP Anne Casey

It is with deep sadness that we communicate the death of Anne Casey.

Anne was a lifelong trade unionist, founding activist in the TULF and its first secretary. Anne was a member of Siptu up to her passing. Anne was particularly committed to trade union and worker education. She understood and saw education as liberating and empowering and a key element of building a militant and fighting trade union movement. She is missed by many in her family, by friends, by union activists and by those involved in the fight for socialism. Anne was a truly honest and brave comrade and a friend to many of us.

We particularly send our condolences to her family and partner Colin who spoke at and attended many TULF meetings and wrote the TULF pamphlet on privatisation.

Solidarity and our thoughts are with Anne’s family and friends.

March 4th, 2015 by TU Left Admin | Type: Standard
Filed Under: News
Mar
01

Politics, Policy and Organising in the Windy City: Lessons from 2015 Chicago for Irish Trade Unionism

Two important events happened in Chicago in February 2015, which hold lessons for the Irish trade union movement. Firstly, a major report was released by the Chicago Teachers Union, the highly politicised and organised 2012 strike winners and enemies of the Chicago establishment. It was entitled A Just Chicago: Fighting for the City Our Students Deserve (full report available at http://www.ctunet.com/quest-center/research/position-papers/a-just-chicago ). It proposed wide ranging solutions to a crisis in city education, which went far beyond base union issues such as pay and conditions. Situating school as the heart of communities, it also proposed substantive solutions to a range of community problems like housing, justice, employment and health.

In the same month, and more significantly in many ways, alderman (equivalent of council with less power) and the mayoral elections took place. Chicago driven by big business ‘machine’ politics was severely challenged for the first time in 30 years by the victories of a range of outsider and left candidates in various wards across the city and the forcing of Major Rahm Emmanuel into a run off with the Chicago Teachers Union backed candidate Jesus ‘Chey’ Garcia.

For the city the victory of the Chicago Teachers Union in the 2012 Teachers Strike and their challenge in terms of policy platform and elections in 2015 is based on core underlying principles and practices which hold huge transformative potential for trade unionism, workers and society more generally.

Firstly, the Chicago Teachers Union puts considerable time and resources into effective research. This takes a number of important forms. Research is geared towards tangible existing needs and longer term visions for education. This provides a counter narrative as well as readily translating into election platforms. More important than that though, is that research in the Chicago Teachers Union facilitates organising, and in particular a breaking down of the division between union and community through the merging of ‘union’ issues and ‘community’ issues. Consequently, more broadly building support for left-wing and grassroots activism.

Secondly, the Chicago Teachers Union research does not occur in isolation. It is part of a wider organising prospective, which emphasises high participation and confrontation backed by democratised union structures. Following insurrectionist election victory from the Caucus of Rank and File Educators (CORE), in 2012 and built on over a decade of grassroots education campaigning, the CTU embarked on a major campaign of industrial action and won. A 9 day strike was famously extended by a day to give the entire membership time to read and thus reached an informed decision on proposals to end the strike action. High participation in bargaining, as opposed to closed teams, expanded school by school councils and reduced emphasis on full time staffers, changed the dynamics of the teachers union.

Research itself was seen not as an elite media narrative alone but an integral tool in organising within the union. Breaking down the division between community and union was also seen not as a loose alliance of representative bodies but a recognition that union members themselves are members of a community, which needed to be built with the union.

Research breaking down the divide between the union and community perspective, organising emphasising high participation and deep democracy merge in political terms in the form of emphasis on challenging politics from the left but also from below. It becomes, in a city dominated by big business influence over politics and a centre of capitals onslaught, a new way of doing politics as well as a different vision. The fact that a relatively unknown Mayor candidate out resourced 16-1 can push the former White House Chief of Staff to a run off shows the political strength of such a vision. The run off will lead to a second round of voting in April, with a major win for the left possible.

For Ireland, the first message, in particular for teachers unions, is that members want solutions to the problems of their profession and communities as a whole and not just the bread and butter of pay and conditions. This may be particularly relevant for jobs defined by their ‘social benefit’. They also want to deal with a range of issues as a member of a community, from housing to healthcare. Secondly this breaking down of the barrier between community and union, or whole worker organising, as referred to by Jane McAlevey is backed by and driven by the membership themselves. There is nothing new in seeing a union member as a worker, a person with a whole range of class interests who’s life does not end at the end of a shift. But this has been lost in recent decades as the servicing of immediate workplace issues through professional staff has taken over.

