Workers Solidarity Movement

The CPSU activist group have produced a leaflet calling on members of the CPSU to vote No to the public sector deal.  "Many public sector workers have been shocked and angered that such a deal was agreed in the first place, some general secretaries including our own tried to present the deal as some kind of “victory”. Of course we can now see clearly that this is a rotten deal." 

There will be celebrations of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered (LGBT)
 Pride across Ireland this summer, including Cork's Pride Parade on June 5th and Dublin's Parade on June 26th. The original Pride marches were held to commemorate the Stonewall riots in New York which began on June 28, 1969, and which were led
mainly by working class Black and Puerto Rican trans people, butch dykes and drag queens sick of being beaten up and arrested by the police. The following year, in commemoration of the riots, the Gay Liberation Front organised a march from Greenwich Village to Central Park. Almost 10,000 women and men attended the march. Today, many major cities all over the world hold LGBT/Queer Pride Marches on the last Sunday of June in honour of Stonewall.



Despite the Catholic hierarchy’s shameful efforts to silence the survivors of abuse, we now have some idea of what was happening behind the walls of church-run institutions across Ireland. In the wake of this, many people have begun asking whether the Catholic Church should continue to have any control whatsoever over state-funded education. As it stands, the Church still control 92% of primary schools. However a MRBI/Irish Times poll in January of this year found that a majority of Irish people now want this situation remedied.

This is the audio recording of the second 'Rethinking Revolution' meeting on the topic of 'Will there be a revolution in our lifetime.' "Are we spending our precious time outside of work at protests and meetings because we want to improve our lives or are we just fighting for future generations. In either case what is it that we are trying to do as we move from topic to topic and struggle to struggle?"

This show is produced by the Workers Solidarity Movement.   The Aim of this show is to cover a range of issues and struggles that don’t get covered in the media.

We do not pretend to be unbiased.  We actively engage in politics and struggles to bring about change in society.  We hope to cover some of the issues which we think are live at the moment in Irish society.  We engage in those struggles and talk to others who are actively attempting to bring about change.

The INTO Vote No Campaign today launched a new, updated version of the leaflet calling on members of the union to reject the Public Sector deal. This leaflet will be distributed throughout the country at INTO information meetings and in school staffrooms in the coming weeks in advance of the ballot of members which takes place during May (closing date 21st May).

Michael Taft has provided a useful quick review of the ESRI Quaterly commentary and the contradictions with government claims over at his Notes on the Front blog.  He says this points at a "joyless an jobless" recovery

With the National Executive of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation coming out unanimously against the Public Service deal and the NEC of SIPTU advocating a yes vote, the battle lines are well and truly drawn.  The next few weeks will see an intense debate in the trade union movement on this deal, and the threats of what will happen to us if we don't comply are already coming thick and heavy from government ministers such as Mary Harney and Brian Lenihan.

This text is currently being distributed in leaflet form by the Vote No to the Public Sector Agreement campaign within the Irish National Teachers Organisation. As well as arguing why the agreement is bad for education workers in the public sector it also explains why it is also bad for other public sector workers.  If you want to distribute the leaflet you'll find a link to a PDF of it at the bottom of the text.

In a major setback for the government the executive of Impact, the country’s largest public sector union has rejected the deal which was negotiated last week.