Marking the 29 September European Trade Union Confederation day of action in Ireland

by opus diablos - the regressive hypocrite party Mon Aug 09, 2010 16:26

My priority would not be on 'Work and Growth' so much as share the work( why should some be over-worked while others are kept idle in the reserve labour pool?) and share the wealth through a more equitable tax system( instead of relying on nebulous 'growth' to float our sunken boats).
That sounds like a re-run of the paper tiger carrot.
And that growth aint coming back in a hurry, except in the jobless variety, i.e. financial growth masquerading as economic development when it is actually impoverishing the general population to the benefit of (often absentee) profiteers.
I'm not in the 'workforce', and I got off me arse to hitch into Galway and march in support of the public service a while back. When the budget cut the welfare christmas bonus and chopped 8% percent off the disemployed there was not a lot of reciprocation from the union direction. I sometimes wonder when I'm hitching how many of the flash cars passing me by and looking the other way are driven by public service employees.Most of the lifts these days are from the immigrant community, who still have residual solidarity and who absorb more abuse from Irish workers for the crimes of the bosses than the fucking politicians and bankers put together. Some of the Irish workers are more boneheaded than their bosses, and make the capitalist's case for him.
The austerity didn't go away while the Tiger was pissing through, you know, it was just drowned out and silenced by the general greedfest of me feinism.
I still wish you luck, but do try and widen the union horizon. Globalised sweatshop 'competitiveness' is not going to release us from the cycles of emigration and poverty alongside obscene wealth. And cosy national agreement, that allows for resumed involuntary emigration to sustain the comfort of a section only, has to end. We need more radical analysis. And less cliched ideological formulae in place of language that alienates anyone with a grain of historical knowledge of the consquences of ideological lockstep. And we need to stop ignoring the global dimension as though a nationalist solution to our not unique situation can be found in some hermetic insular arrangement. National is the oxymoronic torpedo that keeps sinking socialist experiments.
Its 'work and growth' worship that divides the community in Shellmullet on the desireability of a gombeen acceptance of Shell's piracy. Microcosm for the global pattern.
Fire at will.