Research can support members and communities to fight. Organisers do the same. For a left of the trade union movement increasingly breaking from the Labour Party, years of partnership and conservative policy, these lessons in terms of organising, engagement with communities and electoral ambitions seem all the more apt. And important for the ASTI and TUI as they tackle the issue of Junior Certificate reform and as early childcare educators seek to organise.

March 1st, 2015 by TU Left Admin | Type: Standard
Filed Under: News Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
Jan
30

The strike is the key to union renewal and working class power

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Reviving the strike – How working people can regain power and transform America By Joe Burns

Available on pdf at https://www.tuleftforum.com/discussion-papers/ and for purchase at http://www.revivingthestrike.org/

Striking to stop production

This is a must-read book for trade unionists and left activists. Though it deals mainly with the American labour movement and conditions there, its main points and recommendations easily apply in Ireland.

The author, Joe Burns, is a union lawyer, negotiator and activist for many decades, most recently involved in the airline industry and health services. He is adamant that the movement needs to return to the strike as the essential part of union revival, to pull the movement out of the crisis of declining membership and power and pull our class out of poverty and desperation.

In this book he describes what he means by strike and explains the traditional form of strike prevalent within the movement in the 1920s and 30s and immediately after the Second World War, at a time of massive union growth and increased power for working people.

The traditional strike, and the workers who undertook it, aimed at stopping production, stopping the business from functioning. This was done with pickets, which blocked scabs from replacing the workers on strike or crossing the picket line, or with factory occupations or the sit-down strike. Whichever way it was done, the workers knew they were stopping the factory producing or the shop from opening, whether they were ceasing to handle goods in solidarity or refusing to co-operate with businesses where there was a strike, with the aim of hurting the employer economically.

Not only did the traditional strike strengthen the demands being made but it showed workers the power they possess within society. In addition to this it gave practical meaning and expression to solidarity. Workers would engage in solidarity strikes and actions to support their fellow-workers elsewhere. This traditional form of strike gave meaning and power to collective bargaining; without it, the author argues, unions are powerless.

The book describes the host of legal and legislative attacks on the strike that have since been introduced—some even welcomed by the movement. The contradiction that Joe’s book identifies is that, as the movement has sought legislation to establish and formalise collective bargaining, this moved the unions away from work-place power and into a dependence on process and on union officials.

The state—as this crisis has reminded us all—is a class state. It exists to secure the interests of capital and to maintain its system of production. Therefore, legislation by the state, even that won by unions, is fundamentally conservative. It established a regulatory relationship of control over workers, designed to pull the movement away from struggle and into formal processes that have made many aspects of the traditional strike illegal.

While concentrating on the history of the strike and its importance to the movement, the book also provides a general critique of other renewal strategies that are in vogue but that ignore the fundamental importance of the strike. Joe suggests that, despite two decades of activity and billions in workers’ money being pumped into organising, corporate campaigning, political leveraging, and other non-confrontational strategies, this has failed to build power or even numbers for the labour movement in the United States.

Reviving the strike in Ireland

What about Ireland today? Will we repeat mistakes made in the United States, or will we commit ourselves to a renewal strategy, with the strike as an essential weapon and the means by which we grow and strengthen the movement and our class?

In Ireland, both the strike and other forms of action are primarily controlled by the Industrial Relations Act (1990), which limits the definition of a trade dispute to disputes over employment or terms and condition of employment, making political or solidarity strikes impossible. It also limits picketing to peaceful acts, making the blockading of scabs illegal, and greatly restricts secondary picketing (aimed at employments not directly involved in the dispute but that may provide leverage for winning the fight).

The strike has also come under more recent attack from the EU Court of Justice, which has introduced “proportionality,” and its definition of a proportionate response, into the equation.

Just as in the United States, the legislation here is really designed to prevent workers taking militant action, providing for a safe withdrawal of labour as a form of protest but making actions to stop production, or to economically hurt the employer, illegal.

So, how can we revive the strike today? Firstly, there is no point—indeed it is damaging—to make irresponsible and hopeless calls for national strikes over political issues when no strategy exists for doing this. This is opportunistic and used only for short-term political gains, and it damages workers’ morale and organisation.

