Time to vote

The envelope arrived at the week-end containing the ballot paper. ASTI is now balloting its members on acceptance of the Croke Park Agreement. While we voted to reject Croke Park last year as members of ICTU we’re obliged to discuss its implementation and its these proposals that are now before members. Last year I voted no. Having seen how the industrial landscape has changed in the last year I’m now having a long hard think about it.
There is no suggestion that the ASTI will resort to industrial action if the union votes to reject the deal. The CPA does offer the unions abiding by it protection for earnings in 2011. That’s effectively what the state gives. What the public service gives is flexibility (i.e. concedes to government what the department had long pursued, PTM outside of school hours, filling in and additional 33 hours to be worked in the working year).
I voted against the CPA last year because I preferred to protect teachers jobs. Personally I’d accept a pay cut over a reduction in working conditions. I’d prefer to protect the jobs of younger teachers, those with mortgages rather than seek to protect my own income for the moment. Let’s be honest there is a low level of morale among public sector workers. They’ve been the subject of abuse and denigration for some time. A poll last week in the Sunday Indo showed that 54% of Labour supporters would support a reduction in the numbers. Support among supporters of other parties for cuts were much higher with 69% of Sinn Fein supporters wanting to see job losses. In the north SF have frozen the pay of all public sector workers on as little as £21,000.
But there are 2 issues that are making me think about voting at all. One is the Fine Gael proposal to get rid of 30,000 public sector workers on top of all that. I think that that would be disastrous. I don’t deny that there are people in the public sector who want to go and that if a voluntary redundancy package was on offer that they would leave and take their pension. Before Christmas such a scheme was on offer at the HSE but there weren’t as many takers as management thought there were.
The other thing that concerns me is the upward trend in mortgages. I’ve a mortgage with Permanent TSB. It seems that interest rates are now increasing not because of any ECB decision but because banks want to increase their liquidity. It’s likely that other banks and building societies will follow up. There is less competition in the banking sector following the withdrawal from Ireland of HBOS and the ECB/EU stated objective of restructuring the banking industry; i.e. closures. Mortgage interest relief is only available for 7 years for first time buyers.
The brunt of this move is going to reduce the amount of disposable income for home owners like public servants. Where is the money that will re-boot the economy? What worries me is that there will be less spending rather than more spending in the economy. That in turn will prolong the slump, not any decision on the part of public servants to implement the CPA.
So when I vote today on the proposed deal, I really get the feeling that power to actually decide your future in the workplace and power to participate is gone. Regardless of how I vote and I’m still veering towards No, most workers feel it ultimately won’t matter. There are lessons for all of us in the context of a general election. What’s the bet it’ll be a low poll?

We are where we were left!

I’m tired of clichés being trotted out as a glass ceiling to box in disenchantment. We are where we are ranks as one of the worst offenders! In fact we are where we were left or more likely abandoned. While most of us face in to a windy or wet Easter spare a thought for Sean Fitzpatrick who has a pad in Marbela that he can get away to free gratis courtesy of a FF appointment to the board of Aer Lingus, who this week announced a record loss of €80M.
If that doesn’t move you then think of how David Drumm feels as he cowers behind his front door as Charlie Bird gapes in his letter box innocently asking him “Why are you ducking down?” Fair play to Charlie, I know his time is almost up as Washington correspondent but thanks for the priceless 90 second clip where he tracked down Drumm to his New England trophy home. Drumm owes his former employer Anglo Irish Bank over €8M (and it seems I and other tax payers are now liable for over €6m) and he is where he is and I’m where he left me!

Make no mistake about international opinion. Just because the international movers and shakers in the financial world approve of the overall figures coming out of Merrion St doesn’t mean there’s another way of arriving at the same figures. All the international lenders want from us is money, where it comes from they’re not bothered. So lets not worry too much about the FF and Green line that international confidence is being restored in the economy. What really matters is the confidence of the ordinary person to spend. There’s little indication that the spending will resume and the reason is that wage cuts and unemployment mean that there is very little spare money.
That’s why the agreement reached between the government and the public service unions will fail. It did nothing about restoring wage cuts.
Indeed the suggestion that less workers will do more work and in return pay cuts will be held back till 2014 shows a lack of understanding of how badly hit many particularly low paid public sector workers are. I’m not hugely surprised, last year I met a woman who worked in Social welfare who said that she’d be better off claiming rather than administering unemployment payments. Here's where the 2 threads plait together. Many public sector workers are fed up seeeing there wages cut by a government that has no problem finding as much money as will be needed to bail out the bankers
In my own case, to propose that teachers work an extra hour is a kite being flown. The suggestion that schools would open for another hour is wide of the mark. Given synchronisation of school year and contracts for school buses what it really means is an extra class contact hour in the week for each teacher. That would mean less time to do the preparatory work for practicals, less time for my post of responsibility but more importantly less jobs for teachers.

The likely alternative to accepting this deal is another pay cut at the end of the year. The follow on response will likely be non co-operation with inspection or Whole School Evaluation and a retaliatory further pay cut by Cowen and Gormley. What happens in my area will happen in others. Its very depressing for those of us who work in the public sector. To be fair to Cowen and Lenihan they’re doing what you’d expect them to do so where is the leadership from the union side? We need a vision to oppose the right wing orthodoxy of "There is no alternative" or "We are where we are" school of economics. I'm pleased my union executive have given this deal a thumbs down, I understand that each union is autonomous in accepting or rejecting. Its not enough to sit back and allow the government agenda to go unchallenged.
If that happens the net outcome of the Celtic Tiger will be a race to the bottom in every sector and the starting gun has been fired in the sack race.

