The chief executive officer of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, has been declared the richest person in modern history, with a personal fortune of €152 billion. This massive accumulation of wealth did not just appear in his bank account or property portfolio: it was created by the labour of others, coupled with […]
Trade Unionism
Trade unions must make no excuses
Industrial relations law often works on the assumption that both sides of a dispute are reasonable entities: employers won’t exploit or take advantage of their workers, and in return the workers won’t ask for “too much”; and, just in case, we have trade unions to try to keep the playing-pitch […]
Fórsa’s first strike
Fórsa, the biggest public-sector union, is in existence since January 2018, but already workers’ rights are under attack. The CEO of Roscommon County Council launched the attack on the issue of flex time. This is not a simple local issue but a challenge to trade unions and workers’ rights in […]
What is the Industrial Relations Act?
The Industrial Relations Act (1990) was introduced on 18 July 1990, replacing the Trade Disputes Act (1906), the main principle of which was that anything done in a trade dispute, provided it was not illegal in itself, would be free from criminal and civil liability. The 1990 act was introduced […]
Lloyd’s pharmacy workers fighting for their rights
More than two hundred employees of Lloyd’s Pharmacy in its fifty branches in the Republic are voting on whether they will take industrial action following the company’s refusal to negotiate with their trade union, Mandate. The union has called for a ballot. In response the company is using its tame […]
Mandate conference: Building for the future
At the end of April, Mandate held its biennial conference, with more than three hundred delegates from the retail and bar sectors in attendance, under the theme “Organise! Organise!! Organise!!!” The conference was opened by the general secretary, John Douglas. His remarks were not “grandstanding” or throwing shapes but instead […]
Mayday, mayday!
If the workers take a notion They can stop all speeding trains; Every ship upon the ocean They can tie with mighty chains. Every wheel in the creation, Every mine and every mill, Fleets and armies of the nation, Will at their command stand still. —Joe Hill The trade […]
Capitalism knows a good thing when it sees it
Women’s pay When people talk about the pay gap they often cite the generally accepted figures of 10–14 per cent difference in pay between men and women, this gap being more noticeable in the higher echelons of business. Critics admit that the pay gap is real but explain away pay […]
Struggle in the work-place hasn’t gone away
Struggle and resistance in the work-place is more common than readers might think. If we think of resistance or conflict between capital and labour in work-places as only industrial disputes, well then, yes, it is a pretty dismal picture. Of course we see the headline disputes of workers collectively organised […]
Repeal the 8th! The role of trade unions
Jointly hosted by the Trade Union Campaign to Repeal the 8th Amendment (TUCR8A) and the Coalition to Repeal the Eighth, this public meeting dealt with article 40.3.3 as a work-place, class, equality and human rights issue. Like most trade union meetings, Repeal the 8th: The Role of Trade Unions started […]
New public-sector union to come into being this year
The merger of Impact, the Civil, Public and Services Union (CPSU) and the Public Service Executive Union (PSEU) will create a new 80,000-member, largely public-sector union, to be called Fórsa, in 2018. Towards the end of 2017, 86 per cent of Impact members who voted supported the merger; 76 per […]
New problems for organised labour
In the unlikely event that any of our readers have invested in a significant number of shares in the British company Curry’s PC World, they would be well advised to sell before too long On a pre-Christmas visit to one of their larger stores I was surprised to find some […]
A future worth fighting for
In 2016 James Wickham and Alicja Bobek produced a report for TASC into working conditions in Ireland in which they identified “enforced flexibility” as the major development in employment conditions for workers in all industries following the crisis. This enforced flexibility comes in a number of forms. For some it […]
Plagiarism in the schools — but it’s not the pupils!
The Department of Education and the media have for years hyped up the idea of schools “ditching the textbooks and going digital.” In particular, Microsoft Showcase Schools are “innovative,” where “digital books” and “tablets” replace “old-fashioned” books This apparently is the great leap forward—but is it? For Microsoft it will […]
A future worth fighting for
Earlier this month the Trade Union Left Forum issued its “Workers’ Charter: A Future Worth Fighting for.” The charter calls for a range of legislative reforms to improve both workers’ and union rights in the south and north of Ireland. Each progressive change itself is important for workers, but, if […]
Sign the Workers’ Charter
I pledge to support, promote and encourage the following principles within my work-place, my union, the trade union movement, and society more generally. I am a trade union activist in favour of— (1) A Trade Union Bill, in the Republic of Ireland and in Northern Ireland, to provide for union […]