But reviving the traditional strike, which aims to stop production, increase solidarity, and build class-consciousness, has to be seriously considered. The movement must accept that the law is not our law, and therefore operating outside the law can be the right thing to do. Indeed we would not exist as a movement if millions of workers around the world had always acted over the years within the law.

Reviving the kind of militancy and awareness needed will not be done overnight, and provisions have to be made for protecting the assets of the movement, the pooled collective resources of workers, from being lost in litigation. But if the movement is to survive, a strategy must be agreed for moving in this direction.

Lobbying and soft campaigning, while necessary, won’t save the movement. Workers taking action, like the Greyhound workers last year during their lockout, at least provides us with hope that we can revive the strike as an essential component of organising and union renewal.

January 30th, 2015 by TU Left Admin | Type: Standard
Filed Under: News Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
Jan
18

It’s time for a radically new Congress

Ireland: the greatest small country in the world to do business in. Unfortunately, it’s not the greatest small country in the world to live or work in. Ultimately that’s the success of the business class (the actual capitalist class of owners and speculators, the big farmer class and the layer of ‘management’ that run capitalism here for their masters) and the failure of the trade union and workers’ movement.

Low corporation tax, low income tax for high earners, tax avoidance schemes that are ultimately compensated for by workers, indirect taxes that go to bondholders, low investment in public infrastructure, public health, public education and public transport services are testament to that fact. So is the fact that we have the second highest prevalence of low pay in the entire OECD.

Arguably the greatest failure, however, is that after more than 100 years of fighting for it, we still don’t have real and effective collective bargaining legislation. We’re four years into this particular Fine Gael and Labour Party government and we’ve seen numerous, timely and opportunistic press releases about what may be included in the new collective bargaining legislation, but still no Heads of Bill have been published. When it is finally published, it will almost certainly not be real collective bargaining (and this view is formed by what we have seen to date from the Department) but a menu for employers to avoid dealing with trade unions directly.

The Irish government can guarantee the entire banking system and liquidate nationalized banks overnight, heaping tens of billions of debt onto the shoulders of children who haven’t even been born yet, but in 70 years we can’t fall into line with the rest of the civilized world and give workers in Ireland the basic right to trade union recognition and collective bargaining.  There can be no greater indictment of our failure as a movement than this.

With the imminent retirement of David Beggs as General Secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions this year, and with the appointment of a new general secretary in the coming weeks, isn’t it time a discussion began about what the role of Congress is and what we want from the new leader of the Irish trade union movement?

A good starting point would be to recognize two things:

  • Within the political establishment, the Irish trade union movement currently has very little power.
  • The Labour Party is the tail wagging the dog of the trade union movement and is preventing any cohesive and sustained fight against austerity, and the debt imposed on the people, that is ripping working class communities apart.

Arguably Congress’s warnings about the impact of government policies on our economy and on our society since the crash in 2008 have been right. With consistent ICTU pre-Budget and post-Budget predictions about austerity resulting in unemployment, emigration, poverty etc, successive governments ignore Congress at will. Every year the trade union movement argues for a stimulus package, utilizing taxes in a more efficient manner, investment in public services, and is ignored again and again by ‘there is no alternative’ politicians.

Reasons for this are varied but most important is the fact that the ‘movement’ cannot (or in some cases, will not) mobilise their hundreds of thousands of members to take action. This is recognized by the established political parties. They know after 23 years of social partnership, trade unions are more accustomed to sitting in board rooms than in community centres, and asking nicely for scraps from the table rather than demanding the food, the scraps and the table itself.

Yet instead of attempting to get back into communities to win the hearts and minds of workers and the unemployed, and build our muscle in the workplace and in society, we continue to put forward sophisticated and comprehensive economic arguments (whether you agree with them or not) that will again be ignored come Budget day. We all know the Einstein cliché about the definition of insanity: “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

The leaders of our movement have a responsibility to be honest with themselves and with us. They need to ask what it is the movement has actually achieved over the past 30 years or so of so-called partnership and agree with workers a clear alternative strategy other than a return of partnership and the continued decline of the movement.

Almost all of the workplace rights we enjoy today – lunch breaks, annual leave, maternity leave, parental leave, force majeure leave, et al. – come as a result of wins by trade unions across Europe which are then normalized through EU Directives, and also through the very real experience of gains achieved in the Soviet Union and socialist countries which forced concessions to workers here.

