Will electricians strike provide shock therapy needed to end Government’s paralysis over Collective Bargaining legislation?

The timing of the TEEU strike is interesting. It is not just about pay (a 4.9% increase recommended by the Labour Court almost five years ago as opposed to the 10% cut employers are threatening to introduce unilaterally), it is about defending the Registered Employment Agreement shot down last year by the Supreme Court. The strike notice, due to expire on February 24th, comes just as the Cabinet is to begin examining proposals  to replace the redundant REAs (and Employment Rights Orders) with new legislation.

Power Workers Defending Workers Rights

The issue is therefore not just about a few thousand ‘sparks’ fighting to preserve decent pay and conditions but a stand in defence of a system that has protected basic workplace rights of 300,000 other workers, ranging from construction to catering, since 1946 – and in some sectors since the 1920s. The threat of a strike that could quickly effect vital elements of the economy might just be the sort of shock therapy needed to shake the Government out of its current state of paralysis.

Of course the new system being proposed will probably be far more ‘top down’ than ‘bottom up’. Instead of workers and their unions agreeing terms with the employers and then registering them with the Labour Court, the Minister for Jobs and Enterprise would make an order, on the advice of the Labour Court, setting terms and conditions following an examination on a case by case basis of the relevant sector, or even individual companies. In addition, there would be new criteria to take account of pay and conditions in neighbouring countries.

A key point will be what constitutes a ‘neighbouring country’, the UK, Germany a member of the Eurozone, the EU, ‘Europe’?

What is not in dispute is that the Supreme Court judgement has left hundreds of thousands of  workers at the mercy of the most ruthless employers in the country.   (more…)

TEEU electricians ballot for national strike

TEEU members vote overwhelmingly for national strike in electrical contracting industry

February 7^th, 2014

Eamon Devoy, General Secretary, TEEU

Members of the Technical Engineering and Electrical Union have voted by 94 per cent in favour of industrial action to protect pay rates and working conditions in the electrical contracting industry. The ballot followed a decision by the Electrical Contractors Association, the largest employer group, to allow members to impose pay cuts unilaterally on a firm by firm basis.

TEEU General Secretary Eamon Devoy said today that the outcome of the strike ballot “shows the strength of feeling of our members. During the last nine years they have been faced with serious austerity measures including both direct and indirect tax increases, negative equity in their homes and loss of medical insurance as well as falling earnings. Now, just as the economy shows signs of recovery, the employers want to impose pay cuts.

“The TEEU has continually tried to reach agreement with the employers about how to plan a sustainable recovery strategy for the industry. Unfortunately the employer groups have continued to squabble amongst themselves and it now seems that they intend allowing the law of the jungle to prevail with every company negotiating its own rates of pay directly with employees. Such a development would lead inevitably to a situation where not only employment but consumer and safety standards would plummet. (more…)

Friends of the International Brigades in Ireland Fund Raiser

Larkin Commemoration – National Campaign for Pay Rises has begun – Full Text of Jack O’Connor’s Speech

Speech by Jack O’Connor, General President, SIPTU

Jack O’Connor General President of SIPTU

At the Larkin Commemoration

Glasnevin Cemetery

Sunday, 2^nd February, 2014

Comrades and Friends we are assembled here to commemorate the man who brought the ‘new unionism’ to Ireland, who organised low paid workers previously denied the right to freedom of association and collective bargaining by replacing the narrow sectional outlook of the ‘old unionism’ with a vision of a better and fairer society for all. He did this by shifting the traditional trade union agenda from its narrow focus on immediate pay and conditions to one which aspired to capturing the political and economic heights that determine the human condition.

That task, which must have appeared incredibly audacious and impossible one hundred years ago, came within grasp across much of Western Europe in the quarter century after the Second World War. Unfortunately the triumph of neo-liberalism has seen progressive forces in retreat in recent decades. This was graphically illustrated in the recent Oxfam Report entitled “Working for the Few”. As others have already pointed out, it showed that 1% of the world’s population now own and control half of the world’s wealth and that just eighty-five people own as much as the poorest half of the world’s inhabitants.

pic.twitter.com/s9QSFq0YaM  (more…)

A NOBLE CALL – A NOBLE PLATFORM

Thank you for the honour of the penultimate Noble Call of the season. I’ve seen the Risen People three times now in the Abbey and on each occasion the cast have brought even more energy and panache to the performance. I don’t know what they are taking but it should be bottled and sold in the bar.

