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After Croke Park: what to do now?
 national |
anti-capitalism |
opinion/analysis
 Thursday June 17, 2010 21:47 by Gregor Kerr - Workers Solidarity Movement www.wsm.ie
facing reality in our unions
In mid-June the Irish Congress of Trade Unions Public Services Committee voted to accept the ‘Croke Park deal’. ‘Social partnership’, presumed dead and buried when the government unilaterally imposed pay cuts on public sector workers in the December ’09 budget, was revived and given a new lease of life.
But this is ‘social partnership’ with a difference. Instead of the union leadership believing that ‘partnership’ gives them some input into government policy (as they have wrongly thought for the past 20 years), all they can now offer in its defence is that this is the “least worst deal” and that “it’s better to be inside the tent than outside.”
It is a testament to the strength of the sway the union leadership has over the members. In the INTO, for example, union members were ‘led’ from a position where 79% of members voted for industrial action to prevent pay cuts last October to a 63% vote to accept those same pay cuts and a raft of changes to working terms and conditions. What had changed in just 7 months to bring about such a seemingly impossible turn-around?
The most obvious thing is that the union leadership chose to sell the deal on the basis of the fear factor. They argued that the only alternative to this deal was a sustained campaign of industrial action. The threat of “industrial warfare” which would see us spending months on strike was used as a stick to beat the membership into submission. The leadership did not see industrial action as being a weapon with which we could win. The idea that we could work out a strategy which would involve rolling strikes and action in key areas - a strategy worked out on our terms and designed to hurt the government and force the trade union movement’s analysis of how the financial crisis should be dealt with onto the agenda – did not form part of their version of “industrial warfare”.
Another element of the ‘fear factor’ which the union leadership exploited was events in Greece. While it is clear that the economic and social turmoil in Greece was as a result of the greed and avarice of financial speculators and showed the importance of a strong trade union movement to defend workers against this greed, the trade union leadership took the simplistic view of pointing to Greece and saying ‘conflict on the streets is the alternative to this deal’.
Union leaders such as Jack O’Connor, Sheila Nunan and Peter McLoone took this stance in relation to the Croke Park deal because they have accepted the government’s TINA (There Is No Alternative) analysis. 20 years of ‘social partnership’ leaves the trade union movement without a real social and economic alternative. They genuinely do believe that they are better off ‘inside the tent than outside.’
They were able to sell this TINA analysis because anarchists, socialists and those who have an alternative viewpoint have failed to establish any real base in the unions. Small groupings did come together, most notably in the INTO and IMPACT, to oppose the deal. However these groupings clearly failed to connect with the mass of ordinary union members in being able to espouse an alternative strategy.
That’s the challenge now for those of us who fundamentally disagree with the current union strategy of appeasement and acceptance of the attacks on our living standards. We cannot give up the struggle for the real soul of our trade unions. We need to attempt to build on the small groupings which came together to oppose this deal and to begin in earnest the task of discussing and developing an alternative strategy.
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Comments (19 of 19)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19Absolutely agree with this analysis. I take it a bit further in my analysis of the weekly protests also on Indymedia Ireland.
Not a single mention of the Private Sector.
Almost Half of the Pay of the Public Sector is borrowed from Germans.
Private sector workers pay their own way.
In a fashion Gregor almost accidentally addresses the real problems that exist. he talked about the sway the leaders have over their members, true enough. But he fails to recognise that the members are even more conservative than their leaders! At least O connor was a former trot, until he realised the members had no time for any left of centre ideology. Dont forget most of his members vote FF or Labour at best. You are wasting your analysis and time with utopian statements such as " the struggle for the real soul of our trade unions....We need to attempt to build on the small groupings which came together to oppose this deal and to begin in earnest the task of discussing and developing an alternative strategy..." Irish trade unionists definitely dont want any of that. Groups on the left wont accept just how conservative this country is even though it is staring them in the face.
A lot of the 'left' get lost in the jargon, and set up new political priesthoods protected by ritual and sequestration of specialised code meanings of language that gives a sense of a grip on the fluid realities, even as the churches with their mumbo-jumbo.Ultimately I think the aversion to ideology is a healthy instinct to preserve the individual judgement rather than accept yet another set of formulated precepts like those injected by Rome.
That said, private sector worker, private sector wealth is predicated on the appropriation of what were originally public resources, whether land, fisheries, minerals, water(increasingly commodified,globally)or media-programming-free thought.