Yes, the movement has managed to prevent some of the worst excesses of austerity (restoration of the minimum wage, JLC’s), but that’s not progress, that’s just a slower retreat.

Economic and social analysis is vitally important. However, equally, if not more important, is the ability to formulate tactics and strategies to have those policies implemented. If the movement cannot mobilise its members to take action or vote in a coordinated manner in which they recommend, then the economic analysis is redundant.

The Right2Water campaign has shown in some ways how powerful this can be. After only two major protests – planned, funded and coordinated by only five trade unions – we saw the biggest U-turn in government policy in decades. The unions did the economic analysis, attended local community meetings where they spoke on the issue, but most importantly they allowed communities to take control of the issue while they facilitated them. Interestingly, none of the unions concerned are affiliated to the Labour Party and have been criticized by members of the Party very publicly for their stance.

What the trade union movement needs to do now is recognise its major flaws, including its inability to activate its members. It has to reinvigorate itself within working class communities and genuinely start to question its political strategy – including affiliations to political parties.

The new general secretary of Congress has the ability to harness the enormous potential that the trade union movement has to offer. They can help to deliver a radically new Congress and a more progressive society. However, it will not happen if we continue to cultivate the failed policies and relationships of the past.

We need a movement that has a strong economic and social analysis, has a strategy to achieve its goals on behalf of its members and is not afraid to use strong tactics to achieve those goals, no matter who is in government.

The movement must politicize its members, educate them, facilitate them and get back into the communities where their ultimate power lies.

That’s what the role of Congress is. That’s what we need from a new leader of our movement.

January 18th, 2015 by TU Left Admin | Type: Standard
Filed Under: News Tags: , , , , ,
Dec
16

Class-consciousness is increasing

The Right2Water campaign and communities from all over the country last week held their third massive national mobilisation within a few months, and the message was clear: people won’t be bullied or bribed, and they see through government lies and propaganda.

The recent retreat by the government is not enough, and is not accepted by the people. The government has lost the Irish Water issue and has no popular mandate. The view of hundreds of thousands of people and families is irrefutable; the government does not have our support to govern.

Last week’s protest followed an intensification of violence, supervision and vilification of communities resisting Irish Water and water charges. But the resistance is growing. Mobilisation against the installation of water meters has spread throughout the country. Peaceful protests against Garda brutality capture the mood.

And all this has occurred peacefully, despite constant propaganda from the O’Brien-dominated media and the spin from establishment politicians and Irish Water itself.

Lies were put out deliberately before this demonstration to break the movement and discourage people from attending. They failed. They failed miserably. The diverse platform of speakers and supporters and the magnificent diversity of the near hundred thousand people in attendance demonstrates the unity, resolve and determination of this burgeoning political movement.

On the day, protest songs and rousing music were provided by a number of local bands, with Damien Dempsey and Glen Hansard showing their support for this growing national movement.

Clearly, over the last few months this has developed from a resistance into a movement, and this is the potential that must now be harnessed not only to secure victory on this issue but to tip the balance of power in Ireland away from billionaires and their political system to communities and working people.

The question now is not whether the government resigns, or who from Right2Water is going to stand in the next election. The relevant question we have to ask is, How do we strengthen the politicisation of this movement and strengthen community groups and the ties that are developing in a very positive way. Unless we do this, the rich will still continue to govern and rule us through the vast array of instruments they have, including the government, senior civil service, procurement arrangement, media, European Union, tax arrangements, trade agreements, IMF, Gardaí, etc.

We must, therefore, be in this for the long haul and not just for short-term electoral advantage. For even if you elect a progressive left coalition, unless they are committed to a progressive withdrawal from the European Union and to challenging the power of corporations they will not deliver any meaningful change.

To do this, these difficult and challenging issues need to be discussed within the movement and popularised within our class. They cannot be ignored, though they will be ignored by those people seeking to use the issue of water charges for their own short-term electoral strategy. We cannot allow this to continue, or this movement will be lost and this historic opportunity wasted. We need to begin building popular support for a withdrawal from the EU and for demands that challenge the power of corporations in our country.

