Showing posts with label Trade Union Movement. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Trade Union Movement. Show all posts
Caoimhin O’Muraile ☭ Is the Western Media Free?In a word No

We are often told how lucky we are in countries like the UK and 26 counties to have a ‘free press’ which is not strictly true. It may be true enough to say the state do not interfere with the media in countries like Britain, Germany, France and Ireland, among many others, in the same way we are told they do in Russia but to call these news outlets free is stretching it. Any reporter who publishes anything against the newspaper proprietor’s interests or political position - and any editor who allows it will be dismissed. Be under no illusions about that. 

So, perhaps we should define a ‘free press’ in its entirety. Does such a thing exist? Can such an entity exist? Just as it may not be in the interests of the Russian or other authoritarian states to print the truth, neither is it in the interests and advancement of interests for the billionaire owners of the British and other capitalist countries media to tell their readers the truth in any other gospel but their own. The gospel according to Rupert Murdoch or that of Richard Branson. Perhaps the late David Bowie should have written a song about this, like the one The Gospel According to Tony Day which he wrote and was released back in 1973. These are the two magnates who own television stations and newspapers and they are not alone. And it would be imagined if a free-thinking reporter printed the truth about, say, the rail dispute ongoing in Britain and wrote from the trade union point of view instead of prioritising the management and government position they would face the sack. The media are a very subjective source of information not to be believed without question. Perhaps the only thing they write which is true, and then look twice and check, is the date! As Arthur Scargill once said at a press conference:

why don’t you lot jut for once print the truth? I know you will get the sack, but you’ll feel a whole lot better for it.

I remember back in the British Coal Miners Strike in 1984-85 and the nominally Labour paper, the Daily Mirror then owned by a very rich man called Bob Maxwell printed lie after lie about the NUM leadership. The very same Mr Maxwell who ran off with his company’s employee’s pensions reportedly and was supposedly found floating in the Atlantic Ocean off the Canary Islands? Maxwell had been bugging his employees' telephones, illegally, to test their loyalty. Maxwell was the proprietor of what we are supposed to believe is a ‘free press.’ This so called ‘free press’ printed lie after lie about the NUM leader, Arthur Scargill and, to a lesser extent the union's general secretary, Peter Heathfield. This so-called Labour paper, when the chips were down just like the Labour Party in Britain, supported Margaret Thatcher’s attacks on the NUM leadership. The Daily Mirror printed lies about the NUM collecting money from Libya’s Colonel Gadhafi and a supposed trip to Libya by Roger Windsor, the union's CEO and MI5 agent. 

Windsor was placed there by friend of Thatcher’s and MI5 chief Stella Rimington purposely to spy on the National Union of Mineworkers at Thatcher’s bequest. The position of CEO was the only role in the higher echelons of the NUM which was unelected by the miners. Windsor travelled to Libya, supposedly as far as the union were concerned, to meet with Libyan trade unionists. Windsor had secretly arranged a meeting with Gadhafi which was not authorised and was certainly not in his remit, a meeting which he had photographed. These were the images which were seen in the newspapers and reported on national news, all lies and fiction invented purposely by the British state, executed by Windsor, and dutifully reported by the ’free press.’ No questions about the authenticity of Windsor’s agenda on his visit and who wrote it were asked. This was despite the denials of the NUM leadership that this meeting with the Libyan leader was not on Windsor’s to do list and, if had been known of, would have been forbidden. As Scargill later said; “if Colonel Gadhafi wants to help the miners he would stop selling cheap oil to the British government.” 

The fact the Thatcher administration was importing cheap oil from a supposed enemy state just to crush the NUM was never reported. I would suspect any reporter who got the truth behind this and reported such, would have been at best dismissed at worst disappear, just like in South America where no ‘free press’ exists. The media told lie after lie about the NUM leadership while at the same time reporting Thatcher’s proven lies as truth! On more than one occasion Arthur Scargill had stated Thatcher and the NCB Chairman, Ian MacGregor, had a secret “hit list” drawn up to “decimate the coal industry”. This was denied by the government who claimed Scargill was making it all up to pursue his “own political agenda”. In actual fact the NUM hit list was an understatement as the one Thatcher had written dwarfed the union's figures of pit closures. These lies by the British Government were never reported by the ’free press.’

Much of the biased reporting against the trade unions continues today, and if anybody has read the stuff about Mick Lynch, General Secretary of the RMT (Rail and Maritime Transport) union, who are presently in dispute they would see correlations between the reporting of the miner’s strike forty years ago and that of today. The last thing any newspaper owner would want is to give militant trade unionism any credibility as it may for one give their own employees ideas about wanting better pay, more freedom, and much more say in their own industry! It was Rupert Murdoch who used the governments anti trade union legislation against his own employees and their union, the NGA (National Graphical Association) at his News International works, Wapping in the later 1980s.

On Sunday morning 28th May 2023, I was watching Laura Kuenssberg’s Sunday Morning Politics Show on which she interviewed then British Health Secretary, Steve Barclay. Laura is usually very impartial and her interview with Mr Barclay was no exception. She asked Barclay about the forty new hospitals he had told the British people the government were going to build. Barclay went, as is the norm, round the houses before not answering any of the interviewer’s points. Much facial acting and hand waving to express himself, but no actual answers. When Laura pointed out that in fact, they were not going to build forty new hospitals at all, he then said; “we will be building extensions on to hospitals to create new facilities.” And when it was suggested that this sounded like; “building a patio on to your house and saying it is a new house”! Mr Barclay then repeated his answer several times about new extensions and never really telling the truth that there are no new hospitals, certainly not forty, as such just a few additions to the old ones. This was objective and fair reporting but Mr Barclay is only a British Minister and people get used to being lied to by such people as this all the time.

On then to interviewing the Russian Ambassador to the UK, Mr Andrei Kelin, now obviously playing to a pre-arranged script. She asked the ambassador about Russian attacks “on civilian targets” and other atrocities the Russians have allegedly carried out in the Ukraine. Fair enough, a reasonable question which the Russian diplomat struggled with, as would Laura with his reply. Without actually addressing the deeds carried out by the Russian army, which are little different apparently to those carried out by the Ukrainian armed forces, including the overtly Nazi Azov regiment, Mr Kelin pointed out that the shooting of “civilians had been going on for nine years prior to February 2022 by the Ukrainian Army in the Donetsk region and Luhansk which have Russian majorities in Eastern Ukraine”. To a large extent she ignored this point asking again about Russian atrocities to which the ambassador repeated his counterclaim which she once again ignored possibly on government instructions. What he was trying to say was the Russians went in as a response to Ukrainian attacks on Russian civilians. Is this true? I know no more than anybody else including those who pretend to. What is true and does give the ambassador's claims some credibility is the presence of the Russian hating Nazis operating in the region. 