Savaged by a dead sheep

It was a most memorable put down. Denis Healy’s verdict on a joust with Thatcher’ Chancellor of the Exchequer came back into my mind when I heard that Fianna Fail backbenchers were reportedly revolting against any deal between the government and the unions to resolve the public service pay dispute.

If you believe the media the usually anonymous backbenchers who’re lucky enough to be household names in their own households have suddenly evolved a spine and are opposed to any suggestion other than pay cuts for reducing the public service pay. It just so happens that I’m reading Charlie Bird’s autobiography at the moment. He has written a chapter on the plinth at Leinster House and those particularly those who inhabit it for the purpose of sending a message to their constituency. It would be wrong to think of these backbenchers in the true style of a political maverick. It’s quite the opposite. The backbenchers were sent out by the Fianna Fail press office to deliberately undermine ICTU. They’re more Sepp Blather than same bladder. Their lines were written for them and the media notified of the “dissent”. In short the backbenchers were willing tools in the deliberate collapse of partnership engineered by Brian Cowen.

A clue to the reality was the attack on the process by John Gormley. It was time to be tough and reach the €4B target for 2010. It’s just a year since Ciaran Cuffe threw himself at the mercy of Ireland’s pensioners to hoots of derision. It seems that the greens have moved on from connecting with real fears that exist in the community and are now lining up alongside the bankers, developers, Fianna Fail and IBEC. Their fears are more pressing.
I don’t go with the media line that Cowen is weak and not in control. Many of the backbenchers who’re concerned at the crisis happily hid from their constituents when banks were bailed out through NAMA, Christmas bonus axed or public servants went on strike. Its easy to dismiss the backbenchers as lumpen gombeen men who hold the family seat but in fact if you look particularly at the 2007 intake you’ll see that their background is significantly different to the traditional view of a FF backbencher who’s got a GAA background, a farm and is middle aged. Many of the new FF backbenchers are from middle class professions; solicitors, accountants, company directors etc. It reminds me of the 1977 intake of FF that gave us Charlie McCreevy, Mary Harney, Bertie etc.
There is an ideological agenda at play taking advantage of the economic slump trying to recast Ireland amidst this crisis. No other EU country is going through what is happening in Ireland now and many ordinary people are fearful. Fear is thriving in Ireland, fear of unemployment, illness, aging, eviction, and emigration. FF & the Greens will lead us to a place where there is a price on everything and if you have the money you can have a service and if you don’t then tough luck. Reykjavik on the Liffey was the snide cut at our economy in 2008. In the future it may be California in the Atlantic and mark my words, there’ll be an enormous social price to be paid and very little sunshine to show for it.

ICTU spell it out to FF & the Greens

The ICTU rally in opposition to cuts in government spending in Waterford saw about 8,000 union members from the south east march in fine dry weather to let the government now exactly how they feel. Nationally almost 80,000 took to the streets to put Brian Cowen and Brian Lenihan on notice that they expect the government to pursue those who made most during the boom years to pay up when it comes to finding the money to keep public services going.

It’s unfair to describe the protest as a public sector protest about avoiding pay cuts. Notable in attendance were community workers from FAB in Wexford opposed to cuts in funding to the CDP budgets.
FAB is funded under the RAPID scheme and does valuable work within estates where unemployment is high and there is a huge reliance on social welfare and funding to maintain the community. These women were there because they know that funding cuts will set them back years while those who have made a fortune in this country will still hold on to their cash oblivious of the real need in their country. But it wasn’t just about workers it was about retired workers too, some of whom I met and spoke to.
I was delighted to meet so many of my Labour colleagues from around the region, Cllrs Denis Landy, Seamus Ryan and Tomás Walsh all marched behind the Labour banner. My ASTI colleagues were out in force as were INTO, IMPACT, UNITE, TUI, INO and of course SIPTU. I was delighted to see the entire Wexford SIPTU office at the rally afterwards at The Glen. Pleased also to see Rory, fellow Wexford blogger flying the Wexford flag and the red flag from the same pole.
Led by a band from The Glen, the march went along the Quays and back via Ballybricken. There was a strong show of firemen and ambulance workers to underpin the depth of feeling in the 24/7 group of workers. As I passed the garda station at Ballybricken I thought for one moment I saw the “Super” give us the clenched fist from his 3rd floor office! There was a clear message from the platform from ICTU, Mayor Halligan of Waterford and other union speakers that ordinary workers are being put to the pin of their collar and didn’t deserve what was being done to them. Those who run Irish society were setting worker against worker.
As one speaker from TEEU said; first it was self-employed worker against employed worker, then it was private sector worker against public sector worker, after that it was worker against unemployed and recently he’d heard someone try to divide the long term unemployed against short term unemployed. What’s next; young unemployed against older unemployed? Teachers have an unpalatable choice, oppose pay cuts and the government will sack your younger teaching colleagues and your working conditions will deteriorate. Accept a pay cut and the very colleague who you feel should keep their job will find the mortgage payments a difficulty. That’s the reality, just 2 years after being told by Bertie Ahern that anyone who was sceptical about the boom should commit suicide. Some Republic!