December 16th, 2014 by TU Left Admin | Type: Standard
Filed Under: News Tags: , , , , , , ,
Dec
01

New Briefing Document: Public Enterprise versus Private Inefficiency

The Trade Union Left Forum has put this brief guide, available at https://www.tuleftforum.com/discussion-papers/, for union activists to use in combating commonly used arguments in favour of privatisation and against public ownership. There is mounting evidence of the value of public-sector investment, compared with the inefficiency and waste of private-led investment; yet this is silenced by the privately owned media, just as they call into question the right of communities to peacefully resist the imposition of water charges.

We have all had arguments with a friend or colleague where the claim of the efficiency of the market is made, that competition is good for customers, without anything to substantiate it. Or we have sat angrily on a Sunday morning listening to radio commentators boldly say that private enterprise is superior to public, that privatisation provides savings for customers, or that the state benefits from the sale of public companies, without ever having to provide any evidence to support this highly political statement.

This guide is to help activists with short facts and figures to help you to combat these arguments, or to send tweets, texts or e-mail to the media so as to raise public awareness of the damage privatisation does and the great value that public ownership brings and can bring to our economy.

So, next time you’re in a pub with mates, or listening to a current affairs programme or being canvassed for a vote and you hear one of these false claims being made, don’t stay silent: use the evidence in this guide to counter their claims.

We hope you find this useful, and please distribute it as far and wide as possible.

Jimmy Nolan

Chairperson, Trade Union Left Forum

 

 

December 1st, 2014 by TU Left Admin | Type: Standard
Filed Under: News Tags: , , , , , ,
Nov
23

Rejecting the slurs and seizing the moment

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In recent weeks we have seen a concerted and co-ordinated effort by the Government, the Gardaí and the media to paint protesters as dangerous and violent, with an agenda of manipulating communities into confrontation for the sake of confrontation. This is a deliberate and outrageous misrepresentation of protesters and communities that are opposing Irish Water, the installation of meters, and water charges more generally. It is insulting to our class and shows the contempt in which the establishment hold us.

Reports of violence against Irish Water employees and gardaí are spun and widely commented on without a shred of evidence. Meanwhile photographs of Garda brutality are blatantly ignored. The Taoiseach, Tánaiste, senior politicians and now even David Begg, General Secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, openly accuse protesters of violence and even imply membership of armed organisations, without the need to show any evidence. Extremely convenient “bomb threats” are made public and given hours of air time. Raids are made on dissident republicans at opportune times. And then in the Dáil a Government TD likens protesters to ISIS terrorists.

This is all a co-ordinated effort to blacken the name of protest and turn people away from standing up for themselves. We have to ask ourselves, Why we are seeing the most widespread and overt attacks, physical and ideological, on working-class communities in decades? Why are the Government, the media (private and state), judiciary, Gardaí, a variety of both domestic and foreign corporations, various chambers of commerce and the European Union all lined up against us?

The state—not just the Government political parties—are losing the support of the people. Communities are joining the dots between the debt and austerity, between establishment parties and private corporations, between the media and big business, and between the state and the European Union. And this is dangerous: this is dangerous to the establishment and to the position of Ireland within the global economic system. This is why the state is now scrambling to crush communities and blacken the name of activism and protest.

The state wants us to play by their rules, and confine ourselves to their truncated conception of democracy. They want to reduce politics to the farce of the Dáil and of elections every few years. This is safe; this is their ground. But people—very many brave working-class people—have managed to bring politics back into the street, and that scares the establishment parties. The working class are the majority, but they are not meant to organise, and they are certainly not meant to engage in political action. At best they should passively vote every few year for one of the list of political parties approved by the Irish Times.

This overtly violent response and increasingly desperate reaction of the state should give us courage and the conviction that we are winning; but it should also give us even more reason to think deeply about tactics for now and strategy for the long term. And that is why the beautiful, almost poetic candlelight vigil outside Coolock Garda Station protesting against police brutality was so right.

Knowing the state’s tactics of trying to create violence to discredit the movement, of planting stories, and of possibly even infiltrating movements to create splits and division, means that we have to be clever and not fall into their traps. Every time they hit us we must stand with dignity and discipline. Unity in the national movement must be maintained, and the right of peaceful, dignified and militant protest defended.

Deeper thought on long-term strategy among groups and within communities is now needed. But a big turn-out on 10 December will keep the state under pressure and show that their tactics are failing.

