"Free the workers - jail the bankers"
More and more potential for explosive class conflict is building up within southern Irish society. Increasing numbers of working class people feel alienated by the gross social inequalities and moral hypocrisies.
Workers are pleased that that the economy is booming but also realise that they are not getting a deserved share of the new wealth. By contrast the middle class has never had it so good. It is impossible to avoid noticing their conspicuous consumption of luxuries, the town centres populated with dozens of new boutiques, restaurants and wine bars especially tailored to their tastes.
Since 1987 the percentage of national income going to profits has risen by 10 per cent. More than 50 new luxury hotels have opened in Dublin in the last five years.
Consumer spending has risen from less than £14 billion in 1988 to over £27 billion in 1997. The number of new car registrations has gone up from 68,000 in 1992 to 150,000 this year.
This year’s Irish Central Bank economic report is forecasting 9 per cent growth rate for this year and 7 per cent for the year after. Interestingly though, in a generally very optimistic report, one threat to healthy profits is singled out – possible wage inflation.
The report fears that several factors including a falling official unemployment rate now down to 7 per cent, skill shortages in key sectors, increasing unfilled vacancies, the expectation of the introduction of a legal minimum wage, rising rents and the so- called "feel good factor" could combine to raise workers’ expectations and spark a wage-push inflation.
The report noted that the 2-3 per cent pay restraint rule agreed between government and the unions under the ‘Partnership Two Thousand’ arrangement is already being breached, the average pay rise in manufacturing is now running at 6 per cent, and at 14 per cent in the booming building sector.
Increasing militancy
We are beginning to see the first signs of a new wave of working class militancy.
In November train drivers brought the network to a standstill, a threat of strike action by busmen forced the company to concede a £1,350 bonus plus a 7 per cent pay rise.
98 per cent of Dublin’s fire fighters voted for strike action if the Corporation went ahead with a productivity plan. Disputes are daily breaking out in the hospitals, mainly against the vicious programme of cuts.
The leadership of the civil service union (CPSU) has been forced by rank and file pressureto convene a national conference to reconsider the union’s commitment to Partnership Two Thousand.
To date the most intense bout of militancy has occurred within the building industry.
Ireland has the fastest growing building sector in the EU: £7 billion invested in 1997. The industry has trebled in size since 1988, it now employs 100,000. Despite this year’s pay rises for skilled workers, in reality the terms and conditions faced by the majority of building workers have worsened over the period of the boom.
This year alone, 18 workers have been killed on the sites, and scores more seriously injured. When a worker dies as a result of a safety lapse, the maximum that can be awarded against a contractor is £1,000.
According to a union representative "It’s cheaper for a developer not to put up a proper safety structure and just keep paying £500 or a £1,000 every time someone gets killed, and that’s what has been happening."
Last year a high court judge called the biggest developer of luxury departments in the country, Zoe Developments, "a disgrace to the construction industry."
Workers imprisoned
Recently two building workers were sent to prison in a fight against the crudely exploitative contracting-out scheme. This is a scheme, recently developed by the main building employers to cut costs by employing workers only indirectly i.e. by small contractors or telephone agents.
Usually the worker starts as an employee of a major contractor, but within a few weeks he is told that if he wants to keep working he should re-register with a sub-contractor or even as self-employed.
Union officials estimate that by re-employing workers as individuals the main employers have cut their wage bills by about 12 per cent. They also avoid paying any PRSI (national insurance), contributions to the industry pension scheme, or any holiday or sick pay.
The two bricklayers were imprisoned on October 21 for picketing the site of O’Connor Construction on the site of the old British embassy after the firm had obtained an court injunction.
The men are part of the rank and file group Building Workers Against the Black Economy, set up in late 1997 to campaign against the employers "re-register or forfeit your chance to work" mentality.
The picketing began in late August after O’Connor’s began sub-contracting work to a ‘subbie’, E. Moran Ltd.
On the day of the men’s court appearance, hundreds of building workers downed tools at 25 sites across Dublin and converged on the court waving placards under the slogan ‘Free the workers – jail the bankers’.
Simultaneous solidarity protests by building workers occurred in Limerick, Waterford, Cork and Kilkenny. All the solidarity action was illegal and went against the advice of the Union leadership, which condemned both the original action and the solidarity activity.
When the men were sent down for contempt of court, hundreds of workers brought traffic on Dublin’s O’Connell street to a halt. Later that evening there were clashes with the police outside Mountjoy prison. Although the two men have now purged their contempt of court, the struggle to end the exploitation on the sites is set to become more intense.
Workers in Dublin are currently picketing three Sisk sites against the victimisation of two shop stewards. A small rank and file group is effectively arguing for action beyond the control of the union bureaucracy.
New period
It seems that a new period of deepening class conflict is developing in southern Ireland. A comfy future with the type of social partnership arrangements favoured by the bureaucracy is looking unlikely.
The ideology of the prosperous Celtic Tiger has raised material expectations. Thousands of workers are fed up seeing the bosses getting rich and arrogant on the back of their continual pay restraint and tougher working conditions.
Whilst the state is boasting of its biggest-ever current account financial surplus, over a billion in the black, at the same time it is cutting back on public spending on health and pubic services.
A few weeks ago an IMF directors report on Ireland warned the Irish government not to start dipping into its budget surplus, maintaining that the state treasury will need large fiscal reserves to enable it to manoeuvre within the new single currency regime.
Already a major row has broken out at Galway Hospital over the state’s refusal to spend any of its surplus to prevent the closure of two vital wards.
Most staff at the hospital attended an angry protest meeting to fight the cuts. Nurses are already on a work to rule and threatening a national stoppage.
We in Socialist Democracy need to start orientating our activities towards developing our programme, strategy and tactics to anticipate a new period of rising class militancy in the south. It would be a mistake to sit around just hoping for a progressive development against the peace process or within Sinn Fein.
In fact in the new period Sinn Fein looks set to become a drag on the development of a socialist class consciousness.
During the same week that workers in Dublin were involved in a stand off with the bosses and their political party Fianna Fail, Sinn Fein was launching its economic plan for West Belfast. Incredibly Bertie Ahern, the leader of Fianna Fail, was invited up on the Falls Road to co-present the plan alongside Gerry Adams.
Nobody present bothered to point out that the owners of Cromptons and Sisk, two of the worst exploiters of Dublin’s building workers, are well known financial and political supporters of Fianna Fail, or ask what Fianna Fail ever did for southern Irish workers.
Sinn Fein’s idea for a deepened partnership with Fianna Fail is taking it in exactly the wrong direction – when southern workers will be looking for political as well as industrial solutions for their discontents.