2006 has begun with a raft of price increases - bin charges are up all across the country, in Fingal the latest increase means they have risen by 50% in last two years.

The price of gas is up 25% and Bord Gais are seeking a 46% increase in the cost of getting a supply connected to your house. Bus fares rose 5%, train and Luas fares up 3.8% and the price of electricity is up 4% making a total increase of 12.5% in the last 12 months. The numbers lanquishing on hospital trolleys are still over 300 on some days one year after Mary Harney promised to solve the A&E crisis - but that hasn’t stopped her from increasing the cost of a visit to A&E by €5 to €60 and the cost of an overnight stay in a hospital is also up to €60. And the longterm ill are also being screwed by the government as the Drug Refund Scheme threshold has risen to €85.

Interest rate rises have increased the cost of mortgages and further rate increases are predicted for this year. This list of cost of living price increases is not exhaustive but it does give a taste of the financial pressures that working class people are under. Any benefits real (or imagined by Fianna Fail spin doctors) from the budget will be fully absorbed by these and other price hikes.

With the minimum wage increasingly becoming a maximum wage for many workers, making ends meet is becoming an impossible struggle. But it is not only the low paid who are finding the going tough. Workers on the average wage are struggling to pay huge mortgages and creche costs, and rising interest rates and price rises will not be offset by Brian Cowen’s pitiful €19 a week allowance for childcare.

The leaders of ICTU are entering a new round of “social partnership” talks with the government and IBEC who support companies like Irish Ferries trying to pay workers €3.60 an hour. David Begg general secretary of ICTU and Jack O’Connor President of SIPTU believe they achieved a significant “victory” for workers because they have created a “threshold of decency”.

What is this threshold - the minimum wage of €7.65 an hour. Trade union leaders who earn up to €100,000 when you include expenses and benefits and their “partner” Bertie Ahern who now earns €252,000 a year haven’t a clue what it is like trying to survive on €7.65 an hour.

The Socialist Party demands that the minimum wage should be immediately increased to €12 an hour as a step towards a decent living wage. We believe that “social partnership” should be scrapped. The massive demonstrations on 9 December in support of the Irish Ferries’ workers illustrates what the trade unions should be doing - fighting back. Instead of grovelling for small incremental increases in the minimum wage or small pay increases barely keeping pace with inflation at the “partnership” table, the union leaders should be taking the bosses on.

The Socialist Party is organising to build a mass working class party as a political alternative to the establishment parties who, despite their crocodile tears, fully support the agenda of big business to drive down wages and do nothing to stop the spiralling increases in the cost of living. Why, because they support capitalism and lower wages and higher prices means bigger profits!

Organise & fight for

* €12 an hour minimum wage
* Scrap social partnership
* Democratic fighting trade unions

The Irish Ferries and GAMA disputes and a rash of examples involving mainly migrants working for a pittance has exposed the "counter-revolution" that is underway in the labour market in this country.

Employers are determined to replace relatively well paid jobs with low paid short-term jobs through the exploitation of migrant workers.

These cases were not accidents nor are they examples of a few "rogue employers" as they have been portrayed by some in the media. This is a widespread conscious strategy by businesses to protect and maintain their profits in the face of so-called international competition.

Tax return figures released at the end of 2005 show this process. The returns were much higher than predicted due to one off initiatives such as tax investigations and a massive under spending by some government departments to the tune of €705 million. Without these "special" occurrences the extra tax intake would have been just €350 million, 3% less than predicted. This is despite an extra 96,000 new jobs last year, but most of these were low paid and many of these new workers are paid so little that they don’t have to pay tax at all. There was a net loss in jobs in the manufacturing sector in 2005, the fourth year in succession that manufacturing jobs were replaced by low paid jobs in the service sector.

Despite the ongoing growth in the Irish economy expected to be about 5% for 2005, the employers and government are worried about Ireland losing its "competitive" edge. Irish Ferries argued that they couldn’t compete with other ferry operators because their labour costs were too high. This has become the new mantra of business, who claim that labour costs are too high in Ireland. But their comparison is to countries like China where wages are appallingly low and workers have little rights. Ask the majority of Irish workers if their wages are too high and you will get a litany about the increasing cost of living. 2006 has started off with a 25% increase in the price of gas; travel costs are up as too are mortgage interest rates.

Big business propaganda about competition is simply an attempt to pit workers in one country against another, or migrant workers against Irish workers, and whoever is prepared to work for the least wages will get the job! The conditions in China and other low wage economies are becoming the benchmark to which Irish big business aspires.

Employers have no interest in ICTU’s "threshold of decency." Attacks on workers’ rights and conditions are happening all over the country and more employers will try to follow the example set at Irish Ferries of trying to decimate workers’ wages and rights in order to increase their profits. These attacks will also result in more battles as workers are faced with the stark choice – accept poverty wages or fight back.