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Irish Unions Plan General Strike Against Bankers’ Bailout
6 January 2011
Irish trade unions will be mapping out a campaign of general strikes and other political activities to fight against the brutal austerity policies mandated by the European Union/International Monetary Fund dictatorship the Irish government has put the country under. UNITE, a trade union with 60,000 members, presented a letter to the Irish Congress of Trade Unions’ executive council last month calling for a general strike. Senior trade union sources confirmed that ICTU Secretary General David Begg has called an executive meeting of the leaders of all the member unions on Jan. 27 to discuss the proposal. The ICTU trade union federation represents 1 million workers. In his letter, UNITE’s regional secretary for Ireland, Jimmy Kelly, made clear that the aim of a general strike would be not only to express anger at the current government’s "austerity measures," but to target what is expected to be early national elections, and give a powerful message to the political parties on what should be the economic policy of the next government. In the letter, Kelly said the massive turn-out for the ICTU protest march last November indicated "a consensus is emerging over an alternative economic, fiscal, and banking strategy to that of the government’s and the prevailing austerity orthodoxy." This consensus, Kelly wrote, includes not cutting the overall level of public spending; a multi-year, multi-billion-pound program of public investment; and that banks and their bondholders should be responsible for their own debt, not the people, according to the Irish Examiner. "UNITE has proposed that the trade union movement should be to the fore of a growing consensus that more of the same is unacceptable," said Regional Secretary Jimmy Kelly according to the UNITE website. "We have a powerful membership that has the real interests of the people of Ireland at heart. We need to make sure that membership is mobilized to ensure that the new government adopts a radically different approach. We need to be at the center of a social and community base of common interest that rejects the idea that bankers and the political elite know best. UNITE is convinced that we need to exercise our power through our members voicing a collective alternative opinion and through the possible use of industrial action to prove the strength of our commitment to a better future for Ireland than is possible under the current approach. This will now be considered by our colleagues in the union movement, and the detail of a short, medium and longer term strategy will emerge early in the New Year." Senior union sources reported that the idea is not to simply hold a one-day general strike, but to launch a campaign that brings into the movement other layers of the population, including community groups and activist organizations. |