Element Six - Get ready for more of the same

Element Six/De Beers’ plan to shut their Shannon plant, sacking 370 workers, and move production elsewhere is a disgusting stab in the back of the workers whose hard work has made them billions in profits over the years.

After huge sacrifices, including working part time on the promise that this would save jobs, the company now want to pack up and jump ship, with only a pittance of a redundancy. The entire cost of the redundancy scheme to the company is only €6.6m, about one week’s turnover for the factory, according to the Irish Independent!

Note: This article was written before managment started discussing an "alternative" proposal saving "some" jobs, probably only a stay of execution, and demaningd much reduced wages, terms and conditions. Therefore, the need for a fight still very much stands

Related Links:
Socialist Party of Ireland | Element Six's Contact Details | Element Six Job Massacre a Disgusting Stab in the Back of Workers | Cian Prenderville's Indymedia.ie Articles | Workers' Issues on Indymedia.ie

Free Education for EVERYone

Today (Thursday) there is a vote of students in UL on fees. It arose from a proposal by the chairperson of UL Fianna Fail to make students vote on what kind of fees we want – which would have assisted the Student's Union to 'lobby' for that specific type of fees, instead of fighting to defeat all forms of fees. Student opposition, including from the UL branch of F.E.E. succeeded in getting a ‘no fees’ option 4 included, which reads: “I am opposed to alternatives to exchequer-funded third level tuition fees”,

UL F.E.E. have been the only ones campaigning on the vote, with everyone else focused on the SU officers elections. F.E.E. has been calling for a clear, "No to fees" vote - putting No Fees as your 'number 1' vote and not giving any vote, even a second preference, to the other pro-fees options.

Related Links:
Support the International Global Week of Action Against Fees
Recent Indymedia.ie feature Schools Out! Stop the Commercialisation of Education by Mark Conroy
Conor Murphy of SEED on why Third level fees should be re-introduced
FEE's Website - Free-Education.info

Don't Just Sit There
Contact EVERY TD, Senator, and MEP about this - Contact.ie

“Anyone passing Roxboro in the last 8 weeks will have seen the workers from Curran Aluiminium standing outside on the Picket Line in the worst of weather conditions. “

So starts the blog entry on Cheebah which is entitled “Striking a Blow”. It links to the same video that is embedded here on indymedia which has started to meander through the Irish blogosphere. Running at 4'45'' the Polish language piece with English subtitles has the story told by Grzegorz Romanski, Robert Grabowski, Marek Witomski and Robert Sawlewicz – some of the workers standing on that picket line.

While the Irish Times tells us 33% of Poles may return home - or at least gives recruitment firm CPL an advertorial to say so - we see that Grzegorz anyway intends to stay, as he is "fascinated by this country".The roll call at the end of this well constructed and informative video are our workmates and neighbours, members of our class who are currently being scapegoated and attacked. When Robert Sawlewicz ends the video by bluntly reminding us he is on the dole, he and his comrades are joined by more than 277,000 others. The SIPTU members in Curran Aluminium are standing on a picket line in Dublin fighting for the right to good jobs in Ireland, the right to be represented by their union, the right to decent, legally compliant terms and conditions. We should remember - the video may be in Polish but this struggle is all of ours.

Apparently the workers are back in the Labour Court on Friday - but the company has already ignored one labour court hearing that went against them so this dispute is likely to have a bit yet to run. While Country Tom and the Construction Industry Federation are happy to rip up social partnership agreements nationally - Curran Aluminium won't even accept the right of their workers to be repesented. And their own representatives in IBEC are happy to fight on their behalf to help them deny these workers the right to representation. Remember, in the current economic climate the only partnerships that matter will be those between workers of all types as they form strong unions.

The Harp, January 1908. Consider, oh, my compatriots, what this implies! That Polack, whose advent into the workshop you are taught to view with such disfavor, if you could trace his ancestry back a few hundreds of years perhaps you would find for him an Irish ancestor who charged by the side of Hugh O’Neill on that fateful day when the English flag went down in disaster at the Yellow Ford.
............
But, you ask me, why this thusness? What has all this to do with Socialism? My dear friend, this is a lecture on Internationalism. Didn’t you notice it before? It is a lecture written in characters of blood and fire in Irish history; a lecture on the mingling and merging and therefore on the oneness and unity of all the races of mankind.
Link to Original Lecturing Article

$7,000,000 WMD for Peace

Ciaron O'Reilly writes: ''...Shannon Airport felt spooky. The last sight of the West by most of the 4,000 young Americans who passed through its small "departure" lounge to their deaths in Iraq. Spooky, too, as I reflected on an Irish society so integral to facilitating the killing yet so disengaged with the escalating and expanding war. Most U.S. troops in Iraq have passed through this small rural out of the way airport.

Spooky as I reflected on my own disengagement from the ongoing suffering. Have I, too, learned to live in an Ireland with the transit lounge for death that is Shannon Airport?...''

On Tuesday afternoon there was a sit down protest by about 30 inmates in the yard of Limerick Prison. According to rte.ie the protest was against harsh punishments imposed on those caught with drugs by the prison governor, as the deployment of 'Rocky' the sniffer dog has led to the seizure of most drugs coming into Limerick Prison.

For anyone who hasn’t seen Trainspotting, going off heroin cold turkey is not a pretty picture; one Rehab centre lists common symptoms such as tremors, panic, chills, nausea, muscle cramps, insomnia, stomach cramps, diarrhea, vomiting, shaking, chills or profuse sweating, irritability and jitteryness. Given the generally scant facilities for treatment of addicts in Irish prison it’s unlikely that prisoners received much in the way of assistance. It’s a tad disquieting when it’s acceptable to publicly gloat over this kind of experience in other people.

Related Links: Brazil Prison Riot | Belfast Telegraph's Coverage | Brazil Prsion Riot | Irish Prison Reform Trust | More From the WSM On Represstion | Irish Prison Reform Trust