No to another decade of austerity!

2012 Dublin demon­stra­tion against aus­ter­i­ty

As the EU line up to kick Ire­land again, unions must lead in defend­ing jobs, sus­tain­able Irish busi­ness & pro­vi­sion of improved pub­lic ser­vices

Bren­dan Ogle: As the ESRI pre­dict the worst reces­sion in our his­to­ry, trade unions and the Irish Con­gress of Trade Unions (ICTU) have led the way in pro­vid­ing a com­pre­hen­sive and work­able counter-analy­sis to the hawk­ish calls for aus­ter­i­ty from Ireland’s crush­ing neolib­er­al con­sen­sus.

In the very weeks when Fine Gael and Fian­na Fail first seemed to rule out tax increas­es going for­ward (includ­ing the ongo­ing refusal to accept the Apple Tax), and then state-led bor­row­ing, an attack began on the COVID-19 pay­ment, with peo­ple who have been forced into iso­la­tion being tar­get­ed for ‘being bet­ter off’ on €350 a week. Now we learn that, of €750bn tar­get­ed by the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion in a recov­ery fund of grants and loans for 27 mem­ber states, Ire­land is ear­marked for just €1.9 bil­lion, a tiny 0.25% of the total. This for a coun­try that Euro­stat found had been forced to pay 42% of the total cost of the Euro­pean bank­ing debt fol­low­ing the finan­cial crash.

“The Trojan horse that was ‘moral hazard’, used to administer austerity for a full decade from 2008, was cruel, unjust and ideologically-driven.”

It would appear that there are those in Irish polit­i­cal and pub­lic life, cheered on by much of the media, who are only hap­py when they are tar­get­ing Irish peo­ple with the harsh­est pos­si­ble pre­scrip­tions for ill­ness – lit­er­al­ly in this case – not of our mak­ing at all. The Tro­jan horse that was ‘moral haz­ard’, used to admin­is­ter aus­ter­i­ty for a full decade from 2008, was cru­el, unjust and ide­o­log­i­cal­ly-dri­ven. It cre­at­ed a mas­sive social­i­sa­tion of pri­vate debt and a mas­sive wealth trans­fer upwards, herald­ing an era of social inequal­i­ty and depri­va­tion. But even that con­cept is com­plete­ly absent in a glob­al pub­lic health emer­gency, where sus­tain­able Irish busi­ness, and the jobs depend­ing on those busi­ness­es, were forcibly put into cold stor­age as a pub­lic health mea­sure.

There is cer­tain­ly no ‘moral haz­ard’ now, but that isn’t stop­ping the ‘kick down eco­nom­ics’ impulse of the polit­i­cal elites, high on the very thought of impos­ing anoth­er aus­ter­i­ty era.

In the run up to May­Day 2020 Unite pub­lished our paper Hope or Aus­ter­i­ty – A Road Map for a Bet­ter Fair­er Ire­land after the Pan­dem­ic. In it we out­lined how a recal­i­bra­tion of our tax base towards the EU aver­age in terms of col­lec­tion, sup­ple­ment­ed by sup­ports includ­ing rent and mort­gage mora­to­ria and relief on rates and insur­ance for busi­ness and house­holds for the forced lock­down peri­od, could great­ly assist job pro­tec­tion and recov­ery. We fur­ther called for those sup­ports to be linked to adher­ence to basic worker’s rights (we have some of the worst work­er pro­tec­tion in our EU peer group), and for us to build the sin­gle tier health sys­tem which is now clear­ly nec­es­sary, expand­ed to include child and elder-care as a uni­ver­sal pub­lic ser­vice based on need.

“… we found out who the real heroes in our labour market were. They were the ones out there saving lives and putting their own at risk!”

This week the Irish Con­gress of Trade Unions has pub­lished No Going Back – A New Deal towards a safe and secure future for all.  Unlike in 2010, ICTU has pro­duced a strong pro­gres­sive pol­i­cy alter­na­tive for the chal­lenges we all now face. The call for a ‘uni­ver­sal pub­lic health­care sys­tem free at the point of use’ must now be our most basic demand fol­low­ing a pub­lic health emer­gency where we found out who the real heroes in our labour mar­ket were. They were the ones out there sav­ing lives and putting their own at risk!

