Dear Ciaran
I read your speech before the Ireland Institute with great interest. There is much common ground between the Left and the Greens. While various political parties may be on opposite sides in the Dail, we are not, ultimately, politically opposed. In that constructive spirit I’d like to discuss some of your observations - specifically, your contention that the trade unionists are somehow ‘vested’ interests. I realise this has been a source of some friction between the Left and the Greens and, I would argue, considerable confusion. So let’s look at the reality.
I sympathise with your contention that Greens are worried ‘when environmental organisations are excluded from the partnership process’. Thousands of trade unionists are excluded from the partnership process every day. In the workplace men and women are not allowed to bargain conditions, defend themselves in disciplinary hearings or promote better work practices through their trade union representatives for the simple reason that many employers refuse to acknowledge or recognise their representatives. Hard to have ‘social partnership’ when one side refuses to acknowledge the existence of any other ‘partner’.
The situation, as you may know, is getting worse. A climate of fear is growing in workplaces as employees are afraid to join trade unions or seek representation because they might be fired, pushed out, contracted or denied promotions. I’m sure you would agree this is a serious and backwards step. Just as environmental groups should be included in the partnership process – at both central and local levels – hopefully you will support the right of employees to bargain collectively in that same process. This is a right that almost every other industrial country admits and vindicates – except here.
And hopefully you will support the trade union campaign to legislate for the rights of agency workers – almost all of whom are from the new communities and experience some of the worst workplace abuse and discrimination. Ireland is one of only three EU countries that have not legislated for this protection. Indeed, the Left, the Greens and the trade union movement could work together to improve the living standards of the lowest paid.
Last year, the trade union and Labour Party leadership came together to support a motion by Cllr. Eric Byrne to use the local authority procurement process to ensure that private companies winning contracts pay their employees a ‘Living Wage’. Possibly, the Left, the Greens and the trade unions could launch a similar initiative in Dun Laoire? This would be a positive cooperative effort to help those on the worst wages.
Would these initiatives mean extending ‘vested interests’? In truth, I can’t see the connection between the interests of working men and women and the interests of the 5:40 Club – the top 5% who own 40% of all the wealth (or the top 1% who own over a third of all financial wealth). There’s a world of difference between a relatively low-paid woman struggling to prevent her job from being replaced by unprotected and exploited agency work, struggling to get her voice heard by her 5:40 employer, struggling to improve her living standards – and the financial elite who run a coach and four through tax, labour and environmental codes.
To justify ‘vested’ you refer to ‘work practices’. Of course, these are invariably highlighted in the public sector – because it is open and accountable (mostly), unlike the work practices in the ‘private’ sector which are closed and unaccountable. But let’s deal with this issue.
Are you surprised to find inefficiencies in the public sector – at all levels – when the historical practices of the management, informed by Government policy (i.e. right-wing led Government), has been to starve public services, forcing them to produce under structures that may well be expedient for certain ideological dispensations, but not for the wider public? Are you surprised at conflict between management and labour agendas when there are policies that subsidise the fee-paying education sector but starve the public sector – as the OECD details; or in the health sector which is a testament to a system run for personal and corporate profit? Are you surprised when cases of harassment of shop stewards and employees in the public sector are cited? Are you surprised that a resulting confrontation, disillusion, loss of efficiency and a ‘protect what you have’ mentality seeps into the shopfloors and the boardrooms?
Public sector companies and agencies have been, and continue to be, manipulated for political effect by the Right. Fianna Fail's inflating of public enterprise payrolls in the late 1970s and early 1980s was a result of the failure of the private sector to respond to their demand policies (and an acknowledgment that right-wing parties had no sustainable solutions to unemployment). Today, the electricity market has become a surreal laboratory where neo-liberal experiments are being conducted, resulting in exorbitant price rises. Interestingly, it is a 'vested interest' trade union that is promoting a market-based analysis and prescription that would benefit households and companies (hopefully Minister Eamon Ryan will sit down with the ESB unions and management with this analysis rather than precipitate industrial action in this sector).
