A new wave of worker militancy

Photos of Dublin Docks Trespass Protest

A small but significant wave of worker militancy is sweeping
Ireland, giving the lie to the claim that workers are too frightened to fight
during a recession. Currently there are three major disputes underway which
have received minimal publicity from the corporate media.

• Mr Binman: Here a mixed workforce of Irish and
  migrant workers are battling against wage cuts. The company involved has
  taken over waste collection in towns such as Limerick and Waterford and is
  attempting to spread its influence throughout Munster – on the back of
  cheap labour. The workforce was largely non-union before the wage cuts but
  have rapidly organised to fight.
• Carroll’s Joinery: Workers here are fighting over
  redundancy terms.  Each day workers from Kilkenny travel to Dublin to picket one of the outlets.
• MTL: This strike of port workers began when the
  company imposed compulsory redundancies and introduced new contracts.
  Since the strike began all but 5 of the strikers have been issued with
  redundancy notices. The parent company, the Peel Port Group, was involved
  in a notorious dispute with Liverpool dockers and is aiming to create a
  non-union workforce.

Alongside these three disputes, the character of workers’
struggles has started to change. The occupation of Waterford Crystal workers
has inspired a new tactic of occupation as workers’ struggles come up against
the very limits of capitalist property relations themselves.

An occupation involves the temporary seizure of company
property to ensure that its assets are controlled by workers until the owners
make concessions to their workforce. It is a rebellion against the notion that
workers are disposable units that are good only so long as they make sufficient
profits for their employer. By taking hold of a company’s assets, an occupation
asserts that workers’ needs are more important that the right of a capitalists
to dispose of their capital in whatever way they please.

The occupation of Waterford Crystal was quickly followed by
an occupation of the Visteon plant in Belfast. Visteon makes components for
Ford Motors and the company had decided to shut its factory in Belfast. A number of key lessons on how to conduct an occupation were learnt from the Waterford experience and applied in Visteon. As a result the occupation achieved a major
increase in redundancy payments.

The Visteon occupation was followed by the extraordinarily
dramatic struggle at Thomas Cooks where a mainly young and female workforce
defied the law to insist on better redundancy payments. In a dramatic example
of worker militancy, a mass meeting of the staff voted – against the advice of
their union officials – to continue an occupation despite a High Court order.
The occupation was only lifted when Garda arrived at 5 am in the morning in
large numbers to break though and forcibly remove the staff. In the course of
their actions, a young pregnant woman began to give birth and had to be rushed
to a hospital where her baby was born.

The Thomas Cook struggle has been a huge inspiration to
workers everywhere. It was quickly followed by an occupation of the 3 D shop in
Mitchelstown and a Centra shop in Wexford. In both these cases, however, union
officials raced to the scene to persuade workers to lift the occupation.

A different scenario was, however, in evidence at the MTL
strike which has now been in progress for eight weeks. This strike has extended
beyond the traditional industrial relations framework to involve a high level
of community support from the Ringsend and East Wall areas. Dockers
traditionally came from these areas and a vibrant local support group has
mobilised hundreds in support of the strike. It is fair to say that if the
strike had solely relied on the support of the official union machinery of
SIPTU it would have been far weaker.

On Monday 24^th August, the first whiff of French
style militancy made its appearance in an Irish dispute. After the official
union leaders gave their speeches to a mass rally of 600 hundred supporters, a
call was made from the platform to march back to the assembly point in an
orderly fashion. The crowd, however, had different intentions and marched towards
MTL to stage a mass invasion. Up to 300 people took part in a mass trespass of
the property to shout ‘scabs outs’ and to enter the control centre of the site.
This was despite an injunction which rendered such actions illegal. Faced with
the power of mass resistance, however, the police did nothing. The protest
conveyed the message in the very strongest terms to Peel Port, that the people
of Dublin will come back at any time to take control of their property, which
is owned by the Dublin Docklands Development Authority. The company has now
been put on notice that more such actions will follow.

THREE  FEATURES OF THE NEW STRUGGLES

There are three key features of the new wave of workers
struggles that demand special attention.

First, many of the struggles arise in response to decisions
made by IBEC, the employers’ organisation. This organisation is an organised
conspiracy, which has inserted itself directly into the top echelons of the
state. Since the recession, it has set out in a  co-ordinated manner to weaken
union organisation. This has involved co-ordination between employer bodies to
achieve a number of specific results. These include:

Wage Cuts: IBEC has at its stated objective a general
wage cut of 10 percent this year. In non-union firms, it has advised its
members to call workers to meet their managers individually to get them to
‘voluntarily’ agree to a wage cut. In unionised firms, it has sought to promote
a 'jobs at any price’ mentality in order to invoke a passive response from
union leaders. The pension levy on the public service and wage cuts in RTE were
imposed in this manner.