What did appear pretty plain to me was Laura Kuenssberg with this interview, unlike the one with Mr Barclay, was running to a prearranged script. This may well have been written by the BBC bosses in conjunction with the British Government who in turn would have sought approval from Washington. It was not a transparent and free interview. When the ambassador asked; “why had the atrocities carried out by the Ukrainian Army against Russian people in the Donetsk not being reported in the British press” she shifted ground a little briefly acknowledging all atrocities are wrong in a very mumbled fashion. She did not address the issue as to why the actions of the Ukrainian armed forces in Eastern Ukraine had not been reported in the same way as those of the Russian Army in the British press or news. Unlike the prior interview with Steve Barclay about the health service and building, or not, of forty new hospitals which Mr Barclay was given ample opportunity to answer, this interview was very much anti-Russian. Laura did not, probably because she could not, answer the Russian Ambassador's counterclaims. 

The Russian claims about Nazis in the Ukraine have recently been vindicated by President Zelenskyy’s reference to Russians as “near humans”. This is similar discourse to that used by the Third Reich describing the Russians as “Untermenschen” (sub-humans). This clip was on the news very, very briefly and not shown again - obviously it was not intended to be aired at all! This short clip unintended or otherwise shows once again the biased reporting we are subject to. What may have happened if an Editor had insisted Zelenskyy’s full speech about Russian being “near humans” be aired? I’ll leave that to the imagination.  

Caoimhin O’Muraile is Independent Socialist Republican and Marxist.

Myth Of A Free Western Media

Mick Hall  organises his rage against bad strategy.

CWU Strategy

I am totally puzzled how the CWU expect to win their fight with the current strategy. Basically it boils down to two days on strike then they take a break until the next two days comes around.

In my experience when taking industrial action, you need to win as quickly as possible for obvious reasons. You need to keep the pressure on management daily because they will plot and scheme to break the strike and by giving them a pause it allows them to do this more easily. As importantly in the current situation it allows management time to lobby the government to bring in even more draconian anti-trade union legislation.

If you look at the strikes which have been successful recently, the Unite Union’s strategy in the Bin men/women's strike in Thurrock were spot on. The Union’s head office built up a war chest to provide a hardship fund to see the workers through the dog days when some will inevitably be considering going back to work, thus the strike was solid. Stop start is not the way you win strikes you need to be out of the gate. But then again perhaps I’m old fashioned a dinosaur of an earlier age.

We shall see.

Ukraine

Talk radio and the mainstream media continue to churn out propaganda daily about the situation in the Ukraine. Yet I cannot remember a single day when the likes of James O’Brien and others have said, hang on a minute where is this leading to? They seem to have forgotten the first casualty of war is the truth, or more likely they’re doing their masters bidding!

The whole point of government should be to keep the people they govern out of harm's way. Instead sanctions on Russia have back-fired with disastrous consequences and NATO have been pouring petroleum onto the flames of war. Approximately 4 years ago, the Ukraine was regarded as a failed state run by corrupt politicians and oligarchs, the only time I can remember it being mentioned In the MSM back then was when Joe Biden’s son had been doing dirty deals there, and when there was yet another political coup.

So what changed? The US, political, military and industrial complex saw an opportunity to take down Putin’s Russia and anointed the Ukrainian government as its proxy. No more talk of the Ukraine being the second most corrupt country in Europe. Not a mention of oligarchs, and fascists in its military as the money and armaments flooded in.

Almost overnight it became plucky little Ukraine and we are where we are on a cusp of a world war.

Next stop China?

⏩ Mick Hall is a veteran Left Wing activist and trade unionist.

Organised Rage ✑ Against Bad Strategy

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of Two Hundred And Sixty Nine

Caoimhin O’Muraile ☭ The British Government is trying to take £4BN out of the British Railway and Underground travel networks. 

The plan is to take £2Bn out of the Railways and a similar figure out of London Underground which will, undoubtedly, cost jobs along with employee and passenger safety. On the Permanent Way (P Way) they want to introduce new technology which will cut costs and jobs and will be, arguably, not as reliable and safe at finding faults on the lines as the manual P. Way which has done the jobs for decades, even centuries. The rail companies and government, the latter who claim the strike is nothing to do with them, have also offered a 4% pay increase which is derisory to say the least and this has strings attached. The Rail and Maritime Transport Union (RMT) have asked for 7% with no strings attached, but the dispute is chiefly, though not exclusively about job losses and safety with pay an extra. With inflation running at 9% any figure below this is, in real terms, a pay cut in terms of purchasing power. This strikes of similarities with the British Coal Miner’s Strike of 1984/85 when the government announced it was to cut coal production by 4 million tonnes, which was, as the NUM claimed, an understatement which would cost at least 20,000 jobs. It ultimately cost a lot more than that!

The government took away from the private rail companies negotiating rights during the Covid-19 pandemic and have not returned these rights to them. Yet, British Transport Minister, Grant Shapps, insists the negotiations must be “between the union and employers”. How can they be? The employers have had those rights removed and not returned to them, therefore talks must take place with those who hold the negotiating rights, the government and the RMT. Mick Lynch, General Secretary of the RMT, has written to Shapps requesting a meeting and been told more than once that “negotiations must be between the company's management and the unions” with no government involvement. How can this be possible with the negotiating rights being taken away from the rail companies and held by the government? Answer, it is impossible because anything the two may agree can be vetoed by the Department of Transport and their boss, Grant Shapps!

