Government preventing workers accessing profits of boom years - Morgan

national | miscellaneous | news report Thursday May 15, 2003 14:12 by Justin Moran - Sinn Fein maigh_nuad at yahoo dot com

Fighting capitalistic Vampires

Government preventing workers accessing profits of boom years - Morgan

In the Dáil today, Sinn Féin Spokesperson on the Environment and Local
Government, Arthur Morgan TD, speaking on the Redundancy Payments Bill 2003,
accused the PD/Fianna Fáil government of having no affinity with protecting the
rights and entitlements of the working class.

Deputy Morgan said

"Despite the wealth generated in the last ten years, life remains a perpetual
struggle for the low paid workers of this state. James Larkin once referred to
William Martin Murphy as the "most foul and vicious blackguard that ever
polluted any country ... a capitalistic vampire". If he had lived today, I
expect that Larkin would describe the current Minister for Finance in similar
terms, for it is Minister McCreevy who has led the lockout against the workers
of this state, preventing them from accessing the profits which their labour
generated during the years of the Celtic tiger boom.

"The workers of Peerless Rugs in Athy and the Irish Glass Bottle Factory in
Dublin deserve much of the credit for forcing this uncaring Government to reform
the outdated Redundancy legislation, the basic terms of which had not changes in
35 years. It is a sad indictment of this Government that it took the
protracted disputes at Peerless Rugs and the Irish Glass Bottle Factory and the
determination of the workers of those companies to force the Government to bring
forward legislation to increase redundancy entitlements.