Even our public representation through democratic structures has been subverted and diverted to the private corporate purposes of the spuriously inclusive 'our economy', which requires infinite 'growth' lest the dispossessed ask for a share of the loot rather than a decoy 'right to work' acceptance of sweatshop slavery.The propaganda of the global private spin machinery nails us like specimens into the constraints of increasingly top-down managed 'debates', usually conducted by overpaid mic-jocks with freebies from the lobby levers.
Can anybody on this thread provide me with a single good reason why I should continue to pay 29 Euro a month to my union if the Croke Park deal is the best they can do?
I feel may now be time to walk away from the useless, parasitic, partnership-enfeebled union bosses and at least to stop paying their salaries.
Also, can anyone tell me if i could get individual membership services (though I accept not collective bargaining) from a better union such as Unite?
"Not a single mention of the Private Sector.
Almost Half of the Pay of the Public Sector is borrowed from Germans.
Private sector workers pay their own way."
The private sector was bailed out by providing the banks with liquidity directly from the public coffers - that was the stated purpose of bank bailouts. The private sector bosses definitely did not "pay their own way". You don't seem to hold the same contempt for the incredibly rich who made off with lots of borrowed money to defend the wealth they accumulated during the boom.
Your statement is made even more confusing because you somehow make it seem as though private sector workers are the same, or have the same interests as the companies in which they work.
Workers in the private and public sector share the same interests, and they aren't the same interests as the bankers, large property developers and politicians running the economic show. Dilapidation of the public sector, the attack on wages and all sorts of public services doesn't suit anyone except for the rich, and really, at the end of the day, probably not even them!
I was a bit dubious about this "right to work " campaign, it reminded me a bit of workfare. opus diablos is on the right track when he talks about sweatshop slavery, it reminds me of the old anarchist arguments against wage slavery. As a former trot I also agree that most real people dont want to hear the old jargon and quotes that the left endlessly repeats to ever smaller audiences. A new ideology is needed and a complete break with the jargon etc currently being used by the left groups it just alienates working people especially in this country where the vast majority of workers are right of center (unfortunately) and vote for right of center parties in every election. Still the unreconstructed left parties continue to live in hope that the workers will eventually see the light and keep saying the same things and having the same (small) marches and (pointless time wasting) protests......
But its not going to be as simple as a new ideology. If it ever tilts to a better balance it will be the accumulated efforts of dispirate individuals and groups under different banners recognising a common intelligence in revulsion from the hydra manifestations of the idiocy of the current management cartel. chances are there is going to be at least one more replay of the war to end all wars.Chances are, one way or the other they'll pull it off this time.Meantime all we can do is have a shot at keeping a reading.Just finished reading Brinsley MacNamara's 'The clanking of Chains', his microcosm of the Irish condition in the pre to post 1916 chameleonics of rural village politics.Contrary to rumour from other quarters, our writers still speak to the present.Which also relates to what realist wrote earlier.
The relevant division is between the overpaid and the underpaid, whichever sector is involved. There is plenty to go round if it was distributed with a trace of rationality, instead of the anarchy of the market dictatorship which serves those dynasties that have accumulated wealth over generations of privatising the common wealth of the earth's resources.It was the market fucked the prospects of a general prosperity, not the 'exotic' public sector wages.Without the public sector you would not have a road under your private vehicle, or water in your private tap, or electr4ic power in your private house and office,etc.By a trace of rationality I mean why should a pop singer or golf addict be paid more than someone who cleans hospital wards or disposes of the rubbish our consumtive society generates?Why should a well connected speculator in mineral future options be paid more than the man(or woman or child,as is still the case in some areas the shares may represent)who goes miles underground in dangerous conditions to actually extract the metals that make our communications possible? We need a rebalance.
Well said Opus regarding the balance needed to address the 'glamorous' role of workers in the public sector. I didn't join the public sector to avail of the bonuses: the free dinners, the company car and the other perks that the private sector had during the boom years. The only benefit was the permanency of the job and even that didn't interest me when I started. Neither did it interest anyone in the private sector to apply for jobs in the area.
