Public meeting: New social partnership deal ; are the unions facing another decade of decline?

dublin | worker & community struggles and protests | event notice Friday June 02, 2006 14:07 by D_D - CIL

Campaign for an Independent Left
(For a new party of working people)

New ten-year social partnership deal

Public meeting:

Are the unions facing another

Decade of Decline?

Union leaders are ready to agree a social partnership deal that will last for ten long years.

The union leaders had no mandate whatsoever for a ten-year deal. It would prolong twenty years of decline by a further one third. On 31st May the Evening Herald claimed to calculate that only 14.5% of private sector workers were unionised and covered by this deal.

Actually the new deal would apply to less than the membership of the ICTU for the simple reason that unions representing thousands of workers in both the private and public sectors have decided, explicitly or effectively, to stay outside it because the deals are holding back their members.

Business never had it so good. Yet the deal produced 4.5% a year. Even official inflation is 4%. They have repeated the insult of an extra half per cent to the lower paid. All the restrictions, the pretence that we are the partners of the rich, the performance-related pay and binding arbitration will remain in place for a decade. In the public sector significant productivity is being sought for a cost of living pay increase.

The protections of employment standards are limited. Displacement is given to the Labour Court to decide on. Outsourcing is untouched by the deal. These protections should be in place anyway and, let’s be clear, they were won not in these talks, but by the mobilisation of the thousands who came out to march with the Irish Ferries workers.

So, what can trade union activists who want fighting and democratic unions do in the face of this deal? What can we do to influence the vote on the deal? How do we adapt to a deal that might be in place for ten years? How can there be a deal when several unions will not be part of it? How do we link up with the unions who are opposed to this deal? The meeting will discuss these questions and examine the details of the new agreement.

8.00 p.m., Wednesday, 7th June,
Teachers Club, Parnell Square, Dublin, 1.

Speakers: Seamus Healy TD, Eddie Conlon (former Honorary Secretary, TUI), Speaker from Community and Voluntary sector.

Campaign for an Independent Left: phone 086 3888151 (Cllr. Joan Collins).