Notes On The Front

The Lonely Predicament of David Begg

ICTU’s David Begg is in a reflective mood. He admits that workers received no gains under the last wage agreement because inflation wiped them out. He even went so far as to say that 100% pay increases would not hugely improve people’s lives

‘ . . . if they can’t buy education or if they can’t buy health services the way richer people can.’

Now, if people’s living standards didn’t improve over the last three years – when GNP growth was strong, public finances were healthy and the economy was generating employment; if people weren’t getting a kickback then, what’s the chances now? Mr. Begg’s options aren’t encouraging. That’s why I suspect that the general secretary of ICTU, sitting quietly in whatever room allows him to ponder these issues in depth, is acknowledging, at least to himself, that the game is up, that the very motor of social partnership is grinding down, that a new model has to be put in place.

If only he and the rest of us could figure out what that model looks like.

Solidarity is the Word

Solidarity: it’s one of those old words, out of contemporary fashion, too redolent of a collectivist politics which has been superseded by more post-modernist relationships. If some of us hang on to the word, it’s more like a life-raft, a self-justification that allows us to go on, pretending our arguments are still relevant, our activities have some impact. Yet, yet . . . , at times, if only in extremis, the word comes roaring back at us, breaking into our everyday comings and goings, not as a concept or theory of social action – but rather, in flesh and blood, exhorting us to see that what happens to people we will never meet in lands we may never visit is what happens to our next-door neighbour, our office colleague, that someone standing behind us in the check-out queue.

Mansour Osanloo is leader of the Tehran Bus Workers’ Union. He is in prison, convicted on trumped up charges by the Iranian authorities, targeted because he is a trade union activist.

Mansour Osanloo is my neighbour.

Recognising Recognition

Raise corporation tax? Introduce legal right to trade union representation? Whoever makes these arguments are usually met with a coup de grace: even thinking about doing these things will drive all multi-nationals out of the country. It’s stated as if it were the end of the argument – QED and all that jazz. However, when one investigates the terrain, things are not so quite clear cut and the room within which we can manoeuvre may be somewhat larger than is generally thought.

Farewell to Hard-Working Families

To the ‘low-wage, low-spend, low-tax, low-service economy’ we can now add another prefix – ‘low-leave’. That’s the conclusion of the European Industrial Relations Observatory report on working time. *  The detailed report on all aspects of working time – weekly and annual working hours, holidays, annual leave, etc. – summarised our predicament:

. . . countries with notably low leave encompass Latvia, Hungary and Ireland.

It’s bad enough that we live in an economy that doesn’t spend enough to provide proper services and social supports compared to the rest of the EU-15. Now we aren’t even allowed time off to reflect on how we might turn this thing around.

If You Can't Say Something Nice . . .

‘If you can’t something nice . . ‘ goes the old adage. Of course, in the political hurley-burley such sentiments are the first casualty. That, and truth. And never more so when it comes to public sector employees. Remember the row over driving tests? The poor driving testers came under a barrage of abuse. Even the Labour Party leader during a nationally televised Party Conference speech chimed in, labeling them a ‘vested interest’ with no right of veto over modernising public services. Wow, those testers must have been up to no good.

Let’s recap.