Irish trade unionism and the end of Civil War politics?

By Sean Byers, delivered at the TULF meeting a political strategy for the trade union movement. In December 2015, as the Right2Water campaign continued to confound its opponents with mass demonstrations attracting upwards of 100,000 people, former Taoiseach John Bruton made this revealing statement to the Irish media: FG and FF have complemented each other through Irish history. In Ireland we have had consensus about major long-term policies largely because we haven’t had a sharp left/right or ideological divide. We have had differences, but they are differences about other things, not economics, and that has served the country very well… […]

All the key issues?

Last September the Trade Union Left Forum asked, will this Government guarantee the right to union representation for workers? (The full article can be read at www.tuleftforum.com/will-government-guarantee-right-union-representation-workers/). Judging by yesterday’s press statement by the Minister for jobs, enterprise, and innovation, Richard Bruton, on legislating for reform of the Industrial Relations Act (2001), the answer has to be a resounding and disappointing but not surprising No. The minister’s statement added very little to what he had already stated, and what was leaked to the media before Christmas. The Fine Gael minister has been clear that any legislation brought forward in this […]

Labour Party pushing the privatisation of schools

The new education “reforms” being promoted by Brendan Howlin and Ruairí Quinn are a step closer to the all-out privatisation of our schools. In essence, schools would be given a lump sum in public funding but would have the authority and autonomy to spend this as they saw fit. They would have control over class sizes and over the number of teachers they required, how many special-needs assistance they required, and other resources and materials. This would remove the national regulations that the state attaches to funding, which require certain standards and best practice be met for every school, so […]

Will this Government guarantee the right to union representation for workers?

The Labour Party, in this centenary year of the heroic struggle of 1913, claims to be committed to providing the legal right to trade union representation and collective bargaining for workers with their employers. They claim it is part of the Programme for Government that they negotiated with their coalition partners, Fine Gael—though in reality all this commits them to is reforming existing legislation to be in line with recent rulings by the European Court of Human Rights. The relevant minister, Richard Bruton (Fine Gael), requested submissions on this subject earlier in the year and has made a commitment to […]