Article from the March 2006 issue of the Socialist
newspaper of the Socialist Party, Irish section of the CWI

Industrial - trade union reports

Social partnership - A bonanza for the rich!

By Stephen Boyd
CHRIS DOOLEY wrote in the Irish Times, 6 March 2006, "There is no doubt, however, that the current difficulties pose a threat to the continuation of social partnership. Unions and the employers are stuck on a key issue: what needs to be done to protect workers from exploitation and to maintain employment standards across the economy?"

This is the issue at the heart of the current drive by the bosses to drive down wages and roll back gains in working conditions. By engaging in the "social partnership" process, the right wing union leaders are saying to the employers that they are not prepared to fight to defend workers' pay and conditions. Instead they are prepared to make compromises that will undoubtedly be to the detriment of working class people.

The bosses are using and exploiting migrant workers in order to lower the wages of all workers in Ireland. Relatively well paid, union jobs are also being moved by multinational companies to countries in the Far East where wages are a fraction of what they are here in order to increase their profits. The Japanese electronics multinational NEC is closing its Irish plant with the loss of 350 jobs and moving this work to Signapore, Malaysia and China.

Both the bosses and the government argue that wages in Ireland are too high and in order to be more competitive wage rates must come down. When these so-called "social partners" put forward this argument they are thinking of Irish wage rates in comparison to countries like China and India! However in the real world in which working class people live, with record house prices, rising cost of living, stealth taxes etc. the reality is that wages are too low.

The ATGWU has published a document entitled "Irish wages: Still a long way to go". The statistics contained within it expose not just the lies of the bosses about wages but also the lie that "social partnership" has benefited working class people.

Irish wages lag nearly 25% behind the UK. Wage increases needed for Irish workers to reach average wage levels in the EU-top five economies are as follows:

• Total services - 10.7%
• Hotels and restaurants - 32.6%
• Wholesale and retail - 31.1%
• Manufacturing - 17.7%

Yet the employers have said they are only prepared to pay 2% per year as part of a new wage agreement and the unions are only looking for 5%, when inflation stands at 3%. The bosses are also attacking working conditions and trying in many cases to increase the length of the working week, but Irish workers already work on average 21 days longer that the other Eurozone countries!

During the last 19 years of "social partnership", the bosses have gained most - with massive tax cuts they only have to pay 12.5% corporation tax and their PRSI payments are half that of the EU average.

The starkest figure that proves beyond doubt that the employers are making a "killing" through "social partnership" are the statistics for share of the national wealth:

• 1993 - wages made up nearly 53% of GNP
• 1993 - Profits and self-employed earnings made up 38% of GNP
• 2003 - wages made up 48.1% of GNP (a drop of 4.9%)
• 2003 - Profits etc made up 49.8% of GNP (an increase of 11.8%)

In the last five years, wages have increased by 29.7%, but inflation has gone up by 25.6%! But in the same time, company profits have gone up by 64.7%! "Social partnership" has been a bonanza for the rich.

Some on the left are arguing that socialists should issue a set of demands that the union leaders should be arguing for in the talks. The Socialist Party is fundamentally opposed to the idea of "social partnership" and believes that issuing a set of demands for the talks would sow illusions amongst the working class in the so-called partnership process.

The only way to protect wages, jobs and conditions of all workers Irish and migrant is for the unions to break from "social partnership" and instead use their full power to fight the bosses' agenda.

Jailed brickies speak to the Socialist

THREE BRICKLAYERS and BATU members, Keith Kelly, Andrew Clarke and Billy McClurg, spent two weeks in jail for picketing a Collen Construction site, who had refused to employ them because they were union members. While they were in jail, pickets were placed on Collen sites in UCD and Parnell Square to try to force Collen to back down. This dispute is an indication of what is happening in the building industry, where sub-contractors and non-unionised migrant labour are being used to undermine wages and conditions and minimise the power of the unions. It poses very sharply the need for a joint campaign by all the unions in construction to root out sub-contracting and unionise migrant labour. Billy McClurg spoke to Paul Murphy for the Socialist.

Can you tell me a bit about the background to how you ended up in jail?

I was out of work and heard that a Council job had started in Ballybrack. The sub-contractor told Keith Kelly that there was no way he was going to employ trade union labour on the site. After a meeting with the company, it was clear they weren't interested in trade union labour, the only route we had was to put a picket on the site. A guy served us a summons and we had to appear in court that afternoon. The judge told us we had to give an undertaking that we wouldn't picket again. We said that we weren't prepared to do that, so she gave the order to take us to Mountjoy until we purged our contempt.

How did you get on in Mountjoy?

When we were processed first at Mountjoy, they made us take our clothes off and gave us prison clothes. They gave me a vest that was so small it was like a "boob tube". We were brought up to the medical unit and put in Liam Lawlor's cell! There was a good bit of banter, we got a lot of support from the prisoners. Both the prison officers and prisoners had fond memories of Joe Higgins. There were bilateral talks, but there was no agreement. On the second Friday, we had a visit from a union official. He said the pickets weren't going too well, there weren't many people turning up. We were in here two weeks and it was up to ourselves. We felt we had done as much as we could, we had highlighted all the issues, and decided to purge our contempt.

Why do you think more people didn't turn out to support you?

I think a lot of the guys are after getting comfortable. People earning €2,000 a week isn't unknown, but in fairness to them they do earn it. It seems to have been the same old heads on the pickets. Also, the number of Gardai they used at UCD to break the picket is more than the number of Labour Inspectors in the country, which shows their priorities.

What do you think the unions need to do to tackle sub-contractors and non-unionised labour?

What is needed is a full stoppage of all BATU and SIPTU members in the Dublin area. Migrant workers need to be brought into the unions. I think in some of the unions, a lot of the guys are career trade unionists, they're in it for what they can get. We need to get good people in there, leading the unions.

Cork building sites - Migrant workers paid €2.83 an hour

By Susan Fitzgerald
CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY bosses in Cork are paying migrant workers as little as €2.83 per hour according to the Cork Building Group of Unions. The CBG is an affiliate body of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions and represents up to 20,000 workers in Munster.

Billy Curtin from the Plasterers' union, OPATSI, called for these wages to be made illegal. He also called for more labour inspectors for the construction industry.

€2.83 per hour is illegal, the craft rate set out in the Registered Employment Agreement for the construction industry is €16.85. While the Socialist Party supports the call for more labour inspectors to enforce compliance, the main body that needs to take responsibility for workers' rates of pay and conditions is the trade union movement.

A national strategy by the trade union movement as a whole could launch a massive drive to target cheap labour bosses and recruit tens of thousands of new members both migrant and Irish. This would do more to cut across slave wages and the erosion of current rates than any number of labour inspectors.