Month: May 2009

33 posts
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Child abuse – Irelands’ gulags

By Joe Higgins

Mary Raftery’s documentary, States of Fear, which gave rise to the Child Abuse Commission was first broadcast just over ten years ago, on Tuesday night, 27th April 1999. It was a shocking story, powerfully told but what happened the next morning in the Dail cast an interesting light on the ‘states of consciousness’ of the main political parties about the seriousness of what it had unearthed.

SR Technics leaving factory
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Capitalism in crisis!

By Stephen Boyd

SOME POLITICAL and social commentators have begun to bemoan the continual stream of bad economic news. However for the working class and the middle class in Ireland and around the world the impact of the bad economic reality is unavoidable.

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NI: Visteon occupation – Action gets results

By Peter Hadden

THE WORKERS at Visteon – through their month long occupation of their factory – have written an important chapter in the history of the labour movement in Northern Ireland.

Had they done as was demanded of them and meekly left the factory when administrators arrived to take it over they would have walked away with their basic state entitlements and nothing more.

No to privatisation of the ESB

No to privatisation of the ESB

By Dave Keating

George Lee wants to sell off Bord Gais and the lucrative parts of the ESB, supposedly to fund a jobs creation programme. The irony is that in order to sell the ESB, Fine Gael has supported Fianna Fail's policy of cutting the staff of the semi state company in half to just 6,500, with further staff cuts planned. Fine Gael has also supported the government's policy of introducing so called competition in the generation and selling of electricity. This they say is in order "to reduce the price for consumers". However the very opposite has happened.

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Socialism – the alternative to the failed market

By Kevin McLoughlin

SOCIALIST POLICIES are needed to solve the economic crisis and its devastating effects on the living standards and lives of ordinary people.

Socialist policies are relevant to the key problems facing people today, the draconian pay cuts, the housing crisis and looming mortgage crisis, the vicious cutbacks in health and education, and crucially the emergence of mass unemployment.

The tax hikes in the budget represent a universal pay cut and are part of an overall desire of the government and bosses to slash general wage levels by up to 20%. They are intent on imposing a race to the bottom. The Quick Service Food Alliance, which is made up of the main fast (bad) food outlets, are attacking some of the lowest paid workers, demanding that they give up payments for Sunday working etc. The minimum wage is also being attacked and undercut by bosses.

Minimum wage cut?

By Laura Fitzgerald

EVERYONE KNOWS the minimum wage is paltry and it’s not enough to live on. Many young people up to the age of 20 have an even lower minimum wage, as miserable as €6.06 per hour for some. Yet each time we hear the oft-repeated mantra of “We must regain competitiveness” from the spokespersons for big and small businesses and right-wing politicians it is now increasingly accompanied by calls for the lowering of the minimum wage.

The Quick Food Service Alliance which includes McDonalds, Burger King, Subway and Abrakebabra, have had the gall to launch a legal challenge to the minimum wage and to the compulsion to pay over-time rates on a Sunday!