Unions in Ireland call general strike

In a stunning display of strength that would have made James Connolly—the martyred Irish working class hero from the early 20th century—proud, more than 150,000 demonstrators surged into the streets of Dublin on Feb. 21 to voice working-class demands.

The Irish Congress of Trade Unions called the demonstration. Demonstrators expressed their anger at the Irish government’s actions, or lack thereof, during the currently deepening economic recession. Many protestors denounced the government’s proposed pension levy and pay cut, which would reduce the wages of more than 350,000 public sector workers.

ICTU Secretary General Sally-Anne Kinahan said, “Our priority is about ensuring that people are looked after, the interests of people are looked after, not the interests of big business or the wealthy,” (BBC, Feb. 21)

Across Ireland, there is an intensifying groundswell of popular outrage at the myriad attacks being perpetrated against workers and the oppressed. The public outcry against the bosses, who are slashing thousands of jobs, the banks, which continue to force families from their homes, and the government, which continues to institute draconian cutbacks to vital services, is now reaching a crescendo.

“There is absolute burning vitriol that we feel at the savage way they have hit the most vulnerable in society,” said Sheila O’Shea, a public school teacher who participated in the Feb. 21 demonstration. (Reuters, Feb. 21)

The ICTU recently issued a call for a general strike to begin on March 30. The proposed industrial action would involve a countrywide work stoppage aimed at forcing the government to agree to the union’s “Social Solidarity Pact.” This pact is a 10-point list of demands crafted by the trade unions. These demands include a 48-percent tax on all upper income individuals, complete public ownership of all banks, an immediate moratorium on all foreclosures and increased support for unemployed workers.

Occupation at Waterford continues

While workers across Ireland prepare for the March 30 general strike, hundreds of workers continue to occupy the Waterford Crystal factory in Kilbarry. The occupation, entering its fifth week as of March 1, was launched in response to the attempted shuttering of the historic factory and visitor center.

The Waterford Crystal company is heavily indebted to a number of transnational financial institutions. The company has been drastically slashing production in attempts to cut costs. When a hired security detail attempted to enforce a lockout on Jan. 30, the workers surged through the gates, took control of the factory and have occupied it ever since.

On Feb. 27, it was announced that KPS, a U.S-based private equity firm, is slated to purchase the Waterford Crystal Company. Workers at the factory have said that the occupation will continue until job security is guaranteed for all plant workers, irrespective of the pending KPS buyout.

At the turn of the twentieth century, James Connolly, speaking to the nationalist movement in Ireland, wrote: “If you remove the English army tomorrow and hoist the green flag over Dublin Castle, unless you set about the organization of the Socialist Republic your efforts would be in vain. England would still rule you. She would rule you through her capitalists, through her landlords, through her financiers, through the whole army of commercial and individual institutions she has planted in this country and watered with the tears of our mothers and the blood of our martyrs.”

In the dawn of the 21st century, with thousands of Irish workers being summarily fired and stripped of their pensions by the transnational corporations for whom they have been forced to toil, and billions of euros in taxes collected from Irish workers being used to prop up banks like Anglo Irish Bank and Bank of Ireland, it appears that Connolly’s warning was dead on.

But the growing fightback movement that is providing a direct challenge to the rule of the bankers and the bosses in Ireland today can provide a roadmap to the socialist future that Connolly always envisioned. The hundreds of thousands of workers taking to the streets in cities and towns across the country are daily demonstrating that the Irish working class is ready to lead the way to a truly free Ireland. While the tricolor flag of the Irish Free State now flies over Dublin Castle, it is Starry Plough, the flag of the Irish working class, flying proudly over the occupied Waterford Crystal factory, which symbolizes the Ireland of the future.

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