Race to the Bottom in Donegal County Council

8 part-time road workers face having their wages slashed in a Thatcherite attack on terms and conditions

The “Race to the Bottom” that is often spoken about in submissions to Indymedia was highlighted recently in County Donegal.
Eight part-time road workers, based in the Gaoth Dobhair and Cloich Cheannfhaola areas of North West Donegal, have refused to sign a new contract offered to them in March by Donegal County Council.

Another 72 part-time road workers in the area have accepted the offer and signed the new contract.
The eight claim that their terms and conditions are being victimised because they are vulnerable and marginalised.
The men also claim that Council officials told them that theirs is a pilot scheme, implying that, if it is accepted, it will be applied to other part-time workers.

The new contract would mean that their ability to get overtime would be severely curtailed. At present, if they are asked to work after 4.30pm, they are on time and a half. If they work on Sunday they get double time.
Under the new conditions, the men claim they will be working alongside full timers who are on these rates while they will be on a flat rate. They are not prepared to accept that.

Bizzarely, SIPTU, the union that represents the men, have advised them to sign a contract that means they will have less wages in their pay packet for the same amount of work done.

As one of the workers put it, “No full time official is going to volunteer to have his wages cut. Why should we?”
He also made the point that the Council would have to be insane to revert to the original contract after their part-timers had agreed to a reduction in wages. The pilot scheme is here to stay, according to the eight men.

Recently, the workers have sought advice from the Independent Workers’ Union and are putting their case to SIPTU at a meeting on Wednesday night, the 13th of September.

Another aspect of the case raises issues of basic democracy.

When the men were given the new contracts, they contacted a number of Councillors in an attempt to have the question raised in the Council chamber. Sinn Féin Councillor for the area Pearse Doherty tried to have a debate on the issue in Council and was told that that was not permitted as it was a “corporate” issue and could only be addressed by the County manager, an unelected official. Independent Councillor Ian McGarvey has also tried to raise the issue in Council, only to meet the same response.

Why do we elect Councillors to run the Council, if they are told there are basic issues such as Council workers’ terms and conditions that they are not even allowed to discuss?

Traditionally, the part-time workers are drawn from the hill farmers and fishermen in Donegal who used the work to top up their minimal livelihood. In the recent past, hill farmers have been unable to make any sort of a livelihood from their farms and small fishermen have been squeezed out by the huge supertrawlers and EU legislation. Now when they need the wages from their part-time work maintaining the roads in Donegal, (and, by God, they need maintaining!), they are being shafted.

The workers are also aware that there are plenty of people in the County who are prepared to work for the lower wages and conditions, but see this as the first step in a concerted campaign to attack all labouring jobs in the Council.

They point out that they work in small gangs, whereas temporary or part-time workers in the water and sanitation departments, who work in larger groups and are static for the most part, have not been offered the new contracts.

Another point they have made is that they fear that such practices will spread over into the private sector in Donegal, given the high rate of unemployment in the county and the recent haemorrhage of jobs there.