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Get behind the government or ?????
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From Breaking News.ie
The Taoiseach is calling on the people of Ireland to get behind the Government in order to get the economy out of its current difficulties.Brian Cowen told the Dáil that industrial action will achieve nothing.
Later today Gardaí and taxi drivers will take to the streets in protest over the pensions levy.
The Irish Congress of Trade Unions is to discuss a national day of protest.
The Taoiseach said we have to pull together as a nation to work our way through the current difficulties.
So Ireland has to pull together as one to solve the problems we face. This I have to say is a very weird thing to have said. In Ireland we had a mechanism for people to pull together and work on things together called Social Partnership. But that did not work and indeed the talks between the government and the social partners to find a common way out of the mess collapse because basically everyone wanted to pull together in different directions. The social partners was the way to get people to “pull together” alas it is no more.
Now whether or not social partnership was the best way to proceed is of course debatable but if the call is for a pulling together after the collapse of the talks it would seem that the “people of Ireland to get behind the Government” is the more the message to be taken from this statement. And as for the “industrial action will achieve nothing” I guess he is suggesting it is either the governments way or no way.
The big thing of course is where the private sector workers will fall. There seems to be a building of a divide between the public and the private. With the government trying to deflect attention for the economic misery to the “overpaid” public sector. If they are successful then the action will only solidify the distance between the two sectors. If the unions want to win they have to realise that “Workers of the World Unite” is not automatic. They have to realise that to alot of people now guaranteed income is more important then take home pay.
Simon,
Listening to David Begg on Morning Ireland today he expressed clear annoyance at the media focus on the national strike threat. It would arise, he said, only if the ICTU offer to renew talks with the government on a national partnership approach to the current crisis ended in failure.
The partnership approach, Begg stated, is the trades unions’ priority. The national strike option only comes into play if they are forced into a position whereby they have no option left but to defend the living conditions of their members through industrial action. Begg also said that ICTU want a three year national deal on cuts, taxation and pay. Even more pointedly he accepted that the pension levy is there for keeps – Congress simply want concessions to alleviate the burden of the levy on lower paid workers in the public sector and, according to Begg, will be happy enough for the revenue difference to be made up elsewhere, presumably from an increased levy on higher paid public servants.
One of the main problems for ICTU going into the last round of talks with Government was that they had nothing to put on the table. From the point of view of their own credibility, they felt they could not accept the choices the government put in front of them: 10% general public service pay cut or imposition of a pension levy plus shelving in either option of the pay agreement they had concluded only a few months previously. Such a deal would have left the union leadership with no credibility and vulnerable to maverick actions by some of their more militant public sector union members. So rightly or wrongly, they walked.
Now they have something – their ten point plan. What’s more it’s bolstered by the 120,000 strong march last Saturday. Begg said that while Congress wanted to get back into talks with the Government, without the public endorsement delivered by Saturday’s march any previous offer of talks would have been perceived as a “sign of weakness.”
Begg further said that ICTU will know the lie of the land by the end of March. He sounded reasonably assured that there will be talks with the Government and that they will be initiated fairly promptly. Everyone is well aware that there are informal contacts going on continuously betwen the Government and the trade union leadership and the template for the next round of partnership negotiations is being worked out behind the scenes. No more than one would expect in the circumstances.
In that context I think you are entirely misreading Cowen’s Dail statements. He knows how this game has to be played out. His priority also is to get back into talks with ICTU, but more on his own terms. For the Government to cave in immediately and issue an invitation to ICTU to come into Government buildings based solely on ICTU’s flawed ten point plan – some bits good; some bits useless – is not politically feasible. Besides, there are other interest groups to be appeased (employers, CIF etc.) and brought on board if the end result is to have any credibility, or indeed to make any deal possible in the first place.
There is also the uncomfortable fact (for them) that the Government has to take responsibility for the impact of any such three year deal that emerges from this process on society and the economy, in all our interests. That has to be their key priority.
If I was the betting type I’d give it a few days before the announcement comes through that exploratory talks between the Government and the unions and the employers are to begin again. But the Government has another option; they can wait and push the unions right up to the wire if they want to and offer talks only in the last week in March. Bit risky, and if Cowen has revealed anything about his character in the past few months it is that he is generally risk-averse.
I don’t believe that ignoring the unions is a credible option for the Government. If they do, then they will have to take all the drastic decisions that are required – tax hikes, further pay cuts in the public services, service cuts etc. – themselves, and will have no social partnership process in place to support their subsequent implementation. The most likely result of that, and something that may be unavoidable anyway if things get much worse, is riots on the street, chaos and breakdown in all public services and the Govenrment being ignominiously drummed out of office sooner rather than later. I don’t think they’re quite ready for that yet, do you?
So Ireland has to pull together as a nation but anyone shopping in Newry has left the Irish nation. Hmm ? Fianna Fail republicanism at its best!
FF/Greens have little option but to try to secure some type of social partnership consensus in my opinion. If as some have suggested they are trying to pursue a divide the workers strategy and regain the intiative by tackling the PS behemoth then they are playing with fire. Breaking workers down into Public and Private sector is operating at an almost elemental level and such fundamental forces will as likely destroy the govt. as prove a route out for the govt.
The ultimate problem for FF/Greens is that the private worker’s might turn against the Public sector workers but all will still look to punish the govt. There may be no redemtion at the end for these sinners.