SIPTU and MANDATE welcomed the news that the establishment orders for the Joint Labour Committees (JLCs) were signed on Wednesday, (29th January).

The JLCs, once they are formed by trade union and employer representatives under the auspices of Kieran Mulvey, the Chief Executive Officer of the Labour Relations Commission (LRC), will set basic levels of pay, above the minimum wage, for tens of thousands of low paid workers.

SIPTU Vice-President, Patricia King, said: "The reinstatement of JLCs is good for low paid workers. It follows the intensive lobbying, and engagement with the Government, by the trade union movement. We now expect that the CEO of the LRC will be requested to invite the parties to make their nominations to the JLCs.

"We would expect the employers in the six relevant sectors including hospitality and catering, retail, contract cleaning, security and agriculture to take a full and productive part in the process."

MANDATE General Secretary, John Douglas said: "The JLC system operates mostly in low-paid sectors and where workers have little ability to protect or improve their conditions of employment.

"The re-establishment of the JLC's will ensure that thousands of low-paid vulnerable workers will be protected and will ensure that the concept of decent work is put back on the agenda. MANDATE is calling on all of the relevant employers to engage positively with the process as a matter of urgency," he said.

SIPTU has called on the Government and Health Service Executive (HSE) to assist workers being made redundant due to the closure of Mount Carmel Hospital, Dublin, in finding new jobs in the Health Service.

SIPTU Health Division Organiser, Paul Bell, said: “Every effort must be made to assist these highly skilled workers to find employment within the Health Service. We cannot afford to lose these people’s abilities and the HSE must facilitate them in finding employment in positions in which their skills can be fully utilised.

“We also need the Department of Social Protection to fast track their benefits because it is currently unclear when these workers will receive the redundancy payments due to them.”

SIPTU Organiser, Kevin Figgis, said: “The loss of this hospital and its skilled staff is a deeply unfortunate and we believe unnecessary blow to the Health Service. In respect of their loyal service we are calling upon the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Richard Bruton, to ensure they receive their outstanding redundancy payments as promptly as possible.”

SIPTU representatives are involved in ongoing talks with the provisional liquidators appointed to the Mount Carmel Hospital by the High Court on Friday (24th January). SIPTU represents workers from several grades at the hospital which has a total workforce of over 300.

SIPTU Vice-President, Patricia King, welcomed the publication of the ‘Review of Apprenticeship Training’ on Wednesday (22nd January) which proposes the development of an expanded dual-system of education in Ireland, combining on-the-job and class-based training.

Patricia King said: “It is encouraging that the Review recognises the scope for new opportunities across a wide range of sectors including ICT, retail, business administration, childcare and social care, hairdressing and beauty care, the green economy, retro-fitting and sustainable energy. 
 
“These were among the areas which SIPTU highlighted in its submission to the Review Group as suitable for apprenticeships.  The report also stresses the importance of the business community making a commitment to train workers in these and other skills by allowing them to take up apprentices while earning a living wage.
 
“The fact that an apprentice is paid a wage and obtains a formal qualification engenders commitment and expertise in the occupations concerned.  The prospect of remuneration, higher education opportunities and a viable career is crucial in encouraging workers to perform at their best and to realise their full potential.”
 
The review, commissioned by the Minister for Education and Skills, Ruairi Quinn, who appointed the review group headed by the chairman of the Labour Court, Kevin Duffy, recommends that employers should pay apprentices in new apprenticeship areas for both the on-the-job and off-the-job periods. It also recommends that progression opportunities to degree level programmes for apprentices are made more transparent for the future.
 
“It is positive that the Review group has recommended a ring-fenced fund to help expand what is currently on offer and drawing on European funding, including from the Youth Guarantee.  There must be no further delay in starting the process of change and we look forward to engaging with SOLAS and the other participants in the proposed Apprenticeship Council at the earliest opportunity,” Patricia King said.
 
“In this context I should also note that SIPTU remains deeply concerned about the recent introduction of fees for apprentices.  This issue must be addressed in order to ensure that apprenticeships remain a viable option for students with limited means and that the developments urged by the Review Group are achieved.”