Abbey Cast of Risen People January 2014

I’m afraid I can’t dance, I can’t sing and I’m not a comedian, though some people might tell you otherwise, so you will have to put up with me saying what 1913 means to me for a few minutes.

What interests me most about the Lockout is its values. My parents were literally children of the Lockout. My mother was born in 1911 in North Cumberland Street and my father around the corner in Buckingham Street in 1912. My mother left school at eight after both her parents died in the Spanish ‘flu pandemic to help her sister, who was a dealer, sell fruit and vegetables from a handcart. My father was sent to industrial school for mitching and had any affinity with the new Irish Free State beaten out of him by the Christian Brothers. They were both among the hundreds of thousands working poor for whom the new dispensation was, if anything, worse than the old one. (more…)

Mother Jones Returns to Cork

Spirit of Mother Jones festival 2014.

Jim Green

The 2014 Spirit of Mother Jones festival/ summer school will be held in Cork city from Tuesday 29^th July until Friday 1^st August 2014. The event is designed to commemorate trade union activist, Mary Harris, better

Si Kahn

known as Mother Jones, who was born in Cork in 1837, it is also “dedicated to inspirational people everywhere who fight for social justice.”

Professor Jim Green of the University of Massachusetts in Boston will deliver the 2014 Mother Jones Lecture. Jim is the author of “Death in the Haymarket”, “Taking History to Heart” and many other labour publications.
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Unions must have place at the negotiating table says leading Academic

John Geary – Professor of Industrial Relations and Human Resources at UCD

Opinion (Irish Times 21/0114)

While unions often have to struggle for recognition, their role has contemporary social value

Last Saturday marked the centenary of the ending of the 1913 Great Dublin Lockout. An important subtext of the centenary celebrations has been unions’ efforts to remind government and the wider public that workers’ right to union representation, with appropriate legislative supports and safeguards, continues to be denied Irish workers. While current Irish legislation affords unions the right to organize workers, it is neutered by an employer right not to recognize unions for the purposes of collective bargaining.

Collective bargaining is often narrowly seen as a mechanism for determining employees’ earnings and, when conducted at a national level, (more…)

Jim Larkin Commemoration Glasnevin Sunday, February 2nd – Relighting Syndicalist Flame

Jim Larkin Commemoration

Sunday, February 2^nd, 2014,

Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin

11 am to 12 noon

Last year a commemoration was held at the graveside of Jim Larkin in Glasnevin Cemetery for the first time in 15 years to mark the beginning of the 1913 Lockout Centenary. This year’s commemoration is to revive this honourable tradition and reaffirm the continuing relevance Larkin’s syndicalist gospel today – that trade unions serve their members and the wider community best when they champion social and economic justice for all.

It is also to acknowledge Larkin’s unique contribution in bringing the ‘new unionism’ to Ireland, which led to the birth of the modern labour movement and gave working people a voice in how society was ordered.

Programme

11 am: A wreath will be laid at Jim Larkin’s grave by Jack O’Connor, General President of SIPTU, on behalf of members, followed by a Lament by a Piper from the Fintan Lalor Pipe Band.

Chair: Ethel Buckley, National Campaigns and Equality, SIPTU

Oration: Jack O’Connor

Dramatic Performance: This will be followed by an interpretive dramatic performance from award winning theatre company ANU Production.

Contact: Padraig Yeates 087 260 5297  

Obituary of Lockout Leader

Owen Boss of ANU Productions has sent us this obituary of his Great Grand Father P T Daly from the Irish Press. Daly died on November 20th, 1943 so presumably the cutting is from Monday, November 22nd, 1943. Big Jim Larkin is the figure on the right at the bottom right of the picture.

P T Daly was one of the leaders of the 1913 Lockout. The Obit states, incorrectly that P T Daly was a Sinn  Fein Councillor in Dublin from 1903 until 1924 when the Corporation was dissolved. In fact he was a Labour Councillor from the time he became an organiser for the Irish Transport and General Workers Union. When the Labour group split, he led the Trades Council wing of Labour on the City Council. His rival William O’Brien led the Republican Labour group on the Council. While Daly supported many of the initiatives proposed by Sinn Fein on the City Council, including the vote to recognise Dail Eireann as the legitimate government of Ireland in May 1920, Trades Council Labour pursued a more independent line from Sinn Fein than the O’Brienites.

Lockout Locked in

Irish Times Report by Frank McNally of the Abbey’s Risen People performance in Wheatfield Prison January 14th, 2014