Workers Solidarity Movement

The 1% Network has announced plans for a Street Theatre and Music event and an Open Meeting during which the Central Bank in Dublin’s Dame Street will be cordoned off as a crime scene. 

Around 80 people took part in Sunday's annual Feminist Walking Tour to mark International Women's Day. The tour was organised by Choice Ireland, Lashback and RAG and for the first time was confined to the south side of the city, starting at Stephen's Green and ending up in Temple Bar. The audio from the individual stops on the tour is included with this article.

For three weeks, until ordered to leave by a judge Thursday, up to tens of thousands of union protesters have been occupying the Wisconsin Capitol building in Madison.  They are protesting the attempt by Scott Walker, the new Republican governor, to all but eliminate collective bargaining for public unions in the US state.  Wisconsin is the battleground against the latest wave of anti-union law in the USA.

There is an increasing likelihood that the state owned forestry firm, Coillte, will be part of a rushed fire sale of semi-state companies. Last year, the government asked “An Bord Snip Nua” economist Colm McCarthy to head a semi-state privatisation group and produce a new report, which is believed to be almost complete. The original 2009 McCarthy report recommended the selling of Coillte “with a view to realising optimal return through rationalisation, asset disposal and, possibly, privatisation”. Thus, the prospect of a sell-off of Ireland’s entire public forest estate is now on the cards.

Amidst the myriad of austerity measures, in both the public and private sectors, there are some signs of resistance.

Some 300,000 workers in Ireland should be watching the Labour Court as it rules on the attempt by the Davenport Hotel, owned by the 122nd richest person in the country, to cut the wages of workers by almost a euro an hour. Five workers there were removed from the payroll after they refused to sign new contracts that contained the wage cut. When they picketed the hotel it got an injunction that sought to limit how many could picket at a time and which forbid supporters from the picket line.

Today German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, politely rebuffed any chance of re-negotiation of the interest rates we are paying on our substantial loan from the ECB/IMF, saying that we knew what we were getting into when we took the loan. It is time to reflect on the difference that loan is making to the lives of those affected.

One picture or story can tell us all we need to know and it should bring comfort to each tax-payer now labouring under the additional losses suffered in their pay packet due to the universal social charge to see such a story.

Picture this, the story of the Kelly family.

As the first step to sorting out some sort of coalition deal Fine Gael & Labour in a co-ordinated move last night announced that they had discovered the financial situation was worse than expected.  This follows only days after the election and the subsequent vote by all but two of Labour's central council to enter into coalition talks with Fine Gael.  Clearly the scene is being set for not only Labour but also Fine Gael to abandon the promises they were elected for, only days after the supposed exercise in 'democracy' of Election 2011 and before a government has even been formed.  So much for Enda Kenny's proclamation of  "a democratic revolution at the ballot box", instead it's the usual Dail as parliament is meant to work, free from the interference of the masses. 

Members of Ireland’s wealthy elite have announced plans to meet outside the Central Bank in Dublin’s Dame Street on Thursday 10^th March at 6p.m. to celebrate the fact that it’s “business as usual now that the election is out of the way”.

Today is work-life balance day. "Hurrah!" you think. Think again. Despite how friendly it sounds, work-life balance is not something to celebrate. There are three things to know about work-life balance.