It was the low-paid workers in the public sector who took the work-to-rule seriously and when the media focused on the siege that was the passport office, the bigger unions left them to fight alone. It was due to the resistance of CPSU staff in the passport office who reigned in the govt leaving our wretched union leaders to brew that self-serving deal to continue social partnership at whatever the cost. A lot of union members from siptu and impact abstained from voting which only means more people dropping out of the unions. So a pay cut for Jack O'Connor please and shame on the union members who voted for this deal. Obviously they can afford to be hit again with as many pay cuts as the govt stated will happen.
Richard, may be talk to a unite member first just in case they're strict on anti-poaching and it also depends on your grade and work for changing union.
used2bsnowwhite, speaking of the CPSU, do you know anything about this re-ballot? Is this an attempt by Blair Horan to tame his members?
Those who fulminate about the alleged conservatism of workers, about "old ideologies" etc. are themselves repeating arguments that have been around for centuries. They just need to add "foreign-imported ideology not suitable for this country" and they will have captured the lot.
The various strands of socialist ideologies are frameworks for addressing the social and economic situation in which we are and usually take into account the historical development of our society. Used creatively they form a base from which to analyse and respond to new variants of capitalist societies and initiatives.
Workers are neither particularly progressive nor reactionary but a change in society is in their objective interest. Some workers are very interested in revolutionary ideas and more are interested in what they see works and who will really fight for them. Over 100,000 workers marched in Dublin to show how opposed they were to being made to pay for the crisis and they were promised a general strike by ICTU. Instead they got the Croke Park deal.
In the face of this massive betrayal the Left were able neither to mount a challenge to the trade union leadership nor to the capitalists, because they had not built the organs of struggle among the workers that were necessary. That remains the situation and no amount of trotting out old arguments (or even new ones) is going to change that hard fact nor can they a substitute for doing that work.
Richard, I'm not a member of CPSU (am unforunate siptu member) so only know of what I've read, your best contact would be Terry Kelleher of CPSU. My guess is that Blair Horan must be playing devil's advocate with CPSU members as TUI have emphatically rejected the deal again this week regardless of the overall vote. A break with the ICTU is a likely outcome for the smaller unions outvoted on the deal so other trade unionists will wait to see the re-ballot in the autumn. Horan is an unpopular and inept leader and he's on the way out. If he keeps selling the deal (which he will do), start a stopwatch, they'll cannonball him out.
Blair isn't just acting on his own; a majority of the CPSU executive voted for the re-ballot. The purpose of the new ballot though is what is important. Blair may be looking for a way out but people like Terry would be seeking a renewed mandate for opposing a sell out.
Building organs for the workers! Try talking to them? that is not what they want I work in a large workplace and not even one of the most active siptu members want what Diarmaid is talking about. Some of them actually went on this 100,000 march that poor Diarmaid is impressed with so did I and most people I talked to didnt want any thing like Diarmaid is putting forward in fact some of them admitted to me that the voted FF a few said they have or might try voting for the Labour party. They are broadly happy with what Jack O Connor is delivering. Get real Diarmaid unfortunately this is Ireland not Greece!
If you are saying that the workers have ended up with the deal they deserve, then perhaps you are right.
If there is no fight in the workers, and if their union "leaders" are, as seems evident, a pack of overpaid, spunkless poltroons, then Croke park is the almost inevitable result.
Hardly any workers are happy with the Croke Park deal and who they vote for occasionally is largely immaterial. If one actually talks to workers and puts forward the kind of views that progressive people have done here, one finds they are at many different levels. Some want to fight, some would fight if they had some decent leadership, others are doubtful and yet others are not ready for a fight at this point, It's our job to organise that first section and to pull in the second section with them. Then we'll see how things go.
To say that the workers don't want change and/or deserve what they get doesn't just absolve the Left of responsibility for facilitating change, it's an absolutely sterile ideological position. It's handy though if one wants to find a reason not to do anything.
I partly agree with some of Diarmaid's critics above, while I admire his eternal optimism it should be based on objective conditions not on his subjective wish about how he would like the workers to behave. The first section he talks about unfortunately is tiny in the extreme and while a couple of hundred of them will keep turning up indefinitely for tiny marches and protests this will continue to have no wider effect whatsoever. What is needed is something a bit Different Diarmaid? try something new instead of doing nothing which would be just as useless as what you are currently advocating.
A majority of CPSU executive committee members have issued a statement criticising general secretary Blair Horan over the Croke Park deal. You can read the statement here:
http://www.socialistparty.net/workplace/39-general/435-...mbers