WILL THE REAL ICTU PLEASE STAND UP?
Apr 2nd, 2010 by Conor McCabe
The absolute farce which is ICTU these days continues, with the public services committee secretary Tom Geraghty telling RTE that the unions cannot do much better in the current circumstances.
Apart from the fact that this is not a bloody pay dispute, his statement is in complete contradiction to ICTU’s own economic analysis, as outlined in last month’s Union Post, which boldly stated that the government’s ‘perverse strategy was hitting jobs‘.
It is also in contradiction to ICTU’s ”Get Up Stand Up‘ media campaign, which lists as its five key demands:
1. Tackle the jobs crisis
2. Stop cuts to people’s incomes
3. Protect vital services
4. Safeguard people’s homes
5. Make the wealthy pay their fair share
Earlier this month, ICTU’s economic advisor Paul Sweeney was one of the signatories of the ‘All the wrong options have been pursued’ letter to the Irish Times’.
This letter was NOT entitled ‘all the best options have been pursued given the circumstances so we should just knuckle down and accept that Fianna Fáil knows what’s best for us’, although that seems to be message Tom Geraghty wants us to accept.
It’s popular these days to call for Labour to drop its connections with the trade unions.
No chance of Fianna Fáil doing the same, though.
Well put!
why is this not a pay dispute Conor?
It may not have been a stellar pay deal - but it definitely wasn’t a partnership agreement or any other form of ‘political influence’.
A predatory employer cut pay and threatened to do it again. The unions traded some productivity for a deferral of this but no guarantees - predatory employers faced with a disunited workforce tend not to give guarantees.
If congress wants to publish some political analysis, its probably checking to see if anybody else thinks its a good analysis and has any ideas on how it to get it adopted - I’m pretty sure they would have been laughed out of Croke Park if they tried to table it at the pay talks.
ICTU itself explains why it’s not just a pay dispute. Paul Sweeney, its economic advisor, agrees that it’s not just a pay dispute. Michael Taft has a good post explaining why it’s not just a pay dispute here.
http://notesonthefront.typepad.com/politicaleconomy/2010/03/in-a-previous-post-we-saw-that-public-sector-labour-costs-are-below-average-by-eu-15-standards-the-argument-that-irish-publ.html
The right-wing wants us to believe that it’s just a pay dispute, and that public sector pay cuts are not only necessary but beneficial to the economy in a recession.
http://www.finfacts.ie/irishfinancenews/article_1019252.shtml
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ireland/7533807/What-Ireland-can-teach-us-about-spending-cuts.html
But that’s just bollocks.
Conor,
In answer to your point below:-
‘A predatory employer cut pay and threatened to do it again. The unions traded some productivity for a deferral of this but no guarantees - predatory employers faced with a disunited workforce tend not to give guarantees’
The problem surely here is not whether or not this is a good deal - it clearly isn’t. and I know you’re not arguing that it is. The point surely is that as regards negotiating any concessions, this is a complete failure.
The day after the budget last December, two ministers threatened that if there weren’t major concessions on working conditions by the unions, there would be further pay cuts. The farce of the low grade work to rule, the threat of strikes and the talks lasting two weeks have amounted to this: the ‘threat’ has now been converted into the ‘deal’. this is exactly what Mary Hanafin and Dara Colleary offered last December. If its a good deal now, why wasn’t it then?
A offer to freeze pay (and pay cuts) without seeking concessions would have been a poor result but a result nonetheless. This - should it be accepted - is nothing but an abject defeat.
The worst thing about it (one of the many worst things, really) is that if we sign up to it we have accepted the analysis that says we have always been over paid and work shy. Once we accept that, we will be faced with ever increasing assaults on both pay and conditions.
Tom,
thanks for the comment but that wasn’t my point. That was Ciarán’s.