SIPTU Vice-President, Patricia King, has said double standards within the Community and Voluntary (C&V) sector have been exposed with the retirement package of over €740,000 for the former Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Central Remedial Clinic (CRC), Paul Kiely.

The revelation at the Public Accounts Committee that the massive lump sum and redundancy package had been provided to the former CEO is in stark contrast to the experience of workers, including very low paid employees, in the C&V sector, she said.

Over eighty workers from a range of publicly funded C&V projects have been waiting up to three years for the State to honour twenty Labour Court and Rights Commissioner findings in relation to redundancy.

Patricia King said: “There appears to be a two tier community sector. One where ordinary workers are denied basic entitlements while those in positions of power enjoy premier league pay-outs.”

SIPTU Organiser, Bill Mulcahy, said: “SIPTU members at St. Leo’s College had no alternative but to ballot for industrial action due to the intransigence of management in its implementation of cuts to their terms and conditions of employment without agreement.

He added: “Union representatives are available to enter negotiations in order to reach a settlement to this dispute which is acceptable to our members.”

SIPTU represents two caretakers and a student services coordinator at St. Leo’s College.

Broadcaster, Joe Duffy, was presented with a specially commissioned trade union badge from 1913 to mark his contribution to the commemorations of the Dublin Lockout.

The badge, based on the design of the 1913 version issued to union members by Jim Larkin and the Irish Transport and General Workers Union, was presented to the broadcaster by SIPTU General Secretary, Joe O’Flynn, in Liberty Hall on Tuesday, (21st January).

Joe O’Flynn said that Joe Duffy had made a significant contribution during last year through his participation in several events and his coverage of the Lockout centenary on his RTE radio programme.

SIPTU members at the Tyndall National Institute, University College Cork (UCC) will intensify industrial action over the coming days in a dispute of over pay inequality.

SIPTU Organiser, Bill Mulcahy, said: “Following a one day work stoppage on Tuesday (21st January), members will be intensifying their industrial action at the facility including the expansion of work to rule measures and further work stoppages.”

He added: “The members voted in a ballot last July to take industrial action to highlight their dispute with management over its failure to address concerns over pay inequality. The dates of further work stoppages will be decided by the workplace committee.”

The dispute concerns the pay inequity which exists between a large number of Tyndall employees and their counterparts doing the same or similar work on UCC main campus. The difference in pay is of the order of 10% to 20%. 

The Dublin City University (DCU) SIPTU Section Committee, representing all grades of staff at the institution, voted on Thursday (23^rd January) to express its support for colleagues at the Tyndall National Institute, in their dispute over the status of their employment.

The dispute concerns the pay inequity which exists between a large number of Tyndall employees and their counterparts doing the same or similar work on the main UCC campus. The difference in pay is of the order of 10% to 20%.

SIPTU represents over 70 workers at the research facility including researchers, engineers, administration, technical and IT staff.

Appearing before the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Transport and Communications on Wednesday (15th January), SIPTU representatives called for a “real public debate” on the proposed privatisation of up to 10% of Bus Éireann and Dublin Bus routes.

SIPTU Utilities and Construction Division Organiser, Owen Reidy, described the decision by the National Transport Authority (NTA) to tender out the routes as “seriously flawed”.

He added: “We are concerned that there has been a lack of real public debate on this critical matter which will have an impact on both the travelling public and workers in both commercial semi-state companies.”

SIPTU Sector Organiser, Willie Noone, said the planned privatisation of routes would have severe adverse effects.

He said: “The public transport service is there to serve all the community, including those in outlying rural areas, pensioners, the disabled and other vulnerable groups. A privatised for profit service will not continue this ethos.”

SIPTU Organiser, John Murphy, said that it was questionable why the privatisation agenda was still being pushed despite current Bus Éireann and Dublin Bus services meeting the Key Performance Indicator targets set by the NTA.