Redundancy Payments: Employers get back 60 percent of
statutory redundancy from the state via the taxpayers. IBEC have, therefore,
encouraged their members to offer only statutory payments or statutory
redundancy plus and an extra week. Their aim is to lower the level for
settlements from the current average of six weeks for every year's service to
the bare minimum they can get away with.

The second feature of the recent wave of struggle has been
the use of the law and the full force of the state to break workers’
struggles.  No better illustration can be offered of the class nature of our
state than to witness how bankers can strut around golf clubs after they helped
wreck the lives of thousands while workers are carted off to jail just for
standing up for the most modest of demands.

During the years of social partnership an implicit deal was
done between the Irish state and the leaders of the ICTU. In 1990, Bertie Ahern
engaged in extensive consultations with union leaders to demobilise opposition
to his Industrial Relations Act. This act removed the traditional right to
immunities from striking workers, which had originally been achieved in 1906. Immunities
in this context is a legal term whereby workers were not made liable for the
losses incurred by a company during a strike. The inducement to the union
leaders to accept this dreadful reversal of workers’ legal rights was a
structure whereby strikes had to be conducted under the auspices of the
official unions. Political strikes were banned; strict conditions were laid
down so that all affected in any way had to be balloted; instant strikes over
the dismal of one worker were also banned. In brief, the Industrial Relations
Act suited both parties – even though the union leadership pretended that they
were opposed to it.

One of the implicit understandings that IBEC, the ICTU and
the state arrived at in this period was that the older, almost medieval
practice of employers rushing to the court to get an injunction would cease.
After all, the Industrial Relations Act tied up workers in a maze of restrictions
and there appeared to be little need for that.

This, however, has now dramatically changed. Employers are
rushing in to the courts to get an injunctions at the slightest sign of workers’
resistance. These injunctions are handed out immediately and are used to break
the momentum of struggles. They can later be made permanent as soon as a court
hearing is arranged, adding to the legal costs of any group of workers who
wants to fight them. In the Thomas Cook struggle, for example, the High Court
met in emergency session on a Bank Holiday Monday to commit workers to prison.
This is in sharp contrast to how working people – if they can raise the money –
must wait months and years to get a  hearing from the same court.

Employers are also threatening to sue workers for loss of
earnings. This has occurred, for example, in Dublin Bus after a recent
unofficial dispute.

It is perfectly obvious, therefore, that the legal veneer of
capitalist societies changes when the system gets into difficulty. In normal
times, there is a mask of liberalism where the courts appear to stand above the
fray of class conflict and even, sometimes, make judgements which benefit
workers. When the system enters difficulties, however, the mask is withdrawn
and the full physical force of uniformed Gardai are used to break workers’
struggles. The issue therefore of how the unions respond to unjust laws has
therefore become a central feature of the new period.

The third feature of the period is a weak and vacillating
union leadership. It is sometimes claimed that the union leaders have become
part of the state apparatus because of Partnership. This however is too crude
because the basis on which union leaders get accepted into state institutions
is different from that of employers. Employers arrive at negotiating tables
because they control capital – they embody the power of money. Union leaders
are only invited because they may be able to control or influence an organised
workforce. If the level of organisation drops to an abysmal level, the union
leaders will be cast aside. The leaders of SIPTU and other unions must,
therefore, attend to the level of union organisation – or union density, as
they refer to it. The leaders of SIPTU, for example, must show some resistance
to the antics of Peel Port because they know that if this company succeeds
other companies on the docks will follow  their example and the union will be
driven out of the area.

The problem, however, is that the union leaders do not have
the will to fight in a  manner that reflects the new period because they have
been so conditioned by the social partnership years. They are also terrified of
the law and are very frightened by the new character of workers’ struggles.

The union leadership have not given up on the prospect for social
partnership. According to Industrial Relations News, informal talks are
continuing over the summer and the key decision time will be in September, just
before the SIPTU conference in the first week of October. The union leaders
have therefore been willing to give some vent to working class anger – but do
not want it to spill beyond the bounds of ‘normal industrial relations’.

The weakness of the union leadership is evident in many of
the disputes. SIPTU should be campaigning for a stoppage of the whole port of Dublin in order to break the anti-union employers of Peel Group – but this will
mean a frontal challenge to the government, so they have hesitated. Instead of
displaying an abject respect for unjust laws it should be preparing ways to
evade them in the same spirit of the old Irish nationalist Daniel O’Connell who
proclaimed that you can always drive a coach and horses through any law. But
again it is terrified of embarking on this approach.

CONCLUSION:

The new character of workers’ struggle indicate that
politics has become crucial. The old reformist Labour Party dominated union
bureaucracy preaches respect for the law and desperately hopes to get back into
social partnership. This political approach reacts back on industrial struggles
and can lead to defeats.

Revolutionary socialists by contrast want to spread the
example of occupation; are for mass direct action to defy unjust laws; and want
to escalate struggles. This is explains why Socialist Work has been to the fore
in urging workers to take the most militant action necessary to secure victory.

Over the next period, the SWP will be stepping up its
industrial interventions to promote a new form of trade unionism.

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