File spoon-archives/anarchy-list.archive/anarchy-list_2000/anarchy-list.0008, message 168


From: "Karl Carlile" <dagda-AT-eircom.net>
Subject: Re: Irish Rail Drivers Strike(ILDA)
Date: Sun, 13 Aug 2000 11:24:46 +0100



The ILDA Rail Drivers Strike

For approximately eight weeks now the ILDA workers have been on strike in defence of
their living standards and conditions of work. The ILDA strikers are raildrivers for
Iarnrd ireann , a state company.
They have had some support from other workers in the transport area. Many transport
workers refused to pass the pickets. Consequently there has been severe disruption to
the public transport system. Sections of the bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie in
Ireland have been using the strike as an opportunity to promote privatisation of state
owned transport companies and for the introduction of more competition into the
transport industry.
The ILDA  workers have had to face the savage hostility of the management of Iarnrd
ireann, the state, the employers, the bourgeois mass media and the official trade
union leadership-particularly NBRU and SIPTU. Despite this they have remained
steadfast. Many transport workers have shown solidarity by refusing to pass pickets
and even in some cases joining the picket line. They have done this against the
instructions of their unions-SIPTU and the NBRU. The Dublin Bus Workers Action Group
have been a valuable agency in mobilising solidarity around the ILDA strikers. Brendan
Ogle, the executive secretary of ILDA, has been demonised by  SIPTU, the NBRU
leadership and the mass media. Disinformation and confusion has been deployed in the
campaign to break the strike.
This general attack from the state, the capitalists,the official trade union
leadership and the mass media on the ILDA strike has been mounted because this small
group of workers by their action are a challenge to both the state and the  bourgeois
trade union  leadership. The state view this tiny union as a challenge to its
corporatist strategy in its struggle to keep wages down while worsening conditions of
work.  Should such a breakaway union be successful it will encourage the growing
number of workers unhappy with the current character of the trade union movement to
join and even form more militant unions. This will render it more difficult for the
state to continue with its very successful current strategy for disimproving wages and
working conditions.

At the same time the success of the ILDA strike will lead to the undermining of the
leadership of the corporatist trade union movement. This can lead to the
disintegration of that pro-capitalist leadership and its consequent decreasing
influence over the masses of workers. The employers see all of these developments as a
threat to their continued intensification of the exploitation of the working class.
Consequently the trade union leadership have formed an alliance with both the state
and the bourgeoisie to crush ILDA. The President of SIPTU, Des Geraghty, had
unsuccessfully urged his members to actively break the strike by doing the work of the
striking ILDA workers. Communists must support this strike. They must expose the
reactionary role of the corporatist state-the Iarnrod management and the trade union
leadership- in seeking to undermine the living standards, conditions of work and
organizations of the striking workers. Communists support the struggle by showing the
working class in general that the ILDA struggle is their struggle. This is done by
revealing
the link that exists between this particular struggle and the struggle of the working
class in general.
      Should the ILDA workers loose this struggle then this particular defeat is a
defeat for the working class in general. It adds to the confidence of the state, the
reactionary trade union leadership and the bourgeoisie itself rendering more prepared
to further erode the living standards and working conditions of workers generally. On
the other side it increases demoralisation among the working class discouraging
workers from mounting opposition to the bourgeoisie and the corporatist state. It
leads to a tightening of control by the pro bourgeois trade union bureaucracy over the
organised working class rendering spontaneous opposition less possible.

Communists must express solidarity with the ILDA striking workers to ensure that their
strike is effective and by generalising their strike into general opposition in
defence of its living standards and working conditions. Support must be expressed at
all levels: There must be support in the form of propaganda; agitation; fund raising;
sympatethetic strikes; joining the ILDA picket line and the organising of a defence
militia; mass protests and meetings; the organising of solidarity groups  in support
of a settlement in which the demands of the train drivers are met.  This is the only
way in which the success of the strike can be both guaranteed and developed into a
struggle to advance the class interests of the Irish working class.
IlDA  demands that the condition for its return to work is on the basis of its former
conditions of work. ILDA must demand the democratic right to have a vote on the issue
of the any proposals for new conditions of work. ILDA must demand that all three
unions concerned jointly organise a ballot of all union rail drivers and that
acceptance of the proposals for new conditions of work be accepted or rejected on the
basis of majority voting. Before any proposals be put to the workers ILDA, NBRU and
SIPTU must jointly form part of the committee appointed to draft new proposals. ILDA
must urge NBRU and SIPTU members to call on its leadership to put an end to their
alliance with the state and the bosses and to desist immediately from activity that
undermines ILDA. It must call on the rank and file of these two unions to condemn the
treachery of their leadership towards the ILDA workers.


Karl Carlile

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