European Trade Unions show solidarity with Irish workers
Wednesday 13 March 2013Last Thursday Mandate’s Karen Wall, Divisional Organiser for the Mid-West, addressed a large European anti-austerity conference in Portugal. The event, which was organised by UNI-Europa, was a resounding success with many European Trade Union’s expressing sympathy with the plight of Irish workers.
The event was attended by Karen Wall and Mandate member Doreen Curley.
In an impassioned speech to the delegates, Karen Wall said, “The mantra of austerity has continued to spread across the EU and is causing untold hardship for tens of millions of workers, families and for young people.
“And rather than learn from the obvious failures of austerity to date, through the Troika of the EU, ECB and the IMF, and through the political parties in Ireland, austerity continues unabated.”
She continued, “We have more than 90,000 mortgages in arrears and the threat of repossession of homes is a genuine worry for literally tens of thousands of people.
“Ireland faces the prospect of growing mass unemployment, mass poverty, mass emigration of our youth and the repossession of family homes.”
She then informed the delegation of the impact the recession has been having on women in particular.
“Cuts in welfare, threats to wage-setting agreements for low-paid workers and the rolling back of public services are all having a severe impact on everyone but disproportionally worse on women in Ireland and throughout Europe.
“In Ireland the impact of the austerity budgets on women did not feature in any mainstream analysis, yet the cumulative cuts of nearly 10 per cent in widow’s pension, one-parent family payment, and the carer’s allowance, the cuts of 8½ per cent in child benefit, and the reductions in services and public-sector pay, have all affected women more heavily than men.”
Ms Wall went on to explain why successive Irish governments were implementing such regressive policies on their own people.
“Throughout the period of light touch regulation of the banking industry around Europe and in Ireland, many European bank bondholders invested in Irish banks as a way to make a quick and easy profit.
“Their investments failed and the Irish government made the fatal mistake of socialising the debt under extreme pressure from the EU and ECB.”
She then explained how Ireland is shouldering the largest bank debt burden in the whole of the EU.
“The cost of saving the European banking system in Ireland is €9,000 for every single man, woman and child across the country. That’s approximately 50 times the average of the rest of the EU which is €192 per person.
“Ireland makes up 1% of the EU’s population with only 4.5 million people, but over the next 40-50 years, our people will pay back 42% of the entire European banking debt.
“The cyclical effects of taking this money from our economy has been the destruction of our domestic economy which has contracted by approximately 28%.
“From 2008-2010, Irish people have lost 12% of their disposable income – while at the same time the loss in jobs in the retail sector was 12.8%.
“As we continue to take money from our people to pay back this debt, our spending power decreases ensuring that our unemployment rate increases. This in turn puts pressure on public finances creating more cuts and damaging our domestic economy further.
Illustrating the effects of austerity, Ms Wall explained to the European delegation that: “Over the past five years we’ve seen local shops closing down, hundreds of thousands of workers losing their jobs, thousands more of our children forced to emigrate in order to have a decent future.
“Retail workers have experienced cuts to wages, cuts to hours and a reduction in living standards. We’ve seen cuts to our health services and our social protection rates.
“We’ve experienced higher taxes, more stealth taxes, we’ve closed police stations and seen vital services to vulnerable families like child benefit and fuel allowances cut.
“And all to save banks who were part of a corrupt culture among senior Eurozone bankers that saw the biggest bonuses awarded to the most reckless lenders,” she said.
Ms Wall ended with a call to arms for all European unions and workers.
“How the labour movement in Ireland and across the EU respond in the coming period will either result in the movement becoming more radical or redundant. There is no other way forward.
“Our own union, Mandate, has been leading the charge in Ireland. 70% of our members will have received a pay increase by September of this year. What this means is that tens of millions of euros is now in the pockets of retail workers as opposed to multinational businesses and their shareholders. This extra spending will help to lift employment and grow our domestic economy.
“The Greek workers have shown that resistance can break the will of the government and cause great political problems for the EU.
“It is a necessary struggle to regain control over national economic and political sovereignty in order to begin to build a new tomorrow for our Countries.
“That means breaking the grip of the external troika of EU/ECB/IMF over the lives of working people and to challenge the internal troika of the political establishment, bosses organisations and the mass media.
“Workers internationally must unite. We must seize the moment to mobilise together against the plans of the Troika. We must ensure our voices and protests overwhelm the self serving aims of the Troika.
“We must together begin to shape a new future for our peoples through international struggle and solidarity,” she concluded
