Workers Solidarity Movement

Dear friends,

A meeting took place in Portlaoise, on July 8th, attended by people concerned at recent statements by Ms Mary Harney, Tanaiste and Minister for Enterprise & Employment. It called for a campaign to defend welfare rights and oppose the low wage strategy of recent governments.

Those present - including representatives from counties Mayo, Cork, Donegal, Wicklow, Laois, Dublin and Carlow - established a new body to promote the interests of people marginalised through poverty, low wages and unemployment. We pledged to work alongside the trade union movement and others who share our aims.

The group provisionally adopted as its title MAYDAY, symbolising the distress which many individuals and communities suffer in the land of the "Celtic Tiger", and also the traditional international solidarity of the working class around the world.

Rejecting recent statements by the PD leader that "the state has no obligation" to support marginalised and excluded citizens, Ms Linda Hassett, who chaired the inaugural meeting, said "quite the contrary, the state has a constitutional obligation to protect all its citizens equally and not just promote the interests of predatory big (or small) business".
Mayday,
c/o Joe Barrett
68 Hillview Drive
Portlaoise.
Phone/fax 0502-20806

e-mail joeb@hotmail.com

From Workers Solidarity no 55 in 1998