A sad day for workers
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Tuesday November 24 2009
ACCORDING to the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, nobody wanted the strike that will close down public services throughout the country today. That is true so far as it goes, but it dodges the question of the unions' responsibility -- and a broader question, their mindset, developed over many wasted years.
Peter McLoone, one of ICTU's most senior and most respected figures, summed it up, no doubt unintentionally, when he said that the Government had not engaged with the unions with a willingness to "negotiate a fair alternative" to the €1.3bn in pay cuts expected in the Budget on December 9.
But the brute fact is that there is no realistic alternative and that, as Taoiseach Brian Cowen says, the strike can achieve nothing.
That has been the case since the action by the public service unions was first threatened. The Government has to set -- belatedly enough -- about repairing the public finances. That means cuts. The mooted alternatives boil down to two: "taxing the rich", or a programme of reform, agreed with the unions.
The first means an individual or a married couple with an income of €100,000 a year: typically, and ironically, in public employment. That makes a mockery of the term "rich". The second is overdue, but what does it imply in the present context? It implies long-drawn-out negotiations, probably lasting for years and going into fine detail, and what amounts to a trade union veto at every stage.
In the present crisis, that is simply not an option, and it is dismaying to hear a threat of "further action" from the ICTU in the short time that remains before the Budget.
Presumably that means action to force the Government to back down. But the Government cannot back down without losing all authority.
It would find authority easier to exercise if it had displayed leadership from the beginning of the crisis. Leadership has been sadly lacking, and the Government has done a poor job of persuading the people that, in a well-worn phrase, "we're all in this together."
Regardless of all past and current mistakes, we are indeed all in this together. Nobody has demonstrated that better than the public service workers who will go out this morning, ignoring the strike call, to fight the flooding that has caused so much misery. This is only one among many threats, and we will not overcome them without national and social unity.
Irish Independent
