24-HOUR PUBLIC SERVICE STRIKE

As 250,000 public service workers  right around Ireland embark on a 24-hour general stoppage today in defence of their jobs, pay and pensions (as well as the public services they deliver), they face not only the combined weight of the Fianna Fail-Green Party government, IBEC, ISME. the country’s Chambers of Commerce, the “official” Fine Gael-Labour parliamentary opposition but also some of their very own trade union “leaders” who are all fully signed up to cutting up to 16bn. euro in public spending over the next 4-7 years.

Before today’s stoppage even began, CPSU boss Blair Horan and IMPACT’s Peter McAloon had already set about attempting to undermine and demoralise their very own members by publicy indicating their reluctance to go any further beyond today’s stoppage with direct industrial action.

The real truth of  Ireland’s economic crisis  is that country’s budgetary circumstances and banking collapse is so profound and so grave that,  short of the state confiscating the estimated “still-in-tact” 40-odd billion euro amassed by a “golden circle” of land speculators and property developers during the celtic tiger bubble, there is simply NO WAY BACK  for the economy. Cutting  16 bn. euro in public spending (be it over three, four, or ICTU’s  seven years) will not even “scratch the bumper”  in terms of fixing the country’s bankruptcy.  The outcome of taking that road will even further depress the economy,  possibly doubling unemployment and completely impoverishing up to 75% of the country’s population.

Public sector workers are therefore fully justified in embarking on a de-facto 24 hour general strike today and (hopefully) the country’s 450,000, mainly, private sector unemployed will take a lead from them and get themselves organised in the weeks ahead.

ISME’s “BABY CAPATILISTS” UNMASKED

Irish Small and Medium Enterprises (ISME) boss Mark Fielding always seems  to get a “free ride” when he’s on Michael Reade’s Loose Talk programme on LMFM Radio. For some strange reason Fielding, invariably, is never allowed to be confronted or directly challenged.  Challenge is only allowed, in the form of soundbites via text or phone messages, AFTER  he (Fielding) has been allowed 10 or 15 minutes free airtime mouthing a diatribe of abuse at trade unions and lecturing and hectoring, in particular (but not exclusively) civil and public workers.

Perhaps Michael is is prevented by the LMFM bosses from allowing anybody on to the programme who just might have the measure of Fielding and the “baby capitalists” (small business owners)  that LMFM depends on for advertising revenue to fund  the station’s  *impartial” current affairs and political coverage.

Now if I was on the Loose Talk  programme with Fielding and having to listen to him telling all and sundry, that because his members (the baby capatilists) want to, or have to, cut their workers’ wages, or the minimum wage, and therefore dole payments, state pensions and civil or public service  jobs and wages should be cut, I’d feel obliged to say (to Fielding) the following.

Your members, the small business owners of Ireland (baby capatilists) typically “rape” their very own enterprises i.e. the  boss’s  holiday villa in Spain (or Portugal) being paid for out of the company “kitty”. Then there’s the  boss’s company car coming out of the kitty (and his second “domestic” car) and his wife’s  SUV (and the petrol/diesel for them all).

The  BIG house that the small business boss lives in, is being paid for out of his “small or medium enterprise’s kitty as well. The boss’s domestic “mobile and landline” phone bill will also come out of the company coffers, as will the mobile of his fellow director (his missus). The boss’s family grocery bill is paid for at the supermarket checkout every week with his “company credit card” and, of course, the overseas business trip (annual family holiday).

I could go on, and on and on, but I won’t.  I’ll just ask, is it really any wonder that Fielding’s “baby capatilists”  say they can only afford to pay their employees  4/5 euro an hour, and they hate trade unions, trade unionists, civil and public servants oof all grades or, indeed,  anybody who exposes or threatens their small or medium ”corporate gravy train”?   

Suffice to say I was given “the heads up” on all this by an accountant aquaintance of mine who  look s after the books of over a dozen of Fielding’s  (ISME) member companies in the south Meath and north Dublin area. My accountant aquaintance IS NOT a socialist but, strangely, he tells me that he gave me ”a high preference vote” at the polls last June.

