According
to the Bank of Ireland’s "Wealth of the Nation" report,
there are now 30,000 millionaires living in Ireland. Ireland is now
the second wealthiest country in the OECD.
Three hundred individuals are worth more than €30 million, 2,700
own between €5 - €30 million. Yet at the same time, one third
of workers earn so little that they are not liable to pay tax and the
average industrial wage of €30,000 a year is not enough to qualify
for a mortgage for a modest home.
One of the main reasons why there has been such a massive expansion
in wealth in this country in the last ten years (350% increase in wealth)
for the rich has been because "social partnership" has reduced
the amount of wealth going to workers and transferred it into the hands
of the millionaires.
The latest "social partnership" agreement “Towards 2016”
proposes to pay workers 10% over the next 27 months. At best, this will
mean that wages will only keep pace with inflation and if inflation
grows as is predicted, it will mean a pay cut. In the light of the above
research on the wealth of the super-rich in this country, how can the
right-wing union leaders seriously argue that this is the best that
the trade union movement can achieve.
Apart from the derisory wage "increases", “Towards 2016”
also opens the door to the government's agenda of creeping privatisation.
A de facto ban on recruitment in the public service will give management
the excuse to outsource core work to the private sector, bring in temporary
staff and agency workers. Along with performance related pay, and increased
open competition for recruitment, this agreement allows for fundamental
changes in the public sector that will seriously undermine the job security,
pay and working conditions of civil and public servants. “Towards
2016” will allow the right-wing parties to introduce a similar
assault on our public services as has been done in Britain by the Tories
and Blair's New Labour.
The government is also assisting big business to increase their profits
by handing over more and more of the public sector into private hands.
They are doing this through Public Private Partnerships and outright
privatisations. Fianna Fail and the PDs, supported by the other major
establishment parties are determined to sell off Aer Lingus and are
also lining up Dublin Bus, Bus Eireann, the ESB and An Post for privatisation.
Relatively well paid jobs will end up being outsourced, wages and pensions
will be slashed in order to increase the profits of rich shareholders,
and the quality of service to the public will be eroded. Yet the right-wing
union leaders are doing nothing to stop this privatisation agenda except
to sign up to Towards 2016 guaranteeing a fast tracking of these privatisations
and the destruction of our public services.
Cheap goods from the "slave wage" economies of China, India
and the new EU states in eastern Europe are pushing companies based
in Ireland to cut their production costs. The bosses are cutting their
costs by attacking workers’ rights and they will intensify their
efforts by speeding up production, extending the working day, cutting
wages and employing temporary and agency staff in the next period. "Social
partnership" and “Towards 2016” will assist them with
these attacks on workers’ wages and conditions and should be rejected.
See the Industrial News section
for more on 'Towards 2016'.
