A column from Socialist Democracy, Irish section - of the Fourth international social partnership deal to follow the PPF next June. So the 8.94 per cent deal but of the next one. oniy cover claims that bunt up before the body was set up, in July 2000, and not just the two years it took to put unexplained figures together, but also the unknown period over which the next deal will apparently run.
mis is what lies beatne ICTU's hurried embrace of the report and threats to any section of workers who might want to reicet it. Accentance will be part of a larger agenda as was seen the last time the public finances were in At that time the new partnership deal, the Programme for Economic and Social Progress (PESP), delirered wage restraint, tax increases, privatsation, unemployment and public services cuts. A new partnership deal this time round will tie workers to renewed wage restraint and cuts in services. Privatisation is already underway bur will be accel. crated.
Charlie McCreevy has already made it clear in the Dail that tax rises are on the way, Just as toc PESP witnessed a tax amnesty for the rich while taxes for workers increased, we are about to witness publication of the Ansbacher report detailine how the rich broke the law for years through tax evasion.
This highly appropriate because the real meaning of social partnership will be revealed. The crement will ot prosecute The ernment will not prosecute. union bosses will strand in the way or elecave pontical outrage by workers because these people are, would be comforting if this had grown or developed over the last dozen years but sadly this class is objectively stronger - for example there is less unemploy ment.
But a minority of militants have oppose the partnership deals. While the left has created rank and file camtherefore less democratic than the bureaucracy they claim to oppose.
The benchmarking major challenge to workers. It can effectively divide the workers while uniting the state with the trade union bosses.
1 here will oe a lot of pressure ou dissatisfied sections of workers to able price. To resist this will require unity sectional section ol workers able to achieve this unity remains to be seen but the price of not doing so wall be scal