The RMT have indicated on more than one occasion their willingness to talk with only one proviso, “no compulsory redundancies.” If this new technology comes in, and the government know it, then compulsory redundancies, job losses, will accompany these so-called developments. This will hinder the safety of the remaining staff and passengers alike. The new technology the government have in mind, cutting thousands of P Way jobs, are computerised machines which can discover cracks in the lines and other faults quickly and efficiently. All grand sounding, unless you are a track maintenance worker, the P Way have been doing these jobs since the beginning of the Railways, but what if one of these wonder machines misses something? No human back up as that would cost money, a disaster waiting to happen. How often do we hear of computer systems going down, or hackers getting into governments files and bringing whole countries to a standstill? Quite often, even recently in Ireland the entire health service administration was paralysed due to computer hackers, if you believe that story. What if such a scenario happened on Network Rail, the company in charge of track maintenance? I know there are countless other issues which can go wrong with computers and new technology which cannot happen with a team of track maintenance workers, aided by new technology but not replaced by it. The difference is, of course, employees have to be paid wages whereas computers do not! Once again, we came down to ever increasing profits and to hell with the service.

The longer-term intentions of the British Government is to streamline and modernise the railways, no doubt about that, but at what cost to employees and passengers alike? They will, as they did in the Miners Strike of 1984/85, continue to lie their way through. Already Shapps, who on the one hand claims he has nothing to do with the dispute, and on the other tells us of their plans for modernisation, has already hinted at bringing “Agency Staff”, how well trained nobody knows. For example, can you get an agency train-driver, or an agency fully trained guard? I doubt this very much. The next thing he will be hinting at, if he has not already done so, is reforming the 1906 Trade Dispute Act which allows a certain amount of immunity for unions in Britain from being prosecuted by employers for losses incurred during a trade dispute. This has not yet come to pass, though Thatcher had a good try, but allow the legislation Shapps is talking of to bring in agency staff and could this be the thin edge of the wedge? Let’s not jump to conclusions but bear it in mind. 

Nobody, least of all the unions, have a problem with progressive modernisation. It can be a good thing in many ways, for example modernising the rolling stock to be more environmentally friendly would be considered by all to be forward thinking. An example of this could be the move from steam power to diesel and from diesel to electrification. Perhaps more electrification and other environmentally friendly moves, instead of concentrating on profits, on profits, year on year maybe considered a bright way of looking forward for the rail and underground networks. 

Talking of the London Underground who got rid of the guards on many lines, perhaps by now all of them, accidents on these unguarded trains have happened and gone unreported. I was on one, the Victoria Line, when a computer malfunction caused the door of the almost empty tube to open and then correct itself by closing again. Now, this was not reported or made the news because very few passengers were travelling at that hour of the evening, but what if that had occurred during rush hour when the tube would have been packed? Bodies would have been flung out of the carriage onto the underground track, in between stations in a deep tunnel! Imagine the carnage and chaos!! That therefore questions the safety aspects of these modernisation plans.

Now what of job losses? This is exactly why the government will not agree to the RMT demands of no compulsory redundancies because, it goes without saying, if a machine, no matter how unreliable on the safety issue, can do the work of ten men then ten jobs will go. Shapps calls Mick Lynch’s demand for no compulsory redundancies an “unreasonable” starting point. I call it common sense, certainly from an employee point of view.

At the time of writing the strikes on Britain’s rail and underground networks have been very effective. Now even the managers union, the TSSA (Transport and Salaried Staffs Association) are talking of balloting their members for strike action and joining the RMT on the picket lines. The managers know that if rail jobs go then, it may be curtains for many of them also. After all a manager cannot manage nothing! Once again similarities can be drawn with the pit strike. At the time, late in 1984, the Pit Deputies union, NACODS (National Association of Colliery Overseers and Deputies) voted by 81% to join the NUM on strike. The Deputies knew if a pit closed down, they would have no pit to supervise. The leadership of this small but influential union called off the strike at the last minute, claiming to have cobbled together a deal with the Coal Board and Thatcher. Noticeable it was to see not one Deputies job was saved through this so-called deal, but the pensions of the leadership were safeguarded! This so-called deal was never put to the membership of NACODS in a ballot, it did not suit management’s purpose to do so, as it may well have been rejected (more on this subject read Striking Similarities by Kevin Morley chapter 14 page 183). Let us hope, if the TSSA ballot their members and get a mandate, the leaderships are not bought off or allow themselves to be so.

As is becoming the normal narrative for the government and management through their ever-faithful media we keep being reminded of the need to stay within the law. Let me quote one of Mick Lynch’s predecessors, the late Sam McClusky of the National Union of Seamen, now part of the RMT, “I am sick of hearing about the law. The law is there to crush us, if we let it.” Never a truer statement made and one which the trade union movement everywhere would do well to remember.

So, we have a situation in which much of Britain’s workforce cannot get to work due to transport problems. There is an argument these workers should not be going to work anyway with a group of workers on strike, they too should be out. “An injury to one is of concern to us all” to quote Jim Larkin! Now, with a crisis on the rail network set to possibly escalate, other workers unable to get to work the British Minister for Transport, Grant Shapps, tells us the situation has nothing to do with him. What exactly does a Transport-Minister do then for a living? What is the point having him or, for that matter, any other Minister all of whom appear to do next to fuck all in the way of work!

We also hear much about many workers “working from home” as a lot did during the pandemic. Well, that may be all very well now with the warm weather but what happens in the winter months of colder times? Homes need heating which costs money and if a person, normally out of the home for eight hours per day, assuming this strike has not been resolved, is now spending those hours at home, and with energy prices, so we are told across Europe, set to sky rocket who is going to pay the higher bills? The employers? There’s more chance of knitting fog than them paying or even contributing towards their employees energy costs. 

Computers, printers and other bits of high-tech equipment do not operate on thin air, they need a power source, electricity. With bills set to rise, due supposedly to the situation in the Ukraine, are the bosses going to foot the bill? I would not hold my breath on that one and the trade unions representing those who have been told they will work from home should be looking at this situation. Or are some employers going to use this, as they did in the pandemic, as a way of transferring their energy costs, heating offices etc, onto the employee who will have to heat their homes and pay the bills or freeze? Are the bosses going to make the workers pay for the wear and tear of their equipment, now they work from home, therefore forcing them to replace all worn out equipment, including mobile phones? 

What are the hidden agendas of some bosses? Time will tell us the answer to that one. In the meantime the RMT cannot allow their industry to go the same way as did Coal and Steel and it looks like the dispute will continue and perhaps escalate as other groups of workers, British Airways and health service employees already talking of balloting for strike action. Perhaps a General Strike could come out of this situation but not to worry, it has nothing to do with government and, especially Grant Shapps!!

