The race to the bottom in workers’ wages and conditions is gathering pace. Aer Lingus management have declared war on its workforce, as they shift operations from Shannon to Belfast in an attempt to drive down wages and impose poorer working conditions. If they get away with it then the jobs, wages and working conditions of all Aer Lingus staff will be under threat.
The race to the bottom is happening across all sectors of the economy and in particular in the construction industry. It’s not rocket science – the bosses are attacking pay and conditions in order to increase their profits and wealth. And it’s working.
According to a report from the Bank of Ireland the rich are getting richer and the wealth gap between the rich and the working class is increasing. In 2006 there were 3,000 new millionaires making a total of 33,000 (excluding the value of residential property).
The booming Irish economy is most definitely benefiting the wealthy at the expense of the working class. Between 2005 – 2006 the wealth of the top 1% of the population increased from €86 billion to €100 billion! The top 1% of the population own 34% of wealth. And in the last ten years their wealth has increased by 165%!
The Bank of Ireland predicts that the top 1% richest people in society will increase their wealth by €33 billion in the next three years and by an incredible ?116 billion in the next 8 years!
A lot has been made in recent years of how everyone has supposedly benefited from the booming economy. Reports say that Ireland is the second wealthiest country in the world. What these reports don’t highlight is the state of the health service, the transport network or the gross under funding of education. But they also mask the reality for the majority in society. If you exclude the value of people’s homes then the wealth per head of population in Ireland is approximately only one third of the USA, half of Italy, 40% of the UK and about 27% of Japan! The reality is that 72% of the wealth attributed to Irish households is the value of their property and only 10% is cash. As the Bank of Ireland says “This reliance on property continues to be a concern and exposes Irish households to unfavourable movements in property prices.”
In otherwords, for the majority of working class people all of their debts are based on the value of their homes and property prices are falling. In some areas the prices are falling dramatically – go on to the internet and check out the asking prices for houses all over the country and you will find in some areas prices have fallen by up to 30%, and it is common now in Dublin for the asking price of a house to be €50,000 less than it was at the start of this year.
In Ireland, the disposable income of the richest 10% in society is 14 times higher than the poorest 10%.
These figures expose the huge inequalities in society and the distortion of wealth statistics because of the inclusion of overvalued residential property – “wealth” that fundamentally can’t be accessed by the majority of working class people simply because we all need somewhere to live!
With the end of the housing boom and the unfolding crisis in the world’s financial markets, there is a real prospect of major job losses in the construction industry and right across the economy.
Attacks on jobs, wages and conditions like those being imposed by Aer Lingus management are set to increase. Now more than ever we need the end to the farce of “social partnership” which has helped the rich get richer at our expense. Instead, workers need fighting trade unions and a political voice to take on the bosses to defend jobs and conditions and fight for better public services.
The next time you hear an economist, journalist or politician bleating on about how wealthy Ireland has become you will know to take what they say with a bucketful of salt!
