Ireland: blank cheque for bankers, slash and burn for workers

Submitted by Matthew on 7 October, 2010 - 3:25

Rob Hartnett from the Unite union in Ireland spoke to Solidarity:

The 29 September demonstration was organised to coincide with the politicians' return from the summer recess. I t wasn't necessarily intended to be a massive public demo but was more about getting the activist voice of the labour movement heard. From that point of view it was a success. Although we perhaps didn't get the headlines of the person who drove a cement mixer into the Dail building, we certainly share their sense of frustration. The government doesn't seem to have any idea about how its lack of planning is affecting people on the ground.

The Central Bank produced figures three months ago forecasting 0.8% growth for 2011. It's now cut that forecast back to 0.2%, blaming reduced consumer demand. Government policy will lessen that further.

Our message is that there is an alternative to the notion that's held sway in Ireland for two years that it makes sense to write blank cheques to bail out dying banks while simultaneously slashing and burning public services. The labour-movement view is that this creates a vicious spiral of downwards momentum; we simply cannot saddle future generations with these levels of debt.

The idea that things can only improve from here is very misleading. We were told that a 3 billion euro cut to public spending was necessary, but now the figure that's washing about is 4 billion euros. Things are going to get worse and working people are being asked to pick up the bill.

We organise across a wide variety of sectors so our members are feeling the effects of the crisis in different ways. Wage-freezes are the least of it; in many workplaces workers are suffering substantial wage cuts. One mortgage in 20 is now in arrears, and low-paid workers are literally struggling to put food on the table and buy school supplies for their children. There's a lot of government rhetoric about how everyone will need to take some of the pain, but it's our members at the lower end of the wage spectrum who are feeling it in the hardest sense.

Unite was the only major union to reject the Croke Park deal. We were extremely worried at the time about the clause that allowed the government out of its commitments in the event of 'unforeseeable budgetary deterioration'; we said that the government policy of writing blank cheques for the banks would lead to 'budgetary deterioration' that was very foreseeable indeed!

However, despite the inadequacies of Croke Park I think there would be a groundswell of anger if the government formally reneged on it. That would certainly put industrial action on the agenda. Wherever employers are using the economic crisis as an opportunity to attack wages and conditions, we'll organise resistance.

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