Caoimhin O’Muraile is Independent 
Socialist Republican and Marxist

Strike On British Rail And Underground Networks

People And Naturealthough the event referred to below, the piece provides a window to how sections of UK trade unionism view the war on Ukraine.

7-April-2022

UK trade unions will demonstrate in London on Saturday, calling for the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine.

“We send solidarity to the trade unionists of Ukraine who have been engaged in humanitarian assistance and resistance to the invasion”, the organisers say. “We will support in whatever way we can the brave people demonstrating in Russia for an end to the war.


“We call on the UK government to welcome refugees seeking to come to the UK without imposing any restrictions.”

The demonstration, which assembles at Parliament Square in London at 12.0 noon, is backed by the GMB general union, one of the UK’s largest, as well as unions representing civil servants (PCS), rail workers (ASLEF), communication workers (CWU), bakers and food workers (BFAWU) and mine workers (NUM).

The three main Ukrainian union federations, and two rail workers’ unions, have also declared support for the event.

The Confederation of Free Trade Unions of Ukraine has appealed to trades unionists internationally to call on governments to send military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine.

“The bombing of hospitals and homes, executions, atrocities and rapes are part of Russian inhumane tactics”, Mykhailo Volynets, the confederation’s chair, wrote. “Russian forces continue to purposefully destroy the people of Ukraine and do not stop even at the time of the negotiation talks.

“The Russian troops are cynically ignoring all the rules of war and international humanitarian law, as well as the principles of humanity.

“Ukraine needs assistance, primarily military, financial, and humanitarian aid. We ask you to call on your governments to provide this assistance to Ukraine and to impose tougher sanctions on the Russian Federation.”

There is a copy of the letter here.

More to read on solidarity action

European trade unions could send convoys to Ukraine. Here’s how – Bob Myers on Open Democracy

Solidarity appeal by UK local councillors to support victims of Russian army abductions. See a report in the Liverpool Echo here

War in Ukraine: reflections and proposals for internationalist union action – Solidaires Union, France

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UK Trade Unions Make ‘Solidarity With Ukraine’ Call

Tommy McKearney Katherine Zappone’s rejection, respectful or otherwise, of an invitation to appear before an Oireachtas committee investigating her irregular appointment was symptomatic of a wider phenomenon. 


It was an example of a sense of entitlement shared by all those in the well-to-do strata of this, our class-bound, class-divided society.

This is a self-serving conviction that the well-to-do are entitled to and indeed worthy of the privileges they enjoy. Moreover—and this is important—there are no lengths to which they will not go to protect the system that guarantees their position.

The practical manifestation of this in present-day Ireland is evidenced, north and south, within two principal, albeit overlapping and complementary, currents. In the first instance, there are those operating almost exclusively within the domestic economy—private landlords, property speculators, major retailers, large construction companies, and private medical services, to name but a few.

There is then the other sector, dominated by foreign capital, with, among other things, the enormous energy-consuming data centres, tax-favoured digital businesses, rapacious extractors of natural resources, and of course hedge funds, such as the Canadian-controlled residential property landlord IRES REIT, Ireland’s largest private landlord.¹

As a consequence, we have a section of society, or in reality a class, that sees itself as deserving to benefit—by their rack-renting of workers, through access to expensive private health, or by reaping dividends from privatised industries or the exploitation of natural resources by transnational corporations. It goes without saying that this comfortable life-style is gained at the expense of the working class.

We are witnessing here, quite simply, the working out of the class struggle in Ireland. Nor is this observation about the nature of our society unnoticed in wider circles. Professor Daire Keogh, president of DCU, recently warned in a press interview that the shortage and exorbitant cost of students’ rental accommodation would create a “class divide,” benefiting the children of wealthier families.

This is an intolerable situation and one that must be changed. However, change for the better won’t come easily. Only last month we had the unedifying spectacle of the Tánaiste, Leo Varadkar, aggressively promoting and defending ratification of the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between the EU and Canada.² If ratified, the treaty would allow, for example (as Varadkar himself admitted to Paul Murphy TD), the above-mentioned Canadian company that owns IRES REIT to sue the 26-County state in a special investor court should the Dáil introduce rent control.

This gives rise to a couple of pertinent questions. In the first place, this trade agreement is not merely a Fine Gael initiative, because it also has the support of the three coalition parties, including Eamonn Ryan’s Green Tories. Moreover, there is the fact that CETA is being equally promoted by the European Union, raising the question of who supports Ireland’s continuing membership of that neoliberal entity, and why.

Nor should we overlook the North in this examination. The Dalradian Gold company is planning to extract precious ore from the Sperrin Mountains in Co. Tyrone, against the determined opposition of the local population. Not only would such mining ravage an area of outstanding natural beauty and poison the local environment for centuries to come but profits arising would fill the coffers of Dalradian’s New York hedge fund, Orion Resource Partners. Worryingly and ominously, not one of the main parties in the Stormont Executive has actively campaigned to have this rip-off halted.

As in the Republic, the reasoning underlying the Executive’s position is a mixture of cynical self-interest and centrist social-democratic economics. Either option simply reinforces the hegemony of the privileged ruling class.

To change the balance of power away from this greedy coterie and in favour of the working class requires the active involvement of all sections of the class and especially its organised elements, those in community organisations and the trade union movement.

Two articles in the September issue of Socialist Voice are of particular relevance in relation to this matter. These are Barry Murray’s article advocating the concept of a people’s participatory democracy, and Nicola Lawlor’s very informative overview of the condition of Ireland’s trade union movement today. The two writers give an honest and realistic assessment of the present situation in both fields. At the same time they are also hearteningly positive about the potential for advances in either area.

It would appear, to this writer at least, that the best results would be obtained through agreed co-operation or combination of both strategies. We have witnessed in the recent past the effectiveness of the campaign against water tax when organised labour and grass-roots organisations combined, to powerful effect. Surely there is a lesson in this that needs teasing out and building upon. If this much can be achieved for a single-issue campaign, why not a similar policy for a system-changing initiative?

Moreover, there is now an urgency for implementing these proposals. There is growing evidence that the global economy is about to undergo significant destabilisation, something that is bound to inflict further pain on the working class. The potential crisis is partly due to Covid, partly to a realignment of global economic influences, but even more so to the inherent instability of capitalism. Early indications of this are emerging, with rapid increases in energy costs, talk of inflation, and fear of a trade war with China.

