Workers Solidarity Movement

TOP TRADE union leaders like Phil Flynn, Billy Attley and Peter Cassells have been working flat out to get the employers and government to agree another national deal for pay restraint. The talks were on, then they were off, then they were on again. It was all a game to make it look like the unions leaders were fighting hard for their members. And maybe they felt they had to put on more of an act this time. The Programme for Competitiveness and Work doesn't even pretend to offer much more than pay restraint and cheap labour schemes.

IT WAS A DEFEAT! 780 jobs are to go in Aer Lingus. The PESP increases for 1990-93 won't be paid. Increments won't be paid. The SIPTU leaders, at both national and local level, didn't want a fight. They agreed to refer the pay issue to a supposedly "impartial' tribunal ...which ruled that there be a pay freeze until 1995.

WORKERS AT Nolan Transport in New Ross joined SIPTU in January 1993. Working hours averaged 15 per day, six days a week. Pay was £2.00 - £2.50 per hour. It was six years since their last wage increase.

The Programme for National Recovery, launched in October 1987, was the culmination of almost a year of talks between the Irish Congress of Trade Unions and the then Fianna Fail government led by Charlie Haughey.

What we strive for is a classless society, one where as well as there being no ruling class there is no working class. Why then the obsession with the working class for anarchists rather then with just people? To this audience perhaps a strange question to start with but one that is key when we come to talk about the nature of the working class.

In the 1860s the modern socialist movement was beginning to take shape. The International Working Mens' Association or First International was becoming a pole of attraction for militant workers. As the movement grew points of agreement and of disagreement between the Marxists and the Anarchists about what socialism meant and how to achieve it were becoming clear. This led to the Marxists using less than democratic means to expel the anarchists.

PART OF THE old Eastern European legend says that a vampire must be willingly invited into the house of its victim, and once invited in has its victim in its power. Members of the Teamsters Union (America's largest general trade union) might well ponder this legend.

The Teamsters invited government intervention in the 1980s to help ensure free elections and oust corrupt Mafia controlled officials who had held power for decades. In 1989 a "mutual consent decree" was put in place creating an Independent Review Board to facilitate the democratisation process. The Board was made up of one union representative, one government representative and one 'impartial' outside person, who was to be agreed by both sides. The Board was to be disbanded once free elections took place inside the Teamsters.

The Workers Solidarity Movement has, since its formation eight years ago, placed special emphasis on the struggles of trade unionists. Were we right? Why place this special emphasis on trade unions rather than any other organisation or campaign?

BANK WORKERS went back to work on April 27th. After three weeks on strike they voted narrowly to accept a revised offer from the big four banks.

The dispute began with a claim for a wage increase of 6.5%. The settlement only allowed for a 3% increase under the 'local bargaining' clause of the PESP, a lump sum of £1,000 in exchange for longer opening hours and one day's extra leave. The hidden agenda was the banks' desire to smash the staff union, the Irish Bank Officials Association.

ALTHOUGH workers have been getting a bad deal out of the PNR and now the PESP in terms of pay the same can hardly be said for Irish bosses. In 1989-90 many executives got increases of 20% according to a recent Irish Management Institute survey.