Work­ers’ rights too must now be viewed through a dif­fer­ent prism. Across the board we have now seen that our indi­vid­ual well­be­ing is linked into our col­lec­tive well­be­ing. The pub­lic need to be safe, but who bet­ter to give a cus­tomer that assur­ance in a restau­rant, bar or shop than the staff who work there? Work­ers need to be respect­ed and sup­port­ed now, and unfor­tu­nate­ly in many employ­ments it is only when work­ers are allowed to respond to issues col­lec­tive­ly that they feel secure enough to do so. These col­lec­tive pro­tec­tions have been obstruct­ed in Ire­land almost as a mat­ter of pub­lic pol­i­cy. But they are now a mat­ter of pub­lic inter­est.

The pan­dem­ic has also high­light­ed the impor­tance of work­ers’ health and safe­ty, and unions have been lead­ing the cam­paign to ensure that work­places are ‘Covid-safe’ as the econ­o­my starts to re-open.  We also need to make sure that strong work­place safe­ty mea­sures and enforce­ment remain in place once this pan­dem­ic is over.

Remem­ber this, when our econ­o­my re-opens if a work­er serv­ing you is sick from COVID you may well get sick too. Do you real­ly want those work­ers not to be safe and pro­tect­ed?

“As we transition from lockdown to stimulus, households and businesses that were viable ‘pre-COVID’ cannot be saddled with debt that they accrued solely because of their compliance with a lockdown imposed for public health reasons”.

But busi­ness­es, espe­cial­ly small and medi­um enter­pris­es, need to be sup­port­ed. The cur­rent lock­down is a pub­lic health emer­gency of an unprece­dent­ed nature. It can only be tack­led with unprece­dent­ed mea­sures. As we tran­si­tion from lock­down to stim­u­lus, house­holds and busi­ness­es that were viable ‘pre-COVID’ can­not be sad­dled with debt that they accrued sole­ly because of their com­pli­ance with a lock­down imposed for pub­lic health rea­sons. This would be beyond unfair. Such debts would act as a brake on busi­ness and a bar­ri­er to employ­ment.

ICTU is call­ing for a debt write-down of COVID relat­ed mort­gage, rent, util­i­ty and insur­ance debts. I per­son­al­ly look for­ward to the paid rep­re­sen­ta­tives of busi­ness join­ing these calls. It is nec­es­sary and it is just. And we now require a response from busi­ness to this emer­gency that goes beyond habit­u­al­ly kick­ing down at work­ers and attack­ing the min­i­mum wage. After all, as we keep hear­ing, ‘we are all in this togeth­er’.

I have been crit­i­cal of the role the trade union move­ment played for decades in ‘social part­ner­ship’, and remain so. I am also crit­i­cal of the movement’s lack of a response to the last fis­cal emer­gency. His­to­ry will show that there was no major fight-back against aus­ter­i­ty until the water charges move­ment arose six years in, in 2014.

“Union? The clue is in the word. We must Unite now and come together in our collective interests, in the public interest.”

But I am also very clear on this: If the major­i­ty of peo­ple in our soci­ety are to seize the net­tle here and deliv­er a bet­ter, fair­er Ire­land post-pan­dem­ic then it is only by com­ing togeth­er that we can do so. There is lit­tle time for past enmi­ty and point scor­ing. Union? The clue is in the word. We must Unite now and come togeth­er in our col­lec­tive inter­ests, in the pub­lic inter­est. It is often our divi­sions which allow a small group of vest­ed inter­ests to pur­sue poli­cies that hurt us, endan­ger our elder­ly, harm our children’s futures, and that wreck com­mu­ni­ty.

‘Hope or Aus­ter­i­ty’? We have tried the lat­ter, it didn’t work. There tru­ly can be ‘No Going Back’.

ENDS