To prevent Ireland’s working class enduring still further disadvantage and pain it will be necessary to end the privileges accruing to one section of society under capitalism, to end the inequalities arising from their sense of entitlement. This can only be done by bringing the means of production, distribution and exchange under the control of working people in a workers’ republic.

Hence the need to organise for such an outcome; and, as is so often the case, we can draw upon the great James Connolly for inspiration and insight.

With Labour properly organised upon the Industrial and political field, each extension of the principle of public ownership brings us nearer to the re-conquest of Ireland by its people; it means the gradual resumption of the common ownership of all Ireland by all the Irish—the realisation of Freedom - James Connolly, The Re-Conquest of Ireland, 1915.

Tommy McKearney is a left wing and trade union activist. 
Follow on Twitter @Tommymckearney 

Ending The Privileges Of The Elite

Gerry Corbett in the run up to Easter took time out to reflect on James Connolly.
As we enter Easter I always give a thought to the man who 105 years ago led the Citizen’s Army into The Rising in Dublin, James Connolly. A man who gave his life working to improve workers' rights and seeking a fairer, equal and more just Ireland.

Here this coming week, a century later we find our membership voting to take industrial action for the most simple of basic of workers’ rights, the right to be consulted on their very work being handed out to others. And the right to protect that work and the terms and conditions achieved by our forefathers many years ago. 

Let’s reflect on how this dilemma has come about

Internal closed shop agreements and social partnership are anti-democratic, because a small group of insiders make the deal. This is then packaged and sold to workers as the best deal possible at this time, given the present circumstances.

Internal closed shop agreements and Social Partnership comes onto the horizon as a result of political, employment and economic crisis, in order to reduce workers’ expectations, demands and aspirations and to lay the ground for the introduction of reduced terms, yellow pack new entrants and austerity.

The trade union movement must reject this strategy.

To be clear, I am not condemning the entire trade union movement. There are many within the movement fighting against this strategy. Internal closed shop agreements and Social Partnership agreements are not binding on the government: it is free to treat them as advisory, while unions depend on the state to introduce legislation in the spirit of the agreement, which rarely happens.

The ultimate goal of internal closed shop agreements and Social Partnership is the demobilisation of union resistance in employers’ interests. Unions exchange wage moderation and industrial peace for an expectation of policy and institutional influence. The amount of influence is debatable. Some legislative regulations protecting workers were negotiated under social partnership but ultimately had to be passed by the government. Not all were: for example, we still await legislation on union recognition amongst many other issues.

Trade unions always feared legislation on employment, but social partnership actually accelerated it. Of course the crowning glory of social partnership was the Industrial Relations Act (1990), which in effect stripped all power from unions and workers, transferring it to employers and the judiciary. The trade union movement was hoodwinked by Bertie Ahern, then minister for labour, who was seen as the workers’ friend, with guarantees, promises and assurances that it was in workers’ best interest to get this legislation through, as it would inevitably lead to better pay and conditions, when employment relations would improve immensely as a result of it. Yes, employment relations improved immensely—but for employers, not workers—as a result of the 1990 Act.

The trade union movement had been softened up and became far too cozy around Government Buildings, and High level local management believing their own bluster that they had influence on social and company policy. During this period the working class suffered devastating cuts to the social wage; the building of public housing was abandoned to the private sector; charges were introduced for the dysfunctional health service, on its knees as a result of continuous cuts. At the same time tax breaks were given to employers, speculators and investors as workers were robbed to pay Peter, Paul and every gombeen businessperson in the largest transfer of wealth to the ruling elite since the foundation of the state.

As a result of internal closed shop agreements and social partnership, union density collapsed. Strikes became a thing of the past, leading to a generation of union reps without any experience of collective bargaining or collective action.

As time went on, Internal closed shop agreements and Social Partnership became more and more bureaucratic, with working groups, task forces, reviews, and committees, leading to avoidance, postponement, and lack of decision-making on contentious issues. Employers did not have to implement regulations, and many did not.

The private sector has almost complete autonomy to pursue corporate strategies, while employers are free to determine the form, structure and organisation of any internal collective bargaining unit.

The main achievement of internal closed shop agreements and social partnership was a victory for the employers in gaining pay restraint and industrial peace. The cherry on the pie was a plethora of anti-union legislation, not least the Industrial Relations Act. The government succeeded in lowering workers’ expectations, enabling them to impose austerity policies at will. In the public sector, “workplace partnership” has been used in a managerial manner to drive through a predetermined reform agenda.

The reliance of the trade union movement, particularly the larger unions, on internal closed shop agreements and social partnership as a strategy has over time engendered a reluctance to embrace - and in some cases a fear of - alternative strategies.

Internal closed shop agreements and Social Partnership created an unnatural division between the public and private sectors, and this was encouraged by the government, employers, and media. The Croke Park / Landsdowne Agreements then divided the public sector unions. Internal closed shop agreements and Social Partnership has left the trade union movement a pale shadow of its former self: broken, demoralised, with falling union density and a serious lack of experience in collective action, leading to a fundamental lack of confidence.

The employers’ side, on the other hand, has grown in confidence as increasingly, and successfully, they turn to the courts to stop workers from striking. The anti-union legislation has led to many victories over unions, giving employers the confidence to now engage in aggressive union-busting tactics.

The legal environment is extraordinarily hostile to workers and to unions. Workplace partnership is non-existent, as the balance of power has shifted from workers to employers.

Internal closed shop agreements and Social Partnership has devastated the trade union movement; but still many within it are wedded to this paradigm. There has been a class war on workers’ rights for thirty years, and workers are losing hands down.

Internal closed shop agreements and Social Partnership is class betrayal. Unions must become radical or they will become redundant and ultimately defeated.

This week our members make a choice and the choice is fully theirs: do we stand together to put a hold on the onslaught of attacks on our very futures, or accept the continued rollover ethic being accepted by the softened up group union thinking?

I know where Connolly would have stood.


Gerry Corbett is Independent Workers'
Union, ESB, National Secretary

An Easter Reflection

Matt Treacy No doubt Bruce Springsteen the great union man is busy as we speak penning a ballad of outrage at the closing down of the Keystone XL pipeline that would have taken oil from Alberta in Canada to the Texas Gulf.
 

