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15 January 1998 Edition

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Workers in struggle

Warning - this is a crisis



A week may be a long time in politics but when it comes to the 26-County economy, it is more than enough time to generate a full size crisis. The last seven days have seen foreign and domestic firms announce closures adding up to 500 lost jobs.

It has also witnessed the rudderless punt fall once again victim to fickle speculators waiting to make a killing out of the very obvious flaws in the plans for an EU single currency. Add to this the ongoing turmoil in the financial markets of South East Asia and Japan and you have a bona fide crisis.

It is a crisis because the events of the last week have exposed on a number of fronts the inability of the Dublin Government to control and shape the 26-County economy. They cannot control the economic forces that dictate the whims of the multinationals employing over 100,000 workers here. They either cannot or do not want to play a role in the domestic economy. Lastly, they are helpless in the face of the domestic and international financial sector's siege of the punt.

Last week significant job losses were announced at three separate companies. Applied Magnetics, a computer disk drive manufacturer, went the way of Seagate and AST, taking 278 jobs with them. In Wicklow Arklow Pottery is to close in April taking 140 jobs with it, while in Dublin Syndey Cooper Distribution is going into voluntary liquidation with the loss of 100 jobs. It is closing after its main customer, Dunnes Stores, decided to move its business to other distributors.

The job losses were compounded by December unemployment figures that showed a jump in 7,700 for the month. Even though the underlying trend was still decreasing, the figures showed just how many part-time and seasonal workers there are in the 26-County economy. The increase in unemployment was caused mainly by these type of workers signing on for the Christmas period.

A Dublin Government spokesperson described the job losses as ``devastating'' but proclaimed that the solution was in the FF/PD budget which aimed to ensure ``the record level of jobs growth will continue''.

Not so, according to Fine Gael spokesperson on Employment Nora Owen. She claimed that the rise in unemployment figures was an ``indictment of the coalition's poor jobs policy''.

Nora Owen's statement went to to show a new look Fine Gael, with very different objectives from those shown when in Government just eight months ago.

``The Government is failing miserably to harness the Celtic Tiger to the benefit of ordinary men and women,'' said Owen who also claimed that ``there appears to a deliberate policy of social exclusion''.

Owen criticised the ``recent rich man's budget'' and called for an end to ``their elitist approach to business and jobs in Ireland if we are to fairly harness the benefits of the Celtic Tiger for all the people of our country''.

While Owen has certainly developed a good line in rhetoric, she is now nearer a solution than her counterpart Mary Harney. The sad truth is that the global cyclical economic forces that generated the job growth of the past three years are clearly changing. The period of sustained economic growth is set to slow.

What Mary Harney and Nora Owen need to consider is do they have an alternative to dependency on multinational companies siting in Ireland and on export markets for our output. How will they plan for the domestic 26-County economy to endure any coming global downturn? The simple answer is that they don't know and that is what the events of the last week show. No one in government is really in control and even if they were no one seems to know what to do.


Bricklayers hit by Industrial Relations Act



The flaws in the 1990 Industrial Relations Act have been raised in radical union circles ever since the adoption of the Act. Sinn Féin has consistently called for the repeal of the Act. This week Building and Allied Trade Union (BATU) members found themselves on the receiving end of the Act's double standards.

Dublin High Court judge, Justice Kelly granted building contractor G&T Crampton an injunction against three bricklayers from picketing a Crampton site at Clonskeagh. The three workers are prohibited from maintaining that they had a trade dispute with Crampton. The penalty of breaching this order would be imprisonment.

BATU officials promised they would comply with Kelly's order and the case taken against them by Crampton was adjourned for a week.

A BATU official told An Phoblacht that the union had met with Crampton on 19 December and three times in January. BATU have been trying to establish who is actually the bricklayer's employer. They are still awaiting this information.

Most of Crampton's competitors hire bricklayers directly as PAYE workers for the duration of a construction phase. This way the workers get full benefits and proper social welfare entitlements. Crampton it seems does not operate in this way and currently there are injunctions on BATU members at two different Crampton sites.

The High Court in Dublin was told this week that the workers were employed by a Colm Murphy. One of the three bricklayers now prohibited from picketing the site told the court that the workers employer had wanted them to sign on the dole while they were employed on the Clonskeagh site. When they refused they were sacked and this is what prompted their now illegal industrial action.

What makes the High Court injunctions granted to Crampton against the BATU workers and the industrial relations stalemate all the more intractable is that the only other case taken against strikers under the 1990 Industrial Relations Act has been appealed to the Supreme Court. Now more than ever is there a case to be made for repealing the 1990 Act.

An Phoblacht
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Ireland