November 23rd, 2014 by TU Left Admin | Type: Standard
Filed Under: News Tags: , , , , , , ,
Nov
11

Water charges the EU and TTIP!

The origin of the planned water charges lies in the EU’s Water Framework Directive (2000), which provided for full cost recovery for water use and whose Article 9 states; ‘Member States shall take account of the principle of recovery of the costs of water services …’ It also required Member States to have in place water-pricing policies by 2010. The Directive was transposed into Irish Law in 2003. The Water Framework Directive, which seeks to commodify water provision through the establishment of the principle of recovery of the costs of water services. The EU took advantage of the ‘bailout’ to make it a condition of the ‘loans’.  This will open the way for the sale of Irish Water either in whole or in part, ostensibly to complete the single market or to promote competition ‘in the interests of the consumer’. This is just one reason why there is such government resistance to a constitutional referendum to permanently retain Irish Water in public  ownership – the other is TTIP.

Both sides in the TTIP negotiations have made clear their intention to use TTIP to get access to what is described as “public monopolies;” that is, public utilities including water. These services would then be vulnerable to greater outsourcing and private tendering for service delivery and eventually, to privatisation. TTIP would open up public procurement contracts to the private sector, meaning that social, environmental or “public good” goals in public procurement would be removed. A private monopoly can fix its price at an unaffordable level, as Bechtel did in Bolivia, leading to a popular uprising; the termination of the contract and replacement of the government.

It would also make the nationalisation (or renationalisation) of services or resources virtually impossible, as incredibly, corporations would be able to sue for loss of future and expected profits. This is facilitated by the inclusion of an (ISDS) Investor – State Dispute Settlement clause in TTIP. TTIP would increase the pressure for the privatisation of ‘services of general interest’, such as water services. Foreign suppliers of services of general interest should not be entitled to claim “forgone profits” through ISDS. This provision, in effect would further legalise neo-liberalism as the economic and social framework in Ireland and the EU.

But even if ISDS is removed from TTIP, the main goal remains; to remove regulatory ‘barriers’ which restrict the potential profits to be made by transnational corporations on both sides of the Atlantic. Yet these ‘barriers’ are in reality some of our most prized social standards and environmental regulations, such as labour rights, food safety rules, regulations on the use of toxic chemicals and digital privacy laws. Public water provision is only one of the services under threat from TTIP. Both water charges and TTIP must be defeated!

Frank Keoghan

November 11th, 2014 by TU Left Admin | Type: Standard
Filed Under: News Tags: , , , , , ,
Nov
09

Resisting the Water Charges and Defending Our Right to Protest

We are residents of a number of communities in Dublin North East. Over the last number of months we have come together to resist the installation of water meters in our areas, and to oppose this unfair double taxation that the government calls water charges.

For most of us, this is the first time in our lives that we have engaged in any sort of protest and have only done so because we simply cannot take any more of this government’s austerity agenda. At all times we have sought to resist the installation of these meters in a peaceful, dignified and resolute manner.

We are therefore appalled at the recent developments in how An Garda Síochána have policed our protests, and with the blatant campaign to vilify and demonise us that the government and Gardai, supported by segments of the media, launched in recent days.

They have claimed that Gardai are routinely assaulted at protests, and that our movement has been infiltrated by a “sinister fringe” or by “dissident republicans”. We categorically reject these claims. In recent weeks we have been subjected to heavy handed and abusive policing by the Gardai. Men and women, protesting peacefully, have been pushed, pulled and punched by Gardai. To our knowledge not one of our fellow protesters has been convicted of assaulting a member of An Garda Síochána, and violent protest is not something we would endorse or tolerate.

With respect to the claim that our movement has been infiltrated by sinister elements, we reject this also. We are the people on the streets, day in, day out, peacefully resisting these meters; we are mothers, fathers, parents, pensioners, workers and unemployed – we are not sinister, dissident republicans.

In light of these developments, we are genuinely fearful that the Gardai, at the behest of the government, are preparing to become even more aggressive towards our protests and to eviscerate our right to protest.

We therefore call on all of the people of Ireland to come out and support us this coming Monday, 10 November 2014, in Dublin North East. We fear that GMC Sierra will attempt, with heavy Garda support, to enter our areas and install meters that we do not want. It is our intention to continue to resist this unjust tax in a peaceful and dignified manner, but we fear that the decision has been made to strip us of a meaningful right to protest.

