They can’t spin us any more lies…
Tuesday 23 December 2014 Unemployment is down to 10.7%. GDP growth is expected to be 4.6% – the highest in the Eurozone. Emigration is lower than in previous years. Government is implementing tax cuts. Looks like we’ve turned another corner and we’re on the mend. So why is combined support for the government parties (Fine Gael and Labour) down to a record low of 29%? Because we can all spot the spin.
It’s easy to list off positive statistics and tell people that all is good and that the worst is behind them. It’s harder to prove it. Especially when the very people they’re selling spin to are living through the reality.
If truth be told, most of us don’t feel the effects of GDP growth because it’s obscure and we don’t feel it impacts on our day to day lives. But here are some of the real statistics that do affect us and our families:
- The real unemployment rate – when you remove JobBridge and other labour activation measures – is 13.2%.
- Earnings are down by 1% while rents have increased by 11%.
- One in four tenants fear losing their homes from rent increases.
- Underemployment (workers seeking more hours but have no access to them) is up by nearly 60% from 2008.
- Ireland has the second highest prevalence of low pay in the developed world, behind the United States.
- There has been a 21% rise in the number of people sleeping rough in Dublin.
Over 480,000 people have no money at the end of the month after paying essential bills. More than 1.7 million people across Ireland say they have less than €100 at the end of the month after essential bills are paid.
Try telling them all is OK because GDP is up.
Yes, there are more jobs coming on-stream. But what type of jobs are they? They’re low paid, precarious contracts where employers control hours and workers have to kow-tow to every unreasonable demand that is made of them. Sometimes waiting on the end of a phone for 24 hours hoping to get that call to tell them they have a day’s work ahead of them.
People are struggling to get by and they’re losing patience, and no amount of promises of growth and manipulated statistics will appease them. Hence the success of the water charges protests taking place right across the country.
As Donna Hartnett, a mother from Cork, said: “The legacy of Bertie Ahern and Brian Cowen has resulted in our two children being raised in childcare centres like caged hens while we work, breaking our necks and our children’s hearts trying to keep up with tax after tax with nothing left by month end. We never financially over-extended ourselves or left a bill unpaid, but still my two very young children are daily out of their home longer hours than the average industrial worker… as we work to meet another tax to our incomings. Our reasons for not protesting before – exhaustion, anxiety, fear and not a minute to spare. But this is where it ends.”
There are tens of thousands of Donna Hartnetts all over this country who are not fooled by the finely polished utterances of politicians telling them we’ve turned the corner.
When homeless people are dying on the streets and couples are forced to live in their cars, and when still, despite losing a quarter of a million people to emigration, unemployment is unacceptably high, it should be abhorrent to even consider cutting taxes for the wealthy, but that’s just what happened in the last Budget.
That’s why we have to continue to fight back both in the industrial field and the political one. If workers want better terms and conditions of employment, then the solution is simple – join a union and get active in it.
If we want a fairer political and social system, we have to fight for it politically. We have to take a stance and say we will not accept any more austerity. We’ve paid enough for the crisis that was caused by others and is being cast on to our shoulders and our children’s shoulders.
As Audrey Clancy from the Edenmore 9 said at the recent Right2Water rally: “The power of the people is greater than the people in power.” But only if we show solidarity and unity in our endeavors for a better and fairer Ireland.
And as Donna Harnett said: “No one will ever stand over my grave and say, ‘Wasn’t she great at paying her water tax?’, but it will be at that exact moment that my children will evaluate the quality in the years I gave them.”
In Mandate, our members haven’t been fooled by glossy statistics, promises of growth and smart-talking political representatives and all their spin.
That’s why we’re all fighting back and Mandate and our members have been – and will continue to be – at the forefront of that fight back.
By John Douglas
Mandate General Secretary
This article and many more are included in the most recent Shopfloor edition.
