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Keywords: PESP, PNR, unions, social_partnership
>From Workers Solidarity No 39
Summer 93
Irish Anarchist magazine
Another PESP?
THE IRISH Congress of Trade Unions is to
hold a special delegate conference on
September 30th. It will decide whether or
not to enter into talks on a further
agreement to replace the Programme for
Economic and Social Development. Having
made up their minds which way they want the
vote to go, the letter adds that the
conference "will also consider the issues
to be covered in negotiations on future
Programmes".
The campaign by the ICTU leadership for a new
Programme has begun. We will be told, again;
that workers, the bosses and the government will
be able to sit down as equals and make the best
decisions to help the 'national interest'. It's
a very noble sounding idea until you consider
that there is no 'national interest'. Workers
and bosses have opposing interests. If they
didn't we wouldn't need unions!
'NATIONAL INTEREST'
The 'national interest' is used to make us think
we have more in common with our bosses than we do
with workers in other countries. What do we have
in common with crooks like Larry Goodman, Michael
Smurfit or Ben Dunne? What have the workers in
Nolan Transport in New Ross got in common with
their rich, mean and union-bashing employer?
Whose was the 'national interest' when the
government reneged on the PESP pay terms in the
public sector in February 1992?
Labour being in government won't make it any
better. Within a few weeks of getting their
backsides onto cabinet seats they had decided to
tax disability benefit, cut the students' summer
dole, not repeal the "dirty dozen" welfare cuts,
broken their promise to provide the necessary
cash for Aer Lingus. Indeed redundancies and pay
cuts are being talked about. The 3% local
bargaining clause of the PESP will not be paid in
the public service. Probably the only promise
they kept was to create some more jobs. The
problem is that most of the jobs went to
Ministers' families.
Once again we will be told, by every class of
'informed commentator', that PESP-type programmes
give the best wage increases in Europe and that
wage restraint will be returned in extra jobs.
The fact is that - after the PNR and with the
PESP almost completed - Ireland has its highest
ever dole queues. The fact is that the
percentage of total tax paid by PAYE workers has
jumped to almost double what it was in the
allegedly bad old days before such agreements.
HAS ANYONE SEEN MY PAY RISE?
The fact is that the ratio of wage increases to
inflation in those same 'bad old days' has fallen
from 2:5 down to just over half that amount
today. And let us not forget that the anti-union
Industrial Relations Act was introduced in 1990,
without a whimper of protest by the ICTU leaders,
as a PNR commitment (see PESP page 84).
Three years ago a handful of union activists came
together to oppose such collaboration with bosses
and government. The network they formed, Trade
Unionists and Unemployed Against the Programme*,
won the sponsorship of over 300 shop stewards ,
produced tens of thousands of leaflets and
newsletters arguing for a 'no' vote. Public
meetings were held in most larger towns. Despite
most unions having pro-PESP policy and despite
the fact that the anti-PESP forces ran on a
shoestring budget, almost one third of all trade
unionists who voted rejected the deal.
TUUAP didn't close up shop and go away after the
vote. It is getting ready to launch a campaign
against whatever new proposals emerge. It has
the sensible position of not being fooled into
believing that workers ever stand to gain from
making concessions to either government or to
millionaire employers.
This time around the socialist argument against
class collaboration should be made as loudly as
the specific arguments on wages, jobs and social
welfare. We have to rebuild a sense of working
class political independence. Beyond the
immediate campaign against a PESP mark 2, a rank
& file movement strong enough and confident
enough to remain independent of the union leaders
and willing to openly defy the anti-union laws is
needed. It won't be built overnight but there is
no time like the present for getting people
thinking on these lines. Anarchists will be
there arguing for libertarian structures, for
participatory democracy and for the anarchist
alternative to the present system.
Alan MacSimoin