Workers Solidarity Movement

The new Croke Park deal is a vicious attack on the pay and conditions of all Public Sector workers and their families by the Government. Shamefully our Trade Union leaders have allowed it to tear up an existing agreement that was due to run until June 2014 and have agreed to another one, which is significantly worse.

In what is clearly a concerted effort to smash their union organisation, over 170 Aer Lingus cabin crew have been ‘removed from the payroll’ by management in a dispute about rostering arrangements.

A battle is brewing between IMPACT cabin crew members and the management of Aer Lingus.  The cabin crew began a work-to-rule action yesterday against changes to rosters by the management which they see as going beyond what the “Greenfield” cost-saving plan had proposed. The IMPACT members will work on the old rosters, will not work on rest days, and will take all breaks and meals due to them. They will also decline to work the Washington/Madrid route. This route is voluntarily undertaken by cabin crew based in Ireland under Irish working conditions.

This audio consists of 10 brief interviews with public sector strikers made during the national strike on 24th November 2009. Picketers at various locations across Dublin talk of what the strike is about, the effects of the cuts and how their unions organised for the strike.

From before 8a.m. this morning, members of the Irish National Teachers Organisation were on the picket line outside the Department of Education and Science in Dublin’s Marlborough Street, alongside Special Needs Assistant colleagues, members of IMPACT, and workers based in the DES building itself, members of SIPTU, CPSU and PSEU.

Strikes took off across Cork city and county this morning as workers took direct action to stop the Government's attack on wages and conditions.

Workers from the IMPACT union marched from Cork University Hospital to the HQ of the HSE on Model Farm Road on Wednesday June 11th at 1 pm to protest against the ongoing recruitment embargo being orchestrated by the HSE. 

In a timely statement on May 1st, nurses in Cork city's A & E service poured scorn on the HSE. Part of the reason why they did this was because of the ongoing situation at Cork's Mercy Hospital. In their statement, the nurses said that it was their "collective view that patient care is being compromised and that it is only a matter of time before there are serious issues and incidents ..." A month on from that statement there has been no resolution in the Cork area. The Workers Solidarity Movement look at the issues and how the impasse could be resolved.

TWO NEW BUZZWORDS have entered the lexicon of the Department of Justice; "dispersal" and "direct provision". The government's "solution" to the crisis of accommodation for asylum seekers in Dublin, like many State solutions, has served to create more problems than it has solved.

This July on a talk show on FM104 in Dublin, one refugee joked; "I had one yellow card, I have just been given another and we all know what this means in football" . Few of the hand picked audience of taxi drivers, private security guards and the likes were laughing, very few "got" the joke. The card referred to is the ID card now issued to all asylum-seekers. These are now automatically renewed through the post (you may remember last February refugees were made to queue in the rain outside the Department of Justice - presumably the government didn't want to repeat such a spectacle which could have damaged "our" summer tourist industry).