National - Event Notice
Thursday January 01 1970

Dunnes workers call for national protest march on June 6th

national | worker & community struggles and protests | event notice

Thursday June 04, 2015 23:36

by Dunnes Stores Workers

Support Dunnes Workers: March to Dunnes Head Office

Dunnes Stores workers need your support. They are seeking:

* SECURE HOURS AND EARNINGS
* JOB SECURITY
* FAIR PAY
* THE RIGHT TO BE REPRESENTED BY THEIR TRADE UNION

Dunnes' owners refuse to listen to their workers and have broken an existing agreement they freely signed up to with the workers' union. They have also ignored the Labour Court who told them to immediately engage. With no other option, the workers were forced to go on a one day strike on April 2nd.

dunnes_workers_national_protest_6th_june_2015_poster.jpg

Since then Dunnes management have been engaging in a campaign of intimidation. with cuts to hours, changes to positions and shifts, and even some dismissals.

Will you stand with the Dunnes Stores workers on Saturday, June 6th and support their demands for fairness and decency at work? We need to send a strong message to Dunnes Stores that this type of behaviour is unacceptable. Thank you in advance for your continued support!

Support Dunnes Workers: March to Dunnes Head Office
Saturday, June 6 at 1:00pm in UTC+01
Merrion Square in Dublin, Ireland

******************************************
Dunnes Stores shop stewards from 100 stores across the Republic of Ireland met yesterday (Sunday, 26th April) to decide the next actions in the Decency for Dunnes Workers campaign. The shop stewards voted unanimously for a national protest march to Dunnes Stores Head Office in Dublin which will take place on Saturday, June 6th.

The protest will be preceded by a series of local protests and actions, further details of which will be announced shortly.

The meeting also endorsed a claim for a 3 percent pay increase lodged by their union Mandate.

Mandate Assistant General Secretary Gerry Light said: “This protest will be an opportunity for the public to show solidarity with the workers who are seeking secure incomes and decent conditions of employment. We expect Dunnes workers who are not rostered to work on the day to attend, and they’ll be calling on their friends and family as well as other trade unionists, politicians, community groups and members of the public to attend and show their support.”

He added: “The workers are also demanding that there are no delays in the implementation of robust collective bargaining legislation with strong anti-victimisation provisions. We believe irresponsible employers like Dunnes should be held accountable for their actions and workers in precarious employments need some avenue to have their voices heard without being forced to take industrial action.”

The shop stewards at the meeting made it clear they are reserving their right to take industrial action in the future. Furthermore, they are committed to potentially escalating the industrial action beyond a one day strike.

“Once again our members in Dunnes are acting in a very responsible manner. They are calling for this day of action because they, unlike their employer, are concerned about potential long term irreparable damage to the business. The support from the public has been tremendous and this march will give them the opportunity to show Dunnes workers that they are not on their own in this struggle.

“This course of action also ensures that low paid workers do not have to unnecessarily endure the burden of losing hard-won earnings to achieve their campaign objectives. It will also deny Dunnes management the chance to further engage in the campaign of retaliation which was carried out following the one day strike.”

Mr Light added: “We know that the Dunnes family have very deep pockets, with the Sunday Times listing them yesterday as having more than €1.7bn in combined wealth. That enormous wealth has only been derived due to the hard work of their loyal members of staff. It’s about time the company acknowledged that hard work by meaningfully engaging with their workers through their trade union.

“It is apparent that instead of fairly distributing some of this massive accumulated wealth with their workers the Dunnes owners are intent in using it in a battle of financial means with our members, many of whom are only guaranteed 15 hours work per week,” he said.

Earlier this month up to 6,000 Dunnes workers took industrial action in order to achieve basic entitlements including:

Secure hours and earnings;
Job security;
Fair pay; and
The right to trade union representation.

Further details on the national day of protest will be announced shortly

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Comments (13 of 13)

Pictures from today's Dunnes protest

by 1 of Indymedia

Sun Jun 07, 2015 00:00

As reported from the Solidarity Times - Free the Media, Be the Media facebook page and photos sourced there too.

Thousands of people marched through Dublin today as part of the Decency for Dunnes's workers demonstration against casualisation of working conditions.

The ongoing fight of the Dunnes workers against zero hour contracts and for decency in work is important to many workers in Ireland.

Dunnes are a large employer which means that victories won by the Dunnes workers will set what can be won by many other workers.

Their fight is very much our fight.