This ideology of confrontation, manipulation and ‘race-to-the-bottom’ is not confined to the public sector but is widespread throughout the economy. You may have read the report by the National Centre for Participation and Performance. It showed that the private sector companies that recognised trade unions and introduced cooperative work practices were far more productive than those that had no trade unions. This seems counter-intuitive to many but it shouldn’t be – its all about the power of democracy and participation. The lack of this power might explain why indigenous enterprise is so poor in Ireland (always has been) – because they refuse to adopt best workplace practices and choose the route of confrontation, union-bashing and loss of productivity.
This power can be seen in one ‘bad practice’ story – that of B&I in the late 1980s. Through negotiation and consensus the public sector workers agreed to pay freezes, workplace practices, overtime bans, while management agreed to investment and strategic priorities. The result was that in a very short time the company was in profit – just in time for the Fianna Fail Government to sell it off to Irish Ferries at a knocked down price (and we know what happened to 'work practices' there). This is not about public sector reform - its about reform in all enterprises.
Or remember the driving testers? The media, commentators, politicians (even, unfortunately the Labour leadership) all queued up to have a go at them. They were blamed for everything that was wrong with the waiting times. Where were all these commentators and politicians when the Comptroller and Auditor General issued a report largely exonerating the driving testers and laying the blame at the Government – which starved the unit of funds and modern structures while trashing its own industrial relations machinery?
None of the above should be seen as a challenge to Green politics but rather a vindication of it. For the workplace is the ‘local’ – the site of challenge to powerful, vested interests. It is the site of ‘solidarity’ – a key concept on the Left, which can inform, and be informed by, Greens principles of sustainability and subsidiarity.
For instance, when the cleaning staff of one university was threatened with being laid-off to make way for outsourcing, the lecturers, professors and other staff threatened industrial action. They were willing to sacrifice their pay to help out their lower paid colleagues. Is this not something that we should be championing – at local and national level? Is this not a moral example for these times we live in?
You suggest the Left should take up the cause of the poor and question whether it has been vocal enough. You may be right (though I would direct you to Labour TD, Jan O’Sullivan’s excellent work on educational disadvantage or the Party's well researched anti-poverty document). Certainly, when over a third of private sector employees are officially regarded as ‘low-paid’, when nearly a third live below the near-poverty line, when we have one of the most unequal societies in the EU - we can’t be vocal enough.
But we must create strategies that incorporate all the concerns of working people for in that way a larger political front can be created for progressive change. For instance, the middle 40% income group has suffered from real income losses in the last two years – yes, middle income earners. By linking their interests with those of the disadvantaged, we can begin to create a progressive majority in society. Issues such as a state earnings-related pension, an expanding social insurance system, childcare as a public service, universal health insurance: all these can guarantee increased living standards for all workers who earn their living by their hands and brains (as James Connolly, whom you refer to, put it). This is not about Government doing things for people, but people coming together in the public realm, to collectively resolve their individual problems: social protection living standards and truly ‘public’ services. In that way, the poor and disadvantaged – isolated in political ghettos – can start to refigure the political agenda. This is another example of the Left’s and the trade union’s concept of solidarity.
At the end of the day, the interests of over 500,000 people who are members of trade unions in all walks of life (and thousands more who want to be members but fear retribution from employers) are more likely to correspond with the interests of similarly employed working men and women than the purveyors of an ideology that seeks narrow, short-term profit at the expense of people's living standards, the environment and a moral culture that values solidarity and equality.
There is much that unites us, Ciaran. We should work harder to understand each other, listen to each other’s viewpoints, and build a common destiny together. I know that I have benefited from being open to Green analysis. I, too, am disappointed at the ‘Green-bashing’ and have pointed to areas where the Left and the Greens can cooperate despite the parliamentary divide. Hopefully, your speech will be the first among many - and from many others - creating a much needed dialogue between progressives.
To most effectively do that we should eschew tired images and stereotypes and go beyond the easy demarcations. Legitimate criticisms of trade unions, the Left and the Greens is not only acceptable but necessary if we are to learn and go forward. But to exalt particulars into misleading generalisations can only buttress those who are fundamentally opposed to a progressive agenda.
If we work together we might just cheat the devil and, one day soon, come together to put forward a united progressive politics. It may not be quite heaven, but we will one step closer.