It was one of those things Biden had been nailed on during his TV debates with President Trump, but was beholden to the extreme left green faction of the Democratic coalition to do so. Indeed he closed the pipeline on his first day even as the ridiculous figure of faux-Woody-Guthrie-Springsteen was playing a song about working stiffs for a man who has spent an entire life mired in the Washington swamp. The same swamp that was part of bombing the Bejesus out of the places Springsteen’s ‘hopeless’ people emerged from.

The reaction of the self-appointed “fact checkers” to the jobs losses – including 1,000 immediate lay offs by the Canadian company TC Energy – was predictably duplicitous. They claimed that none of the unions or companies or others who had made statements had gotten back to them.

Not that anything they said was untrue, just that they hadn’t taken the time to respond to some Woke censor. Oh, and in any event the jobs, which were estimated to be over 50,000 once full production was up and running, were only “temporary.” Real jobs are temporary. Woke sanctimoniousness and hypocrisy is for ever.

The green left is happy as they don’t care about ordinary people anyway, unless they inconvenience them in some way, but those who like to pose as being on the side of Dungaree Joe claim that Biden’s mad Green New Deal – which of course he denied having anything to do with during his stage-managed appearances opposite Trump – will lead to trillions of dollars of new investment and millions of jobs tending wind trees and making sure the solar panels are pointing in the right direction.

All of this will complement Biden’s return to the Paris Accords which commit the United States and other western economies to potentially crippling environmental policies that have no proven value, while the Chinese Communist Party presides over a massive industrial base that is pumping carbon into the atmosphere like it was some new strain of the Wuhan virus.

Barely able to contain themselves, the mouthpieces of the CCP are laughing at those who kow-tow to them in the traditional pose of subservience to their overlords. The Chinese military intimidation of Taiwan is the diplomatic equivalent of mooning out the back window at the old banger you’ve just passed after conning them into using seaweed instead of petrol.

The closure of the pipeline at the cost of thousands of jobs also comes as a piece of hubris pie for those American unions which persuaded their members into voting for the Democrats in November. In August, the President of the United Association of Union Plumbers and Pipefitters, Mark McManus, declared that “Biden is a life-long Labor ally.”

Mark McManus of the United Association
of Union Plumbers and Pipefitters

So what does McManus think of his hero now? He is not best pleased, it would seem. Here’s part of his statement on the matter.

In revoking this permit, the Biden Administration has chosen to listen to the voices of fringe activists instead of union members and the American consumer on Day 1. Let me be very clear: When built with union labor by the men and women of the United Association, pipelines like Keystone XL remain the safest and most efficient modes of energy transportation in the world.

“Fringe activists.” Well, he and his members were told that this was exactly what was going to happen. At the very best interpretation, Biden is no more than a doddering patsy for sharks like Harris and the growing far left green extreme faction within a party that is a pastiche of the one that many Irish Americans and Irish in general associate with Kennedy. Who was none of the things the Democrats now revere.

Some opponents of Biden and his union backers were inclined to remind them of all this.

Another unintended consequence of the closure of the pipeline is that it has managed greatly to annoy the Canadians, who, like the Irish and black Americans, are just assumed by the Democrats to be worthy of nothing more than a patronising pat on the head every so often.

So spare a thought as well for the Ultra Woke Canadian Premier Justin Trudeau who was forced for political reasons to express some disappointment at the kick in the genollockers from his “friend,” but who is otherwise fully on board with the agenda of the Democrat left.

Justin Trudeau
 
Indeed Trudeau, like his friends in the Democrats and the left generally, clearly values other things more than trivialities such as energy security and jobs. Trudeau added:

Despite President Biden’s decision on the project, we would like to welcome other executive orders made today, including the decisions to rejoin the Paris Agreement and the World Health Organization, to place a temporary moratorium on all oil and natural gas leasing activities in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and to reverse the travel ban on several Muslim-majority countries.

So like his buddies here who have amnesia when it comes to the Obama/Biden bullying of Ireland into the bank bailout in 2010, all of the ideological allies of China Joe will just have to see where this crazy trip takes them. Man. Or as Brucie might say, Take Me on Your Burnin’ Train.

Matt Treacy has published a number of books including histories of
the Republican Movement and of the Communist Party of Ireland. 

Biden Stabs Union Members In The Back

UnHerd It is inevitable that, as the West’s culture war thunders on, we will read yet more reports of individuals being hounded from their jobs, and in some cases forced to withdraw from public life, for saying the ‘wrong’ thing (or even, as sometimes seems to be the case these days, merely for failing to say the ‘right’ thing). 

Paul Embery
15-June-2020

The hyper-sensitivity over issues of identity and race that already bedevilled so many of our institutions and workplaces has further intensified in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests and the attendant row over statues.

There is, it seems, no room for disagreement or nuanced debate in some quarters. Those who refuse to support the Black Lives Matter movement, warts and all, are, in some cases, risking their whole careers and reputations.

This pitchfork mentality was illustrated by the affair of the local radio presenter on the Isle of Man who was suspended from his job recently for the heinous crime of challenging the concept of ‘white privilege’ in a debate with a caller. His wasn’t the first and won’t be the last such case.

Continue reading @ UnHerd.

When Will The Trade Unions Speak Up?

Waylon Hedegaard asked that his thoughts be shared with trade union activists. 

Allow me to make a confession. I’m a 52 year old fat bastard, white and proud Union member, and I fully support Black Lives Matter…

Fully and utterly support!

“Why?” Many of my brothers and sisters ask.

 

As if the idea of standing for justice for all no longer affects us.

Is the concept of fairness and decency is not our concern - Have we forgotten where we have come from?

What so many of my brothers and sisters don’t understand is that the fight for justice that Black Lives Matter represents is exactly where the fight for worker’s rights was 100 years ago. It is no slight to say they are not on new ground at all, but rather are standing precisely where unions stood a century ago.
We are them. They are us. Young! Angry! Thirsty for justice! And like us in 1920’s, they need to be heard.

Let me state this as bluntly as possible. There is no activity that Black Lives Matter does that we did not perfect a century ago. In no way am I disparaging this. They are borrowing time-honored techniques from a previous century's movement just as that movement borrowed them from those who came before. 

 

Anything that people complain about BLM doing, the Labor Movement did. We did those things to get us the privileges we have today. In fact, those things are the reason we have the rights we currently enjoy.