The Dunnes family dossier

by T

Tue Jun 09, 2015 22:14

The Socialist Party website has an interesting article about the Dunnes family. For example the opening paragraphs are:

The Dunne family own and control €1.78 billion making them one of the richest families in Ireland.

Frank Dunne is the 19th richest person in Ireland with €445 million. Margaret Heffernan is the 25th richest person with €389 million.

Exploitation of workers at home and abroad, union busting and political corruption have all played a part in the rise of the Dunne family empire.

It took a three year strike by Mandate shopworkers in the mid 1980s to force the company to take goods produced by slave labour in apartheid South Africa off their shelves. To this day Dunnes continue to stock Israeli goods produced in colonial settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Workers’ rights – a shameful record

Closer to home Dunnes are leading the way with low hour contracts and anti-worker rosters – policies they refuse to even discuss with representatives of their workforce.

The company does not negotiate with trade unions and doesn’t usually show up at Labour Court or Labour Relations Commission hearings. In 2005 they sacked a worker, Joanne Delaney, for the crime of wearing a union badge.

........

Full text at the link

socialists don't care about us,there just there to jump on the bandwagon..

by mark

Thu Jun 11, 2015 15:53

Not to go off track here,but i think its relevant to say socialists don't care about ordinary workers, or ordinary everyday people, they jump on the bandwagon telling us not to pay for our water, eventhough there could be penalties introduced for not paying for our water services and repairs, cue socailist paul murphy of the aaa to come out in good time before the elections to preach to us all, while in secret he probably paid for his own water, he was on radio 1 spreading his lies/disinformation and ill gotten information he must have gotten out of the wrong side of the bed.Shame on you T for promoting the socialists,who latch on to everything and try to ruin it for the rest of us.Im not nessecarily a right winger or advocate paying for water, but if repairs need to be done, someones got to foot the bill, you want lead in your pipes? People are DYING of cancer up and down the country and its idiots like the socialist paul murphy that would have us drinking water thats not fit for purpose only to give us cancer.

Re: socialists don't care about us,there just there to jump on the bandwagon..

Thu Jun 11, 2015 21:43

You are just slinging mud and trying to undermine the water charges campaign by your illogical statements. As to the Socialist Party, they won't win the campaign because if anyone wins it, it will be the people, but at least they as are not afraid to come out and support it and speak about it in the media. I don't believe your assertion that Paul Murphy has paid his water charges as it sounds more like something planted in the media by the right wing press.

It is idiotic to suggest that not paying the water charges means that people will have lead in their pipes and they will get cancer. The lead has been there a long time and the reason it was not removed is because the media decided not to cover it but now it is being used as a fake argument by Irish Water to pretend they care about people. They don't. They are spending €500 million to meter your water NOT to fix it or clean it.

The last time an attempt was made to introduce water charges was in the late 1990s. A decision was then clearly taken to underfund the water supply infrastructure so that the claim could be made later that it needs private sector investment. This is why the leaks were never fixed and the lead has remained. Lead piping goes back a long time.

To suggest that people are dying of cancer up and down the country because of Paul Murphy shows the dishonesty of your argument. All groups in the campaign, whether community groups or the various Left parties, including the SP have consistently called for leaks to be fixed and the pipe network upgraded and the areas affected by contamination to be given priority.

So far the priority and agenda of Irish Water has been to pay bonus to top executives, spend millions on legal fees, bring people to court and jail them, and to create a fake PR image that they care about the environment using arguments that they know from the PR people that resonate with people's concern but which they cynically use for their own corporate agenda.

We don't mind paying for a utility, but won't pay twice!

by Sharon. - Individual.

Fri Jun 12, 2015 14:52

Hi Mark!

You have gone "off track", perhaps purposely so, I suspect?
The water service in this State has always been paid for by the consumer, through taxation, and has never been 'free for use'. Like hundreds of thousands of other utility consumers, I object to being told that I must pay at least twice for any one service and that is why I won't be paying this separate 'bill' ie I don't believe I owe it.
See the 'Related Link' , below (article entitled 'WATER , RAIN , ARC!').

Thanks,
Sharon.

Unjust then, unjust now!

re: i dont trust socialists..

Fri Jun 12, 2015 19:41

Just to back up why i dont like socialists,if we were to live in a socialist ''utopia'' - we would have all the same rate of pay regarldess of the work we did,regardless of how labour intensive it was,or how mentally taxing it was,we would all get the same small fee for our work...Not only that but the GOVERNMENT under a FASCIST, Socialist regime....Would have the socailist government of the day under law to own your own home,under socalism nobody,NOBODY has the RIGHT TO OWN THEIR OWN HOME..............Only the GOVERNMENT can own your home,you could NEVER own it under socialism,so what if you had a reason to rail against the government for some reason,would they kick you out of their residency? Would you be dispossessed for speaking out of turn,like in north korea...?