Yours fraternally
Michael Taft
Member of UNITE-ATGWU section
Great response Michael....I was involved with the Greens for a short time before I joined Labour and when I see comment like that of Ciaran it makes me cringe..Like you I agree that the left agenda and the green agenda can go hand in hand....Only through the democratisation you talk about can a sustainable environment be created. . . It's two parts of the one coin....Fair play
Posted by: Dan O' Neill | October 10, 2007 at 06:48 PM
Interesting.
I wrote in a Labour Youth pamphlet some time ago about the left and environmental protection and about how the left can offer a holistic, joined up policy linking questions of environmental questions with economic and social issues.
I agree strongly with the the points on co-operation.
Also interesting to note that there were motions passed on the environment at Labour Party conferences some years before the Irish Greens were formed.
Posted by: Paul Dillon | October 11, 2007 at 01:25 PM
"Also interesting to note that there were motions passed on the environment at Labour Party conferences some years before the Irish Greens were formed."
True Paul...The Labour Party has had comprehensive environmental policy since 1978, 4 years before the Greens began!
Posted by: Dan O Neill | October 11, 2007 at 02:06 PM
Dan, Paul - you wouldn't happen to have any of the policies or motions you refer to? If they could be up on a web-page or even summarised, that would be very instructive. It's always struck me that the Left - in particular, Labour - doesn't value its own history to the extent that it makes its past positions accessible to people. Its not just the environment. Labour has an education policy that calls for national schools to be brought under public and democratic control. How topical. And that policy was published back in 1968/69 (of course, James Connolly published a similar demand in an election manifesto back in the 19th century). Sometimes, you don't have to reinvent the wheel.
Posted by: Michael | October 12, 2007 at 10:58 AM
Michael,
I would agree with your comments on the difficulties faced by unions, the need to address the 5:40 divide, and the need to find a way for workers in all sectors to find a vehicle for protecting their interests against the onslaught of free market ideology.
It is true also that poor funding and mismanagement by government has damaged the public sector.
But, personally I remain convinved that:
1.In large chunks of the public sector, work practices and management practices alike are woefully inefficient, outdated, and inflexible. Underfunding, therefore, is not the sole, perhaps in some cases not even the primary, root of the problem. Inefficiencies abound and Cuffe alludes to examples which illustrate this point fairly well.
2.The various factions of the public sector are often ruthlessly committed to preserving their own conditions even where this prevents reform that is both obvious and desparately required.
Cuffe was right to highlight these aspects of the public service. You failed to acknowledge or disprove these problems and instead went on the defensive. For me this is the kind of closing of ranks that is far too typical of the public service and is a huge tributary in the vast river of cyicism towards the public service.
The public service is not all bad. For sure many arms of it function well and deliver a thoroughly good return on tax payers' money. But whole chunks of it need to be modernised.
Cuffe was right to point out that the distrust of government undermines the public's willingness to bank roll the public service.
Therefore, those sections of the public service which resist reform are in effect killing the long term prospects of our ever building a society where the public service is held in high regard, well funded, and efficacious.
Posted by: Tomaltach | October 15, 2007 at 11:57 AM
Tomaltach - hands up, I take your points. I didn't mean to be defensive but I'm sure it may have come across that way to a lot of people. I usually don't pay much heed when I hear trade unions being called vested interests since it is usually coming from the right (who have a vested interest in attacking employees and their representatives). But when I hear it from someone I have regard for, well, I was frankly taken aback. Though he used the phrase 'vested interest' six times in his speech, nowhere did Ciaran define it. He merely labelled trade unions as 'vested interests' and used two examples to justify that (secondary teachers and a handful of public sector staff in Dun Laoire), I'm not familiar with these two issues but even if his complaints are legitimate, they still don't bolster a claim of vested interest. Surely, Ciaran is aware of how pejorative that term is - and to claim the Left is a 'vehicle' and 'receptacle' of vested interests: I doubt that will contribute to a constructive debate.
But on the particular issue you mention, yes, no doubt, without a doubt, dollars to doughnuts - there are people in all walks of life that behave irrationally. And the Left should root out inefficiencies wherever it can - otherwise its platform of promoting a strong public sector (as you rightly point out) will not be taken seriously. I would suggest one small thing: let's start that efficiency drive in another place, one that is quite distant from labelling an entire movement a vested interest just because there are some instances of inefficiencies.