Did we block streets in the course of our strikes and protests for better wages and treatment? Hell yes! All the time! There were strikes and marches that shut down entire cities and even states for days at a time. In the fight for just the eight hour day, hundreds of thousands marched across the nation month after month and year after year. They shut everything down. They needed to!

Were we violent? Oh my god! Our Grandparents were tough as nails. Does anyone think that they just asked nicely to be given living wages and be treated like human beings? Our great grandparents fought like hell itself for the rights that so many of us now take for granted. And we fought violently against authorities who beat or shot workers in these actions. Many of these periods of civil unrest led to the destruction of rail yards, factories and entire city blocks. Cities shuddered to a halt with the rage in the face of the injustices that occurred when companies had the police departments and the courts firmly in their pocket or could hire mercenary armies to maim or kill workers.

Year after year, our predecessors rioted and burned shit down.

But we didn’t loot, right? Do you really believe that? There have always been looters and there always will be. In every period of labor unrest, looting was widespread. The shopkeepers, clerks and capitalists were always against us. They hated what unions stood for and many had little problem with looting and burning shops to the ground.

But last week the rioters looted Target!!! Get real. With the anti-worker attitude that Target and so many other mega-companies have, our great great grandparents would have had little issue burning Target after Target to the ground.

Did we kill people? Yes. The usual scenario was as follows. The police or mercenaries would shoot a few workers, and the workers would shoot several of them in return. Police firing into crowds or ambushing workers would often lead to full scale violence often devolving into all-out war where dozens or even hundreds died. 

Let me give you some events to look up. The Battle of Blair Mountain, The Ludlow Massacre and aftermath, The Great Railway Strike of 1877, The Memorial Day massacre of 1937 to name just a few off the top of my head. Oh, and for all our sakes look up the Minneapolis Teamster Strike of 1934.
Look them up and learn.

 

When workers grew so desperate, they did terrible things. And rest assured, when their brothers and sisters or sons and daughters were shot before their eyes, they often rioted with frightening force. 

These were not isolated incidences. This violence happened repeatedly decade upon decade. So much so that most American cities built armories downtown to help put your grandparents down if they ever had the temerity to rise against the powers that be. Understand that these armories were not built against foreign invasion, but rather against our union brothers and sisters.

This is our history! Learn this so you not only can protect the rights you have, but so you can recognize what is happening now?

What does all that violence and destruction produce? In our case? Everything! There is not a right we possess today that did not in part arise from violence or the threat of violence by our great grandparents. You may as well ask what good violence did in the Revolutionary War?

Our opponents have never given us rights until they are exhausted, until we have risked our lives time and time again standing up to them. In so many cases, we had to demonstrate that every victory they had was a pyrrhic victory. That is where it didn’t matter if the authorities won every battle, the victories would be so expensive that they were never worth winning.

Understand that I am in no way justifying killing and violence. I grieve for those hurt on the sidelines. I sorrow for those who lost business and livelihoods, and I weep for the officers injured and killed. In addition, I also know that often violence becomes the enemy of any movement and often wrecks what has been achieved. Yet most riots, contrary to current conspiracy theory are not planned. They are the inevitable rage created by a system that crushes people in its gears. Violence stems from desperation which stems from injustice. Rioting and other violence is inescapable in a system where for many, justice cannot be found.

The long term solution to rioting is not more police. The solution to rioting is setting up a system where injustice is dealt with. 

Worker violence raged across this nation for 50 years until Unions were legalized and workers had another outlet for their grievances.

 
And yet many of the same people who have benefited all their lives from the same tactics that Black Lives Matter is using are now whining about inconveniences in their lives? How have we forgotten so much? Do we think we are shopkeepers and clerks now? Have we moved out of the working class? Do we believe that if we pretend we are on the billionaires’ side that they’ll continue to feed us with tidbits dropping from their table? Do we think that they won’t eventually drop us to the floor to be ground under their heels?

And if when that happens and we have stood for no one else, who will stand for us?

But above all justice is still the centerpiece here and as a matter of justice, the facts are brutal. Black people are 2.5 times as likely to be killed by police. How is this not a tragedy worth any inconvenience? Unarmed black men are being killed because they don’t obey the police fast enough, because they don’t bow low enough, because even handcuffed and lying on the ground they are presumed to be such a threat that four officers can slowly suffocating a helpless and pleading man to death.

Can you imagine seeing a video of your son or daughter slowly strangled to death? Can you envision how you’d feel watching their gasps for air? How would you feel if your son’s murder was just another in a long line of murders where justice was virtually unknown? Where the perpetrators would get off either utterly free or with a mere slap on the wrist?

Imagine the rage you’d feel?

I fully support Black Lives Matter because even though my child is white, I can imagine them being slowly suffocated under the weight of a human knee. 

In the last week, I have imagined it time and time again… 

I admit that I do not know and I fervently hope to never know how that feels, but I can imagine… and that’s enough for me.

For two centuries, the Labor Movement has been a push for justice and is not complete. BLM is a push for justice right now and is just beginning. No matter how I look at it, BLM is a sister organization to my own.

As Unions, we should remember enough of our history to understand what the desperation and suffering of our grandparents when they were on the bottom of society. And we should remember that it has always been our goal to lift everyone up to our level rather than tear anyone down.

Therefore I, a white, 52-year-old, fat-bastard of a Union member stand in solid support of Black Lives Matter.

A fight for justice has always been at Union's core, and I’m not about to give that up now.

 
Please feel free to share this with union members you know.

I Fully Support Black Lives Matter

Gerry Corbett, a frontline trade union official, offers his opinion on the current challenges faced by the trade union movement.

The Impact of Social Partnership and the Industrial Relations Act on Irish Workers Rights 2020, and the need for the leadership of the Trade Union movement to immediately accept and address the failings of past decisions - radically reform and reconstruct its thinking and approach, ratify and endorse new organised steps and measures to realign workers throughout the country and begin a process of restoring the years of lost ground pertaining to workers rights, in both a strong presence on the ground and the achievement of proper legislation to protect the very future of the movement - has now become an integral and essential necessity.

The alternative is to continue with and be part of a failed process, whereby Congress and the trade union leadership in the eyes of the majority of the rank and file, and indeed the greater public have become nothing more than another arm of the state, all too willing to endorse and support what has now become an endless reduction in prior achieved and hard fought rights.