And not only that, Mark....

Fri Jun 12, 2015 20:01

re: i dont trust socialists..
Just to back up why i dont like socialists,if we were to live in a socialist ''utopia'' - we would have all the same rate of pay regarldess of the work we did,regardless of how labour intensive it was,or how mentally taxing it was,we would all get the same small fee for our work...Not only that but the GOVERNMENT under a FASCIST, Socialist regime....Would have the socailist government of the day under law to own your own home,under socalism nobody,NOBODY has the RIGHT TO OWN THEIR OWN HOME..............Only the GOVERNMENT can own your home,you could NEVER own it under socialism,so what if you had a reason to rail against the government for some reason,would they kick you out of their residency? Would you be dispossessed for speaking out of turn,like in north korea...?

....but by heck we'll make you pay twice for each utility, too!

Apologises, Mark, I thought you were a serious contributor. Gonna have to send the 'EXTERMINATION SQUAD' around to your gaff now.
Sorry about that.

Thanks anyway,
Sharon.

socialists and the stalinist dream...

by john

Tue Jun 16, 2015 08:47

i dont trust socialist either,they jump on every ''social justice'' issue and jump on the bandwagon for votes,they will flood our countries with immigrants who HATE us and then when it all kicks off turn us into a stalinist police state...

Re: socialists and the stalinist dream...

Tue Jun 16, 2015 12:49

Alright on that basis then, I will withdraw any support for the Dunnes workers and support the idea of zero hour contracts and the right of Dunnes Stores to exploit their workers completely. Now that you mention it, I think everyone should ask their bosses if they can work longer hours and for less pay and give back all holidays because accepting such luxury means we are for a police state otherwise. And yeah, immigrants hate our freedoms. In fact they go out of their way to come from their lovely pleasant war torn countries ruled by dictators installed by the CIA and IMF/World Bank friends to come over here and hate us.

you're truly a brainwashed serf, well either that or a left baiting troll. But then whats the difference?

by realist

Tue Jun 16, 2015 16:27

er....most people in this capitalist wet dream don't own their own home. The bank owns it. And you have to work like a slave for the next thirty years or so to ever own it because you are in negative equity. and hundreds of thousands are now at risk of the bank taking back their homes because their mortgages are in arrears. Nobody cares where they go after they are thrown out of the banks property on to the street in a capitalist system. But in a socialist system, they would be housed and fed as basic rights.

Or alternatively some greedy landlord owns your house. And sticks your rent up at every opportunity. You end up working just to keep the roof over your head so you can go to work. Stop working and you are thrown out on the street like a dog. In a capitalist system, most ordinary people are in reality at the mercy of their greedy landlords and bosses and only a couple of paychecks from homelessness.

It's all a very successful con job to persuade people to voluntarily offer themselves up as a slave to work all their lives to make money for the property owners and the owners of the means of production.while barely getting enough themselves to pay all their debts and keep a roof over their heads and food on the table.
it's called wage slavery. Enjoy the illusion that it's anything more than that.
Now we have zero hour contracts. Things just keep getting better. And the capitalists have become more and more emboldened, now taking back piece by piece every gain that was made for labour rights and social safety nets after the horror of WWII

Yet there are always
brainwashed idiots to cheer on the system that enslaves them. Such is the power of media and the bath of propaganda we are immersed in each day.

As george carlin once remarked:
"it's called the american dream because you have to be asleep to believe it"

we are all becoming americans now. But surely there has to be a better way for people to live than an
"every rat for himself" police state dystopia.

oh and FYI the fascists were the ones socialists and communists were fighting against in WWII.
They were the guys in the hugo boss designed black uniforms who set up all those death camps and sent everyone to work for nothing until they died as slave labour for german companies. I don't recall any of the untermenschen owning their own homes, or indeed anything, even their own lives!. Lucky for us, 27 million communist russians gave their lives to defeat the fascist nazis so you can still freely walk around criticising communists and socialists while ironically living under and cheerleading an ever more fascist system. i.e. by mussolinis definition: "The merging of corporation and state"
google TTIP to learn how rapidly this merger is progressing.

Hope your kids and grandkids enjoy their lives under the fascist dystopian system that brainwashed sleepwalkers like you are enabling. Assuming there actually is a future and not just some insane greed and power stoked path to WWIII

Re: T now you are putting words in my mouth....

