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.