Each and every one of us has resolved to resist this tax and these meters, we will continue to do so in a peaceful way, but if we are to succeed we need the support of other communities. If we all stand together, we can resist these charges, retain water as a public good and human right, and vindicate our right to protest.

Communities Against Water Charges
communitiesagainstwatercharges@gmail.com
09 November 2014

November 9th, 2014 by TU Left Admin | Type: Standard
Filed Under: News
Nov
02

Real trade unionism in action – right2water

The type of class-conscious and politically active trade unionism that the Trade Union Left Forum has advocated at many of its meetings, and in its publications, is truly on display and being built in the Right2Water campaign.

The 1st November saw the second national protest against the water charges and the potential privatisation of what should be a guaranteed, universally available public resource. It is estimated that between 150,000 and 200,000 people took part. This follows the 100,000 who marched on 11th October as well as the daily militant class struggle being fought in communities throughout the country, led in the main by self-organised working people.

The Right2Water campaign, led by five unions of both the private and the public sector (Mandate, Unite, CPSU, CWU, and OPATSI), has provided a broad national platform for a variety of groups, parties and communities and has maintained a progressive and impressive unity, despite attempts by some to break it.

This is now clearly and without doubt the biggest and most militant mobilisation of working people this country has seen for some time. As trade unionists it is wonderful to see unions take a leading role in the national campaign and beginning to build alliances within the movement but also with community groups and tens of thousands of workers who are not members of any union.

It is not pleasant to have to draw attention to the role of the leadership of the largest union in the country, SIPTU; but while it organises for justice in society and fairness at work, its absence from a campaign where unions are actively campaigning and building towards these goals is regrettable. Many thousands of SIPTU members are active in this campaign on the ground but by the leadership not endorsing Right2Water they are playing into the hands of a right-wing Government.

The intervention by the general president of SIPTU, Jack O’Connor, the day before up to 200,000 mainly working class people marched in support of the Right2Water campaign on 1st November, was particularly unhelpful. His criticism on Newstalk (the radio station owned by Denis O’Brien) of the Right2Water campaign and calling for “realistic” policies was regrettable. Calling for concessions, such as “water tax-credits,” to placate opposition to a tax that the trade union movement in general correctly labels as regressive, only assists those seeking to undermine the momentum of a working class mobilisation not seen since the PAYE marches of the late 1970s and early 1980s.

O’Connor’s call in the wake of the mass mobilisation of 1st November for a Referendum on public control of water supply is welcomed. However, it will only be effective if it is followed up by an acceptance that the ongoing water commodification process overseen by Irish Water must be stopped immediately.

A constitutional amendment to secure water as a publicly owned universal resource, paid for through general taxation is a proposal that the TULF will give full consideration to as this struggle develops. We must remember that water charges were beaten in the 1980s and mid-1990s; and if we are to make this a lasting victory, a constitutional amendment may be the demand to mobilise around.

The TULF take seriously also the impact the closure of Irish Water, which was formed as vehicle for privatisation and as such can have no constructive role to play in the supply of a public resource, will have on public service workers who have been transferred to its control and these workers should be secured in employment as part of public water provision in the future.

Denis O’Brien’s role in this growing political struggle is crucial. He owns the main water meter installation company and so is the not so hidden hand behind the offensive on working class communities who are resisting their imposition. He is also a major link between the Fine Gael party, and the present government, and the international neo-liberal agenda which seeks to attack democratic ownership wherever it is found. As the current struggle develops its clear class nature will see an intensification of the focus on O’Brien and his cohorts.

Members of Unions not involved in the Right2Water campaign must begin to challenge their own unions to become involved and strengthening the campaign and the resistance movement. On this basis the TULF will shortly launch a petition for union members to sign to encourage those unions not involved in the right2water campaign to join it and strengthen this working class mobilisation.

The combined strength of progressive unions and local communities, playing a heroic role facing constant harassment and brutality from the Gardaí, has the potential to transform this country. This alliance is crucial, and must be built on. Unity must be maintained. Political education and demands must be expanded, within unions and communities, to secure water as a resource, to win this once and for all, and to strengthen our class in other areas of struggle.

November 2nd, 2014 by TU Left Admin | Type: Standard
Filed Under: News Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
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