Posted by: Michael | October 15, 2007 at 08:40 PM
Obviously, I can't speak for Ciarán, but I get a different impression from reading his speech. You seem to have the impression that he's calling the entire trade union movement purely a collection of vested interests. The impression I get is that the union movement has some vested interests within it, and that it doesn't tackle them.
Trade unions are a good thing, but sometimes they go too far in securing rights for their members - Ciarán's example of the ASTI inspection practice is a good one. I think we can all agree that it's a case of a union using its influence to insulate their members from perfectly fair criticism.
The point is that the left (with particular reference to Labour) tend to be uncritical of this. By being uncritical of unions, the left becomes a vehicle for some of the unions' worse decisions.
Posted by: Pidge | October 16, 2007 at 08:57 PM
I love this lazy analysis that sees an uncritical approach to the trade union movement as Labour's doing. This holds for England, but not here. The trade union's friend in government has not been Labour, but Fianna Fáil. where do you think partnership came from? and yet, the Irish labour party is told to break its links with the trade union movement in order to move on! A classic example of reading the English newspapers and applying the analysis to Ireland. If links with the trade union movement were a hindrance to election, FF would have dropped partnership years ago.
Posted by: Conor McCabe | October 17, 2007 at 12:04 AM
Eh, no, not quite. I don't read many English papers, and I'd share the analysis.
These blog comments are a good example. Someone says something critical of the unions and people "cringe" and become defensive. I've had someone mention how Ciarán's being saying bad things about unions, and they mentioned this blog.
To me, that's overly defensive of unions. I'm not saying that you should move on, or that you should "break your links" - I don't really care. However, by being largely uncritical of unions, the Left allows itself to be used as a vehicle for some of the negative work that unions do.
Posted by: Pidge | October 18, 2007 at 09:07 PM
Thanks Pidge for your comments. I have stated in my resposne to Tomnaltach - that my post might have been a bit defensive. Its a fair criticism. And to say that there are some things that people get up to in trade union are subject legitimate criticism is also fair. However, let's be clear - Ciaran's piece was quite hurtful to many of us. As I said above - he used the phrase 'vested interest' numerous times in relation to trade unions without any qualification. And as for the Left being uncritical of trade unions - that's not something that could describe the previous Labour leadership who attacked the driving testers during a Conference speech (which I discussed in a post) and who attacked ESB workers prior to the last election (the basis of that attack had me utterly mystified since the ESB workers weren't doing anything industrially). So the Labour leadership was quite capable of having a go at trade union members.
Can I suggest a way of how we can move on. I certainly don't want to give credence to Green-bashing - I write about that in a prveious post as well. We should try to first find a form of dialogue that maximises understanding. Second, we should find ways to work together even though the Left and the Greens find themselves on different sides of the 'House'. I've suggested previously that the Left should positively embrace the all-party committee on climate change and work with the Greens to advance a progressive agenda. There is also very fruitful grounds for cooperation on John Gormley's upcoming local government review - and area where the Left and the Greens have much in common.
THese are concrete areas of cooperation and if the Left and the Greens do engage constructively with each in these area where they share so much, then we might come to greater understanding of each other's positions on other subjects - like trade unions. I know I'm game for it.
Posted by: Michael | October 19, 2007 at 10:26 AM
Pidge, you've missed my point completely. I'm not defending the unions. I'm saying that the analysis that Labour should break its links with the unions is one that completely ignores the elephant in the room - namely, Fianna Fáil's very public links with the trade union movement via partnership, and through its own political history.
If labour's links with the unions has cost it support, why hasn't Fianna Fail's links cost it votes?
It is a lazy approach to assume that just because the British labour party has moved away from the trade union movement, that Irish labour has to do the same, when it is quite plain that such links, through partnership, (and history), have not done Fianna Fail any harm whatsoever.
where's my defence of the unions by pointing out that Fianna Fáil have a good relationship with trade unions, and have had so for decades, going back, in fact, to the formation of FF itself in 1926?
Posted by: Conor McCabe | October 19, 2007 at 05:40 PM