Joe Higgins Debates Jim Power

Justice for the sacked NCP workers

23 June 09

CHRIS O’KANE, one of the leading organisers of the sacked traffic wardens who are fighting to be re-instated spoke to The Socialist about their struggle.

“In April, 26 of us took part on a half day stoppage after our employer, National Car Parks, refused to deal with a mountain of grievances we had raised over months.

“We were just fed up with management not caring about our working conditions and being ignored. The health and safety standards were deplorable. The toilet floor would regularly be covered in urine from overflowing toilets. We had to walk about in the rain with leaking boots. Men and women had to share changing rooms. Other grievances included breaches of personal confidentiality, faulty equipment, accusations of bullying, even lack of communication from management after threats from dissident republicans had been made against traffic wardens!

“The response of NCP was to ignore all avenues to satisfactorily deal with these issues and summarily sack all 26 workers for taking unofficial strike action.

“At first, it was a shock to find out they could just sack us like that, we were only using our right to strike to achieve basic terms and conditions. But we have all rallied each other to fight on. We have recruited every recently employed traffic warden to our union, NIPSA, and the public support for us has been amazing.

“We have agreed to ballot the members for official strike action and management are worried. They are already making certain improvements in conditions, but this is just to trick people into believing they have changed their ways in the hope that the ballot will not be supported.

“We are also calling on the Minister for Regional Development, Conor Murphy, to support workers’ rights by terminating the contract with NCP so that the service can brought back into public hands. We have received a lot of support from fellow NIPSA members, but have also seen through our experiences the need for proper democracy in our union. We need accountable trade union officials who are democratically elected. That is now really important for workers who, like us, find themselves in dispute with their employers. Myself and another workmate have recently joined the Socialist Party, not just to campaign for democratic unions but also because workers need a political voice to challenge the privatisation agenda in the Assembly.”

Shop Stewards Network Conference

Pat Lawlor, RVH worker, 23 June 09

THE IMPORTANCE of the third National Shop Stewards Network (NSSN) conference to be held in London on 27 June 2009 cannot be overstated. Workers across the UK are witnessing wholesale attacks on jobs and services in both the public and private sector.
The NSSN has been to the forefront in raising solidarity and providing practical support in many battles recently against job losses and attacks on wages, terms and conditions, such as the Lindsey oil refinery strike and Visteon.

This work has brought confidence to workers in struggle who have been left with no choice but to take militant action in order to defend their conditions, as opposed to the partnership approach favoured by most trade union leaders.

The jobs slaughter in Northern Ireland has emphasised the need for workplace organisation to resist job cuts. Over 2,000 jobs were lost between April and May in the private sector. The Stormont Executive is expected to axe up to 10,000 jobs over the next three years in the public sector alone. The need for fighting unions capable of defending jobs and services has never been greater.

Shop stewards and unions reps from Northern Ireland will be attending the conference to participate, develop links and bring back the lessons of other workers’ experiences within the NSSN. A meeting to bring together trade union activists from across all the unions is to be called to discuss launching a similar organisation in the North. One of its aims will be to link up grassroots activists and shop stewards to co-ordinate solidarity and support to any group of workers struggling to defend jobs, wages and conditions.

Visteon workers: Fighting for Pensions Justice

23 June 09

SACKED VISTEON workers are continuing their fight to force Ford to keep its guarantees to fund their pensions. The occupation and blockading of the plants in Belfast, Basildon and Enfield forced Ford to move on redundancies, but the question of the workers’ lost pensions remains unresolved.

When Visteon UK was spun-off from Ford in 2000, Ford landed Visteon workers with a $49 million deficit in the pension fund. Now Ford expects the taxpayer to bail them out by use of the state Pension Protection Fund. Ford has made huge profits down the years. There is no excuse for refusing to pay Visteon workers what they are owed.