As for Fielding’s regular “free rides” on the radio, well now you know why Michael Reade would never allow me to go head to head with the ISME mouthpiece on Loose Talk.  I’d simply crucify the hypocritic bastard (Fielding, that is) and Michael knows that only too well.

FIANNA FAIL- GREEN PARTY WATER CHARGES PACT

SOCIALIST PARTY PRESS STATEMENT  11/10/2009:

Green Party/Fianna Fail pledge to reintroduce water charges will spark a Water War ….MASS BOYCOTT SET TO ERUPT AGAIN

 

Cllr. Mick Barry (Cork City Council). Cllr. Ruth Coppinger (Fingal County Council). Cllr. Clare Daly (Fingal County Council). Cllr. Frank Gallagher (Drogheda Borough Council). Joe Higgins (MEP). Cllr Terry Kelleher (Balbriggan Town Council).

PAYE workers and hard pressed families will be outraged to see that the Green Party and Fianna Fail have agreed to reintroduce water charges. The revised Programme for Government is clearly a continuation of Government policy of landing the price of the crash in the capitalist economy squarely on the shoulders of working people.
Minister Mary Hanafin, who was part of the Fianna Fail negotiation team at the talks with the Green Party, said some time ago that if water charges had not been abolished in 1996, every household would now face a yearly bill of up to €800. That is a measure of the burden that is being contemplated  for working people’s households even if it first mooted as a low charge.
Fianna Fail and the Green Party are guilty of blatant hypocrisy when they speak of introducing a charge for water ‘to reduce waste’.  As far back as 1995 the Federation of Dublin Anti Water Charges Campaigns demanded  that Government and Local Authorities would introduce changes in Building Bye Laws to install mandatory inbuilt water saving features in new homes and provide assistance for owners of existing homes for modifications to the same effect. Nothing was done in the intervening 15 years despite the fact that up to half the present housing stock was built in that time.
The fact is that countless billions of litres of drinking standard water could have been saved every year if all the building constructed over that time had water conservation features. But now it is back to the same old catch cry of reducing waste as an excuse for more taxation on those paying most already.
Should the Government attempt to reintroduce the hated water charges which we worked so hard to abolish in the 1990s we promise them a major water war. Just as happened in the 1990s there will be a massive boycott with people power coming directly into play to defeat any plans to introduce a water tax.  It was such a campaign in the 1990s that forced the Fine Gael/Labour Party Government to abolish water charges for the whole country in December, 1996.

PRESS STATEMENT: JOE HIGGINS MEP

 

Press Statement: Joe Higgins MEP (Socialist Party),  3 October 2009.

 

• Campaign of fear and promises of jobs and economic recovery delivers Yes vote for establishment
• Promises will not be delivered upon –  future reality of Lisbon agenda will be opposed in workplaces and communities.

 

Socialist Party MEP for Dublin, Joe Higgins, responded to the emerging results of the Lisbon Treaty referendum:

“The unprecedented well financed grand coalition of the political establishment, big business , most of the print media and the EU authorities has delivered a Yes vote. Bullying and fear was combined with extravagant promises about jobs and economic recovery. I congratulate those voters who stood up against the intimidation and threats and voted no. I understand the anxiety of many who voted Yes in the hope of better job prospects and security.

“Any hope that this result will bring the promised jobs or economic recovery will unfortunately be quickly dashed as the neo-liberal policies of the EU and Irish government continue to make working class people pay for the economic crisis.

“The 10,000 Opel and Vauxhall workers in Belgium, Germany, Britain, Spain and Poland who are facing losing their jobs are victims of this approach. In Ireland, working people in the private and public sector are victims.”

 “The pro-Lisbon elements in the trade union movement have a case to answer. The striking workers at Coca-Cola and MTL Docks in Dublin, Mr. Binman  in Co. Tipperary and Manor Park Nursing Home  in Co. Longford will see no enhancement of their rights in their fight to maintain jobs with decent pay and conditions . Instead, the race to the bottom will now be pursued more vigorously by the establishment. Employers will still come running to the High Court in Ireland to obtain injunctions to prevent effective strike action.

“The fight against the neo-liberal agenda enshrined by Lisbon will now take place in workplaces and communities across Ireland and Europe. It is seen in the struggle of the taxi drivers against the horrific effects of deregulation and in the important strikes of workers across the country.