Furthermore, in their actions they have fully bought into and promoted a system that actually weakened the resolve of the membership on core issues. And using the principals of facilitation and mediation at every turn actually defeated the original stand made on any issue. In return at almost every test, what was believed and packaged to be a great success has been struck down on numerous occasions as repugnant to the constitution, and has actually proved worthless.

It is important to remember that trade unions are presently obliged to operate within a restrictive legal and constitutional framework partly of their own making, The buy-in at Bertie's behest by the then and subsequent trade union leadership into the social partnership model brought about what can only be the described as a slow growing cancer to the movement: three decades of centralised wage agreements that effectively removed the power of the worker from the shop floor to the ivory towers of the so called people who knew best. Industrial peace was promoted and the unions became the free HR department of the employer. Low tax policies and small pay awards became the norm and were packaged and sold to the members as the wise leaders' answer to all.

With the low taxes came the underfunding and privatisation of our essential services like health, transport, education, water and of course, housing. The Unions after buying into and recommending the process found themselves defending and actually guarding the partnership on behalf of the other so called partners. They now found themselves telling members want they could not do on a daily basis. The rot had set in. But rather than pulling the plug, the leadership had become too friendly with their new found friends, too comfortable sitting in the soft chairs in the big plush offices. They had long forgotten the long, nasty, hard fought battles it took for them and their like to get to even be sitting at that table.

Add to this lovely mix, that after all those years of so called partnership the trade union movement have still to this day not achieved proper legislation on mandatory collective bargaining rights. Some partnership?

The industrial Relations Act and all of its amendments has consistently being sold as another prize for the benefit of workers,. Yet when it has been tested within the judicial arena if has failed at all the important hurdles - REOs were deemed to be unconstitutional, Registered Employment Agreements’, ‘Joint Labour Committees’ and ‘Sectoral Employment Orders’. all have been found to be unconstitutional.

The constant tinkering at the Act in its present format is nothing more than a window dressing exercise for a failed entity, Furthermore, to take it a step further, any collective agreement in any employment naturally falls under the same remit. The freedom of contract and freedom of association as defined, and now consistently upheld in the Supreme Court and the High Court, clearly leaves the option open for employees who are non-union - or other, and who were never part of a process of discussion and agreement, and never balloted on acceptance - to freely challenge any enforcement of such a collective agreement within their contract of employment and terms and conditions as being unconstitutional. It is worth noting to date no collective agreement has been challenged to the High Court, mainly because the in-house agreements generally ensured improved terms and conditions. However in recent years it has become too often that the terms of new collective agreements actually reduced the terms and conditions. Not too long I think before we see a High Court challenge from a grouping of disgruntled employees.

Why you might ask does the trade union movement find itself in such a quagmire? Quite simply that in spite of this great partnership, and great friendship between the government, the employers and Congress - and indeed the leadership of all the big unions - over decades now and with all the might and strength of our great membership and leadership, we have failed to have mandatory collective bargaining legislation drawn up, and passed in Dail Eireann.

Our present whole labour legal legislation is based on a voluntary buy-in. And in all those decades the might of the trade union movement on this island has not yet managed to influence any government to have a mandatory collective bargaining trade union act, created in legislation, placed before, voted on, and passed in Dail Eireann.

Rather the present wisdom coming from the marble halls of Congress and indeed the major union block to the most recent High Court finding went as follows: the government must appeal this decision to the Supreme Court and put a stay on the High Court decision; we must now ballot all of our members for impending industrial action, was the war cry from some of our leading lights.
Let us just for one minute examine this light bulb response from our highly paid leaders, none of which will be actually impacted by the High Court decision in their take home pay.

The High Court decision ruled out the Sectoral Order because it was repugnant to the Constitution, in that decisions by a minister or the Labour Court could not interfere with the protections of freedom of association and freedom of contract as protected and guaranteed under article (Article 15.2.1).

Now a quick chat with any young barrister who has just left the Kings Inn on his way to carve out a well heeled life on other people’s problems, you can be told a couple of things very smartly:  any appeal of a High Court decision on a decision of repugnancy of the Constitution will have very little hope of success. Furthermore, it will probably take two years to hear. And, more importantly, no stay can be put on a High Court decision because of the finding of an infringement of constitutional rights.

The actual only way to overcome the ruling is by way of referendum. Some chance of that happening.

So the question must be asked - just what games are the brains of the trade union movement playing with the membership? Then we have the ballot the members for industrial action war cry, just for what? To march the troops up to the top of the hill, then be referred to the WRC to mediate and facilitate for what? And on what? And achieve actually what? Because the minister, the Labour Court and the WRC still will be without the authority to enforce anything that infringes on the protected rights of the Constitution. Some plan all right.

England has the Employment Relations Act 1999, introduced by a Tony Blair-led government which introduced Trade Union recognition legislation for firms with more than 20 employees where a simple majority of the relevant workforce wanted it. France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy. Portugal, Sweden, Luxembourg, Germany and Austria all provide for collective bargaining machinery as nations at all levels. Serious questions must be asked of our leadership when we find ourselves in this present position.

It is often said Unions are only as good and as strong as the members; fair comment would be the national membership have become too complacent and accepted a lackluster ageing leadership who have become far too comfortable in their plush surroundings. The restrictive democratic process of the trade union model indeed has also certainly played a major part in what the movement has become. Also any discerning voice, even when it made sense, was quickly silenced and shunned in a totally negative fashion.

This cannot be allowed to continue, A complete root and branch overhaul of the movement in its entirety is now required. The membership must stand up and be counted and demand this takes place in an open and transparent way, and quickly if the movement is to survive.

The elephant in the room has to be tackled. Draft legislation has to be prepared, The Trade Union Act, 2020, enshrining the trade union right to access and representation of choice, and ensuring the legitimacy of collective agreements is not open to endless challenge. If a referendum is required to support this act, so be it. At least then when we march the troops to the top of the hill, we have a plan. Furthermore, a plan we will not mediate backwards on. Whatever action is required it must take place to achieve the goal.

Governments and Employers were never the workers friend. It was naïve to ever think otherwise. It is time we returned to the founding principles of Connolly and Larkin. Their aims and wishes are still unfinished business. Let us together as a movement again make them proud.

Gerry Corbett is the national secretary of the
Independent Workers' Union ESB Technicians.

A Reflection Of The Present Crisis Pertaining To Workers Rights In Ireland