NIPSA Conference: Elections see shift to the left

Padraig Mulholland, NIPSA General Council member (personal capacity) 23 June 09

THE RECENT annual conference of the largest trade union in Northern Ireland, NIPSA, has delivered a significant change in the make up of the union’s elected leadership.
All the key positions in the union including President, Vice President and Treasurer have been won by left wing candidates. For the first time in its history, the important Civil Service Group Executive which deals with terms and conditions for Northern Ireland’s civil servants has an elected left wing majority.

In a crushing rejection of the failed strategy of the right wing over the last year, conference delegates returned 15 left candidates to the 25 person Civil Service Executive. These votes for the left reflect deep concern at the lack of progress on issues such as equal pay and privatisation and, as stated repeatedly by conference delegates, the lack of information between the old secretive Civil Service Executive and members on the ground.

NIPSA’s new left leadership has inherited problems that will be challenging. Issues like equal pay have been the subject of secret negotiation for over a year and the role of the right wing in those negotiations has made things more difficult.

The left will have to work with the members to overcome this “legacy” and the resistance to struggle from the unelected NIPSA officials. Significant steps can be taken by the Left to redevelop the fighting capacity of the union. Everyone in NIPSA will be watching.

ICTU debates political affiliation

23 June 09

AT THIS year’s ICTU conference, a motion moved by SIPTU which calls on all trades unions in Congress to affiliate to the Irish Labour Party will be debated.

The Socialist Party welcomes a debate within the trade union movement on the need for political representation for workers and for the unions to be political. However, the Irish Labour Party, like the British Labour Party, is no longer a party which represents the interests of the working class. This was clearly seen earlier this year when it called on workers not to go on strike after ICTU called for general strike action in the South.

Labour is intent on entering government after the next Southern general election with Fine Gael. This will be an anti-working class right wing government which will preside over major cuts in public services and attacks on workers’ living standards.

Why in such circumstances should trade unions be affiliating to Labour and why should unions’ subs be used to fund such a party? There needs to be a real debate on political representation for the working class and the role of trade unions in assisting the establishment of genuine working class parties both North and South.

KEEP THE POST PUBLIC
No privatisation

23 June 09

THE NEW Labour government seems determined to defy the laws of economic gravity by trying to part-privatise Royal Mail at a time when thousands of private companies across the world are going bust as a result of the world economic crash.

The very companies lined up to cherry-pick off the most profitable parts of the postal service are in the proverbial brown stuff. TNT, the Dutch-based company expected to take over up to 30% of Royal Mail are shedding 1,000 jobs as a result of declining profits. In marked contrast, Royal Mail’s profits have almost doubled in the past year, even though it is legally obliged to service every part of Northern Ireland and Britain! It makes absolutely no economic sense to privatise any part of Royal Mail. Yet the unelected Business Minister Lord Peter Mandelson, better known as the Prince of Darkness, still insists that Royal Mail will have to be part-privatised.

Postal workers can take advantage of the crisis New Labour finds itself in. There is huge opposition to privatisation of postal services. With opposition to the government at an all-time high due to it’s pro-rich and anti-working class policies, not to mention the MP expenses scandal, now is the time to step up the pressure to force the government to abandon this deeply unpopular measure.

Royal Mail has now announced plans to introduce a pay freeze for its 181,000 workers which will mean a cut in pay, especially for the low paid. Postal workers should refuse to accept this. Royal Mail made £321 million profit last year – there is no justification for pay cuts.

Postal workers should also demand that their union, the Communication Workers’ Union (CWU), stops funding the Labour Party. Postal workers donate £1 million a year to a party which long ago walked away from the idea of representing the interests of workers. If you took away the names of the main parties it would be impossible to differentiate between them – their policies are identical: sleaze, privatisation, cuts, job losses, bail-outs for the rich… The list goes on.

It’s time the trade unions withdrew support for New Labour, and for that matter also time to stop propping up the parties in power in the Assembly who also share the same economic madness of privatisation. Instead we need new mass parties of the working class which stands for a socialist solution to the economic crisis of capitalism and the madness of privatisation.