Our island floats on the backs of unpaid women. Ireland has the third highest amount of unpaid work in the EU, consisting primarily of care work. The state has continued to support a gendered distribution of this work, rather than attempt any dual caregiving model, like those of Scandinavian countries […]
Labour
Construction Workers Union, CMFEU, Suffer Unprecedented Take Over by Labour Party Government
One of Australia’s biggest and most radical construction workers’ unions is on the defensive after being taken under state administration by the ruling Australian Labour Party (ALP). 270 elected leaders of the CMFEU (Construction, Forestry and Maritime Employees Union) have been removed under this administration, barring union leaders from undertaking […]
Big Tech Redundancies
From the end of 2022 to the middle of 2023, Big Tech employers laid off 300,000 workers globally. Between January and May 2023 alone, there were approximately 2,300 redundancies in the Irish tech sector, including at companies like Google, Meta (Facebook), Stripe, Salesforce, Microsoft, X (formerly Twitter) and Zendesk. For […]
On Chips
On 15 May 2023, an interview with the French ambassador in Ireland titled “Ireland must ‘pull its weight’ on increasing defence” was published in The Irish Examiner. Most of the interview focuses on the perceived need for the European Union to reduce its industrial and energy dependence on other global […]
The three card trick: don’t ask, don’t hear
Simon Coveney, the Dublin TD, and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, was interviewed on RTÉ Radio 1 in late May about the loss of jobs at Meta, Facebook’s parent company, over the last few months. True to form, tongue in cheek, he regretted the job losses and vowed to […]
Workers Pay the Price of Capitalism
Capitalism has survived despite a roller-coaster of crises for over two centuries. It uses many means to survive, but one of its greatest weapons is controlling the narrative and dividing the working class, to divert attention from the cause of all the crises faced by and paid for by the […]
Why do corporations want you to go back to office so badly?
Covid came and went but working from home is not going away, and yet, corporations are pushing their workers to go back to the office. Why? During Covid and the resulting lockdown, tech companies reaped record profits, especially the likes of Amazon, Netflix, Google and Facebook, or “FANG” for short. […]