Keywords: PESP, PNR, unions, social_partnership

>From Workers Solidarity No 39
           Summer 93

Irish Anarchist magazine

Another PESP?

THE IRISH Congress of Trade Unions is to 
hold a special delegate conference on 
September 30th.  It will decide whether or 
not to enter into talks on a further 
agreement to replace the Programme for 
Economic and Social Development.  Having 
made up their minds which way they want the 
vote to go, the letter adds that the 
conference "will also consider the issues 
to be covered in negotiations on future 
Programmes".

The campaign by the ICTU leadership for a new 
Programme has begun.  We will be told, again; 
that workers, the bosses and the government will 
be able to sit down as equals and make the best 
decisions to help the 'national interest'.  It's 
a very noble sounding idea until you consider 
that there is no 'national interest'.  Workers 
and bosses have opposing interests.  If they 
didn't we wouldn't need unions!

'NATIONAL INTEREST'

The 'national interest' is used to make us think 
we have more in common with our bosses than we do 
with workers in other countries.  What do we have 
in common with crooks like Larry Goodman, Michael 
Smurfit or Ben Dunne?  What have the workers in 
Nolan Transport in New Ross got in common with 
their rich, mean and union-bashing employer?  
Whose was the 'national interest' when the 
government reneged on the PESP pay terms in the 
public sector in February 1992?

Labour being in government won't make it any 
better. Within a few weeks of getting their 
backsides onto cabinet seats they had decided to 
tax disability benefit, cut the students' summer 
dole, not repeal the "dirty dozen" welfare cuts, 
broken their promise to provide the necessary 
cash for Aer Lingus.  Indeed redundancies and pay 
cuts are being talked about.  The 3% local 
bargaining clause of the PESP will not be paid in 
the public service.  Probably the only promise 
they kept was to create some more jobs.  The 
problem is that most of the jobs went to 
Ministers' families.

Once again we will be told, by every class of 
'informed commentator', that PESP-type programmes 
give the best wage increases in Europe and that 
wage restraint will be returned in extra jobs.  
The fact is that - after the PNR and with the 
PESP almost completed - Ireland has its highest 
ever dole queues.  The fact is that the 
percentage of total tax paid by PAYE workers has 
jumped to almost double what it was in the 
allegedly bad old days before such agreements.  

HAS ANYONE SEEN MY PAY RISE?

The fact is that the ratio of wage increases to 
inflation in those same 'bad old days' has fallen 
from 2:5 down to just over half that amount 
today.  And let us not forget that the anti-union 
Industrial Relations Act was introduced in 1990, 
without a whimper of protest by the ICTU leaders, 
as a PNR commitment (see PESP page 84).  

Three years ago a handful of union activists came 
together to oppose such collaboration with bosses 
and government.  The network they formed, Trade 
Unionists and Unemployed Against the Programme*, 
won the sponsorship of over 300 shop stewards , 
produced tens of thousands of leaflets and 
newsletters arguing for a 'no' vote.  Public 
meetings were held in most larger towns.  Despite 
most unions having pro-PESP policy and despite 
the fact that the anti-PESP forces ran on a 
shoestring budget, almost one third of all trade 
unionists who voted rejected the deal.  

TUUAP didn't close up shop and go away after the 
vote.  It is getting ready to launch a campaign 
against whatever new proposals emerge.  It has 
the sensible position of not being fooled into 
believing that workers ever stand to gain from 
making concessions to either government or to 
millionaire employers.

This time around the socialist argument against 
class collaboration should be made as loudly as 
the specific arguments on wages, jobs and social 
welfare.  We have to rebuild a sense of working 
class political independence.  Beyond the 
immediate campaign against a PESP mark 2, a rank 
& file movement strong enough and confident 
enough to remain independent of the union leaders 
and willing to openly defy the anti-union laws is 
needed.  It won't be built overnight but there is 
no time like the present for getting people 
thinking on these lines.  Anarchists will be 
there arguing for libertarian structures, for 
participatory democracy and for the anarchist 
alternative to the present system.

Alan MacSimoin

*TUUAP can be contacted at 10 Comyn Place, 
Drumcondra, Dublin 9.


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