Workers Solidarity Movement

WSM member Joe King, a clerical officer in the public sector, responds to the calls for pay cuts and redundancies.

In the world today there is no body of revolutionary theory that provides a fully convincing picture of where we are or a program for the future. The left is trapped in a cycle of state ideology and reactions to state ideology.

The Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign has called a National
Demonstration in solidarity with Gaza for this Saturday 3rd January .

Somewhere over 50,000 people took part in the INTO organised march through Dublin this afternoon in protest at the education cuts, The was the culmination of a series of regional marches called by the INTO.

Click on one of the thumbnails for a a PDF version of the northern or southern edition of Workers Solidarity 106 which can be printed out on eight A4 pages.

What a farce! As the economy officially goes into recession, as electricity bills go up by 17.5%, as food bills are officially 6.4% higher than this time last year, the leaders of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions negotiate through the night and emerge bleary-eyed from the ‘social partnership’ talks with 1) a pay pause and 2) pay increases, when we eventually get them, lower than the rate of inflation. And then they have the cheek to tell us that this is “the best deal available in the current economic climate” (1). Lucky for them they’re not on performance-related pay if that’s the best they can do for their members.

On October 22^nd, in the biggest show of student strength in many years, over 15,000 third level students marched through the streets of Dublin. They were united in their opposition to the Budget’s 67% College Registration Fee increase and Minister for Education, Batt O’Keefe’s threat to bring back full college fees by September 2009. Last month, he announced that the return of fees would raise €530 million in revenue at a family income threshold of €120,000. To his embarrassment, he later had to admit that these figures were wrong and that in fact the maximum revenue would be only €130 million.

What we were witnessing was a clear demonstration of people power in action. The government was in a panic and was drastically hurtling to reverse the medical card decision. And when this meeting was followed up 24 hours later with a demonstration of 15,000 organised by the Senior Citizens Parliament and another 15,000-strong student demonstration against the re-introduction of 3^rd level fees it was obvious that politics in Ireland had changed drastically.

As part of the growing struggle against education cuts WSM branches have produced a leaflet that is being distributed by anarchists who study or work across the education sector. We’re working together to build a democratic and open campaign that can fight education cuts, challenge the imposition of fees and push to improve access to, and quality of, education. You can help by downloading the leaflet and distributing it at education protests or at local schools and colleges.

Report of the National Secretary for the Fall 2008 Conference held at the Teachers Club in Dublin on the 25th and 26 of October.