“We will now focus our energies on assisting these vital campaigns of workers to defend their jobs and conditions and of communities to fight against the brutal cutbacks which are being imposed.”

For information and confirmation contact:

Michael O’Brien 087 2400331 or Paul Murphy 086 1688050.

SOCIALIST PARTY PUBLIC CAMPAIGN

Local Socialist Party members, including Drogheda Borough Councillor Frank Gallagher, distributed hundreds of leaflets to lunchtime shoppers in West Street on Saturday last (August 8th), as part of their campaign of opposition to a proposed introduction of a property tax and the re-introduction of water charges on domestic households.

 

The leaflet entitled, “Can’t Pay – Won’t Pay”, pointed to proposals from the Special Review Group on Public Service Pay & Numbers (An Bord Snip Nua) and the Commission on Taxation, to introduce a property tax of between 600-800 euro per year on an average family home and to re-introduce water charges on all domestic households.

 

The Socialist Party, in their leaflet, pledged to organise and launch ”a mass non-payment campaign of civil disobedience to defeat these taxes”.

 

Speaking after the protest local Socialist Party councilior, Frank Gallagher said that “it’s all very well for most of our public representatives and trade union leaders to say they are against these attacks on the living standards of ordinary working people, families, the unemployed and pensioners but the acid test of their sincerity will be whether they lead from the front and publicly advocate a mass no-pay fight back. In anticipation of the usual and predictable, pathetic response from both the country’s trade union leadership and the phoney Fine Gael-Labour parliamentary “opposition” the Socialist Party make no bones about our intention to organise a mass no-pay protest in the event of either a property tax or water tax being forced on the ordinary working people and their families”.

 

WATER CHARGES – Press Statement

Issued by the following Socialist Party Councillors on Monday, July 27th 2009:

Cllr. Mick Barry (Cork City Council), Cllr. Ruth Coppinger (Fingal County Council), Cllr. Clare Daly (Fingal County Council), Cllr. Frank Gallagher (Drogheda Borough Council), Cllr. Tterry Kelleher (Balbriggan Town Council).

There are widespread media reports today that the government will attempt to impose water charges on households in the report of the Commission on Taxation.

This would be another intolerable imposition on the incomes of hard-pressed working people arising from the chronic crisis in Irish capitalism. 

We give notice to the government that any attempt to re-introduce a water tax will be met with a mass campaign of opposition including a mass boycott by householders. We would remind the government of the huge opposition to water charges throughout the country, and in particular in the greater Dublin area, in 1994, 1995 and 1996 led by the Federation of Dublin Anti-Water Charges Campaigns, which forced the abolition of this hated tax in December 1996.

Water conservation: The Green Party in government may try to justify water charges by saying that they would assist water conservation. This would be a patent hypocrisy. The fact is that almost half the national housing stock has been built in the last 13 years and extensive water conservation measures which would have dramatically improved the levels of conservation could have been insisted on. Despite consistent calls by the Socialist Party, these measures were not implemented.

THE JOBLESS RE-TRAINING SCAM

The Fianna Fail-Green Party coalition government’s recent announcement of  state cash to agencies like FAS and local  Partnership / Leader / Development companies to retrain, upskill or indeed encourage the unemployed to look at  ”start your own business” options is a bare-faced political deception.

EDUCATION – Reverse the Cuts Now

The cuts introduced in the recent budget are, most certainly, the biggest attack on education in over 20 years and, very probably,  the most savage since the foundation of the state.

UNEMPLOYMENT – 27% in Drogheda

More than one in every four of Drogheda’s total labour of force of 17,879 are out of work according to official statistics for the month of October. Add in those who are engaged in Fas shemes like C.E. (Community Enterprise) and J.I. (Job Initiative) as well as various ”back to education” courses, and the town’s real unemployment figure is even worse.

BATU General Secretary assaults striking staff member

The October issue of “The Socialist”  (the monthly newspaper of the Socialist Party) published an exclusive story of a physical assault carried out by the General Secretary of the Building and Allied Trades Union (BATU) General Secretary, Paddy O’Shaughnessy (who is also a member of the Executive of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions) on striking BATU clerical worker Susan Fitzgerald.