Created on Thursday, 28 July 2011 20:16 Written by Tony Healy
Under the present economic circumstances Bruton’s remarks should set the alarm bells ringing within the trade union movement. As RTÉ reported tonight:
The Minister said the planned measures would make the system fairer, more competitive and more flexible in order to encourage job creation. He said the changes would also reinstate a 'robust' system of protection after the recent court ruling.
He said heads of the relevant bill had been agreed by Government, and talks with the EU and IMF would take place as the legislation was being drafted. The aim is to have a bill ready as early as possible in the next Dáil term.
When a bourgeois politician starts talking about making things fairer, more competitive and flexible, the truth is that he means making things better for the bosses, not ourselves. By more competitive and flexible Bruton means lower wages with less rights at work and worse conditions. Doubtless the EU and the IMF will make their contribution to the debate also. A cursory glance at the track record of the IMF around the world should be enough to explain the likely outcome of that discussion.
Likewise, the courts aren’t impartial, the Judges, the tops of An Stát-sheirbhís, and the Gardaí are tied by a thousand threads to the ruling class. Together they represent an “executive” for the ruling class. As such it is no surprise that the government can wheel out High Court Justices to back up their political programme.
The fact that the ladies and gentlemen of the Irish ruling class already enjoy the lowest corporation tax in the whole of the EU means that they already enjoy a fair old degree of flexibility and competitiveness as it is. But, clearly it’s not enough. Here’s what RTÉ reported the employers as saying:
Business group IBEC has described the Government's plans as 'misguided and unnecessary'. It said that workers affected by the recent High Court decision continued to enjoy the full range of statutory employment rights that apply to all employees in the State, and that no additional measures were needed.
'While some of the proposals, such as the abolition of Sunday premiums, are an improvement over the last regime, the entire JLC system should have been consigned to history,' said IBEC director Brendan McGinty.
But Chambers Ireland welcomed the changes, and called for the necessary legislation to be implemented rapidly.
'The decision that those remaining JLCs can no longer set Sunday premium rates will be particularly welcomed by many struggling retailers,' said the organisation's chief executive Ian Talbot.
Small business group ISME said that while some welcome initiatives had been included, the reforms did not go far enough. ISME chief executive Mark Fielding said the core issue of general pay had not been addressed. 'The opportunity to bring wage levels in a significant number of sectors down to affordable levels, has been missed,'
While the politicians might couch their words in a more subtle fashion – after all they have elections to win every now and again; such considerations don’t apply to the bosses. The problem for IBEC no doubt is that there is any regulation at all. The small and medium enterprises represented by ISME reflect the more rabid elements who clearly are after trying to convince the government to attack wage levels across the whole economy.
The Irish capitalist class is particularly weak and feeble as is illustrated by the fact that some 75% of all exports are generated by multinationals with 44% coming from just 20 companies. They will of course be the first to demand that someone else, i.e. the workers, should pay for their crisis and bail out their mistakes.
The ongoing economic crisis and its political ramifications have had enormous consequences across the whole of the world and particularly in Ireland. The bosses are slowly stripping away the veneer of civilisation that existed in many of the European countries over the last few decades. Working people have entered an epoch of austerity and hardship on a world scale. All of the indications are that capitalism is in a grave impasse. Unite have said that the changes are 'tearing apart Ireland's reputation as a society that cares about its people' . We would agree entirely with this; but we would add that the working people in the state have the power to transform Ireland given the correct leadership and armed with a socialist programme.
The changes that the government are proposing for the private sector, together with the onslaught on the public sector are creating the conditions for a new upturn in the class struggle in Ireland. The evidence for this is on the streets of Madrid and Athens, in the squares of Cairo and Tunisia and among the students and trade unionists fighting the cuts in Britain. Ireland is not immune to the class struggle. Capitalism offers nothing but misery for working people in all countries. It has to go.