Workers Solidarity Movement

With women’s control over their own fertility still denied in Ireland North and South, Ciaran Murray drags up a story from the not so distant past, where direct action, literally got the goods.

Christmas has increasingly become a matter of spending money on presents, rather than spending time with your loved ones. Where this might be hard for some, it can be financially unbearable for others. In order to meet the expectations from the society and avoid humiliation, we take up loans to get through family events such as Christmas.

In early December classroom assistants in the North returned to work after a series of strike actions which had gone on since September. This action by the classroom assistants showed in stark form the two faces of the trade union movement. On the one hand there was the tremendous bravery and solidarity shown by the workers themselves in standing up to attempts to bully and harass them back to work. On the other hand was the duplicitousness and skulduggery of some trade union bureaucrats who not alone did their best to undermine the dispute but actively worked with management and politicians to betray the workers.

Porsche has given a bonus to its entire full-time staff. The 11,000 people who actually build cars got €5,200 each. The six person management board, none of whom has ever built a car, awarded themselves a whopping €113 million.

Union leaders, employers and the government will soon be sitting down to negotiate a new pay round as part of the Towards 2016 ‘partnership’ agreement. It doesn’t take a crystal ball to see that the bosses will be insisting on wage increases of no more than a few percent. They will troop into TV studios to tell us that anything better is – take your pick - impossible, irresponsible or unaffordable.

Remember the good old days - before the election - when the Green party used to be in favour of the anti-war cause and used to support the searching of CIA ‘rendition’ planes passing through Shannon? Remember how the Greens used to believe that the reason why the then Fianna Fail/PD government wouldn’t sanction the searching of these planes was because they were in George W Bush’s pocket?

After a month of fooling around, the government has finally declared that they will implement water charges for schools, backdating them to 2007. These charges come as a serious blow to Irish schools, which are already among the worst funded in the OECD. In many schools, funding does not cover basic requirements such as computers or gym equipment, forcing them to fundraise among parents of students.

November saw WSM members gather for their national conference. These take place twice a year and all members can attend, submit motions and vote. The National Secretary reported that membership had increased by 25%. Although we are still a small organisation this was encouraging, as was the increased circulation of Workers Solidarity. A report is available at www. wsm.ie/story/3156.The closing weeks of 2007 saw WSM members who have been working with the Wheelock family’s campaign for an inquiry into the death of Terrence after his arrest by gardai from Dublin’s Store Street station help organise a public meeting, which saw 200 people fill the ballroom of the Royal Dublin Hotel.

November saw WSM public meetings about anarchism in Cork and Dublin, with 40 people at one and about 60 at the other. With the crisis and a growing employers’ offensive on wages there is a greater openness to radical ideas, and we will be holding more meetings around the country over the next couple of months.

Working all your life just to make ends meet; having no say in the decisions that affect you; try to do something about it and they'll lock you up. Yes, that's capitalism!