Workers Solidarity Movement

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, Up pop Inda Kinny and Baldy Noonan with their version of how they intend to screw the workers (or their “budgetary proposals” as they put it).

Having accepted fully the same €15 billion cuts target as the current FF/Green coalition, the only issue at stake for Fine Gael is how they intend to implement their version of the ‘slash and burn’.

I never thought I’d feel this way but the thought that Fianna Fail are about to be wiped out in the forthcoming general election is sort of worrying me. The latest opinion poll has put Fianna Fail’s support as low as 13% - in fourth place behind Fine Gael, Labour and Sinn Fein. 

The government recently published a draft memorandum that will give legal effect to the negotiations between the EU/IMF and Ireland (see here). Essentially the draft details, by quarter of each year, how the government intends to implement an incredibly far-reaching austerity program to help get us back on our feet.

This article was first published in the Monday edition of the Andersonstown News a few weeks ago.

The dreaded IMF have now landed on our shores, thanks to the bankers, property developers and their lackeys in power.

Once again, ordinary people will bear the brunt of a new round of vicious cutbacks in jobs, wages and conditions and social services, all, we are told, in the name of the ‘national interest’ . 

The former chairman of the Special Group on Public Service Numbers and Expenditure (otherwise known as ‘An Bord Snip Nua’), UCD economist Colm McCarthy, is currently heading another cutting group, the Review Group on State Assets, which is looking into the fire-sale of state firms.

State enterprises such as the ESB, An Post, Irish Rail, Dublin, Cork and Shannon airports, (all owned by Dublin Airport Authority) 10 port companies, the VHI, TG4, RTE, Eirgrid, CIE, Bord na Móna, Bus éireann Expressway, Bord Gáis, HRI, RTÉ, utilities (like water and refuse collection, where provided through local authorities), and Coillte are being looked at.

It is an uncommon pleasure to see the world’s politicians scuttling around furiously, much like woodlice uncovered by the lifting of a rock. WikiLeaks are the ones who did the lifting, and have exposed for us the working of US diplomacy; the information, intentions and concerns of the world’s dominant power.

You have a gathering of nearly a 100,000 people, many of them active trade union members, and we are supposed to phone up one delusional Green party leader and try to get him to do our bidding. We, as workers and trade Union members are supposed to have that power to change things. We can do so by withdrawing our Labour! We do not do it by putting through phone calls like we are voting in the X-Factor and praying that our voice prevails.

It has been revealed that the changes in tax credits contained in the IMF/ECB four year austerity plan will hit low paid and average paid workers far harder than the those who earn hundreds of thousands.  A worker on 36,000 a year will pay around ten times as much extra tax as a percentage of their income than a banker earning 300,000 will.  In real terms both pay exactly the same, 1860 euro.  The independent think tank TASC has produced a short report which graphically illustrates the deepening of inequality that is contained in that aspect of the four year plan.

Having announced their decision to sack 1,200 teachers and an untold number of Special Needs Assistants last week, the government has swiftly followed it up with a plan to make unemployed teachers and other school staff work for free.

This article was written prior to the big ICTU anti-cuts demonstration of November 2010 and in the afterfath of a large anti-student fees demonstration where a two thousand strong militant breakaway was attacked by Gardaí.

An article headlined "Gardaí on alert for Dublin protest" published this evening on the Irish Times website is a clear attempt by the political establishment to divide protesters and create an atmosphere of fear amongst those attending.

Garda Chief Supt Michael O'Sullivan is quoted as saying “there are individuals and groups who seek to exploit such events for their own ends”. This is a globally recognised police tactic of trying to divide the movement into "good" and "bad" protesters. This follows weeks on from disturbances at the national student march where Gardaí in riot gear launched an unprovoked attack on demonstrators.