Thu Jun 18, 2015 11:25

Where exactly did i say i supported the exploitation of dunnes workers?? I wasn't saying withdraw support for the dunnes zero hours workers, i was saying that leftist stalinist jackboot thugs seem to have a habit of jumping all over the social issues of ORDINARY PEOPLE, from water to workers rights, pretending they are ONE OF US, when they are CLEARLY NOT. What socialists want and what ORDINARY PEOPLE WANT - are two different things. Stalinists want a north korea stalinist state - Ordinary people want rights for workers etc, socialist want to give the same rate of pay for everyone from a doctor to a cleaner while the socialist dictators stay in power with an endless supply of money for themselves, while we all toil away for pittance , these socialists will stay in power for a long time with no democractic challenges to their position, and want to own everyones home, nobody has a RIGHT TO THEIR OWN HOME under socialist rule. The GOVERNMENT owns your own home - YOU DONT AND NEVER WILL. And if you go against the stalinist government? Well....Forget the bankers, the socialist stazi are worse...

it isn't socialists that are responsible for all of these problems

Mon Jun 22, 2015 08:00

er... why do we have "workers rights" issues and water charges, high rents, unemployment, zero hour contracts anyway? And why is something so basic as buying a house/putting a roof over ones head that you refer to, so out of reach for most ordinary people without slaving for 30 years to pay a huge mortgage with no definite prospect of owning the house if they don't continue to slave for the best part of a lifetime.
it's certainly not because of socialists who are not in government and remain unpopular partly due to very successful and widespread propaganda soundbites like yours, endlessly repeated. No it's because of right wing neoliberal capitalists in government.

Did I say there were no socialists in government? Well I tell a lie. Because if you are a bank gambler with euro connections, you get socialism on your gambling debts. However only the serfs get raw "fuck you, every rat for himself" capitalism.

Socialists and communally minded people fought for the rights and social safety nets we gained after the war, which recently governments have gone after and started to dismantle and make harder to avail of for applicants. Alongside their relentless drive towards privatisation of public assets and services backed by like minded neoliberals in the EU. This is their bleak philosophy: "sink or swim". You see the endgame in the states. Tent cities of homeless people, mentally ill people begging on the streets, minimal hospital care for poor people and people dumped on the street still under anaesthetic. More money saved from the poor to give to already enormously wealthy corporate thieves and sociopathic banking scum.

Why bother having a society if it is to be vast riches for 1% and debt or at best a life of glorified wage enslavement to survive if you are poor? or homelessness and early death through misadventure if you are at the bottom of the ladder. Surely a system which strives to even things out a bit is a better more humane one to aspire to?

Keep drinking the kool aid and slave until you die to keep the rich capitalists living it up in the style they are accustomed to you sycophantic "useful idiot". Or maybe you are just a propaganda tool of these same people. They require and pay for lots people like you to keep the slaves on message. Otherwise they might start to do a little more thinking for themselves and elect a socialist government and then eventually maybe take over the means of production in workers co-ops. Then there would be some well deserved headaches for the rich and rentier classes who have lived as parasites on the backs of poorer workers for far too long.

Well it's a nice pipe dream anyway. Sadly your rich powerful masters have it all pretty well sewn up at the moment. And with increasing investment in, control and ownership of media, the total immersion propaganda bath gets more efficient and all pervasive each day. Not even a low traffic idealistic website like indymedia which stubbornly refuses to die is free from such propaganda and attacks in its commentary. Well we can't have any threatening alternative viewpoints on reality can we? even in the quietest corners of the internet. It might confuse the livestock!

socialism is a failed ideal,lets think of something else instead..

Mon Jun 22, 2015 09:20

You say there are no socialists in power???Look around the EU there are plenty of them....Its not all evil capitalists running the show,its a mixture of capitalism and sociailst ideals - i think both got to go! Socialism is a failed ideal,it never worked anywhere.......In venezuela there are emtpy supermarkets and food rations,and in north korea people are eating grass and worshipping kim jong un........Is that really the solution?? Let's look at what socialism has done to sweden,rape has increased over 300% thanks to muslim immigration and the iron fist stamping out anybody who has anything to say about this.Socialists have made it ILLEGAL to critisise immigration from dangerous middle eastern countries,you have to put up and shut up,even swedish men are getting raped there,and if they DARE to critisise immigration,they are thrown in jail like a criminal...
Heres a link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJjO17TYCTs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIrcNL9PfUU

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Dunnes workers call for national protest march on June 6th

Comments (13 of 13)