“The UK experience shows that when you have a fractured national bus service with multiple operators and where contracts are awarded at short intervals the result is that compliance levels drop and passenger confidence in the system of public transport also dissipates. This will also prevail in this jurisdiction should this flawed and unnecessary ideologically driven approach occur. It is evident on this item that the NTA is proposing to fix an issue that is not broken and in which the two CIE companies are excelling according to independent auditors.”

There are forces in Ireland who would wish to develop and fund a new political project with the aim of increasing inequality in our society and further eroding workers rights. They seek to do this by claiming a concern with ‘reform’; in reality the only change they wish to deliver is that which benefits wealthy corporate interests.

Irish society must learn from past mistakes and not allow the current public questioning of its political class to, again, be hijacked by a greedy minority.  A degree of unity on the Left, accompanied by a more vigilant trade union movement could have prevented the unbridled free marketeering Progressive Democrats from grabbing the balance of power in what was a healthy and sustainable economy in 1997.

If the Left had managed to retain the Department of Finance, the majority shareholding of Eircom, the ACC, the ICC and the TSB would never have been privatised and speculation would never have been incentivised while innovation was starved. The buccaneering ‘look the other way’ regulation culture would never have become as endemic as it did. And while there would have been a down turn as a result of global developments it would have been on a much lesser and more manageable scale than that which ultimately unfolded.

The indebtedness, the unemployment, the emigration and a great deal of the misery that has been endured over the past few years would never have been experienced. The tragedy is that it did and whereas we in the trade union movement and on the Left certainly did not cause it, we were not able to prevent it either. 

This well-appointed Public Exhibition hosted in the Ideas Space on the third floor of the Arts and Humanities Research Institute, TCD, and better known as the Long Room Hub from December 2013 to February 2014 is well worth a visit. It is funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Glucksman Ireland House.

The exhibition explores the time which James Connolly, spent in the United States between 1903 and 1910, where he witnessed the waxing and waning of labor radicalism and unionization as well as seeing at first hand the conditions in which working class people existed in an unregulated corporate expansion.

When Connolly arrived in Ireland in 1902 he found that employers still enjoyed an advantage, (which they still do today). During his period in America he was among an influential second generation of, Irish American Labor leaders who attempted to rally immigrants from across Europe to press for the dignity of labour. In later years his time in America was translated into a Nationalistic fervour which ran along with his work on behalf of workers from factories to farm workers.

Connolly’s experience in the US influenced his actions during the period of the Dublin Lockout of 1913, which can be looked as the larger transatlantic effort to better the rights of the working poor in the time leading up to the Great War of 1914-1918.

This fine exhibition curated by Professor Marion R Casey, a faculty member at Glucksman Ireland House, & Daphne Dyer Wolf, a PhD candidate in History and Culture at Drew University, and was designed by Hilary J Sweeney.

On Wednesday 15th January 2014 Ms Dyer Wolf gave a talk on the concept and research underpinning the exhibition at a very well attended function. The patrons for the project are Eamon Gilmore, Tánaiste and John J Sweeney President Emeritus of the AFL-CIO and was facilitated by the Connolly Commemoration Committee (New York).

James Connolly made three extensive tours of the United States stopping in big cities and small towns. Travelling by train and stagecoach he spoke to crowds in union halls and on street corners often two and three times a day, Connolly’s first tour September to December 1902 was sponsored by the American Socialist Labor Party. He advocated for the value of strikes and the importance of ethnic alliances among workers under the socialist umbrella.

On his second tour July to October 1908 Connolly trumpeted the newly formed Irish Socialist Federation, and its newspaper, The Harp, of which he was the editor and chief writer, While in America Connolly also campaigned for Eugene Debs,  the presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America.

On his third tour May 1909 to April 1910 Connolly was a national organiser for the Socialist party of America with a mission of softening the prejudices against socialism among Irish Americans.

New York City (1908) On Mayday 1908 nearly 8,000 people assembled in Union Square just north of Greenwich Village for an IWW rally. Connolly was among the scheduled speakers that day and was captured in a rare photograph of the event taken by George Bain.

While in America Connolly had contact with John Devoy the leader of Clan na Gael. Devoy republished an article from the Harp in the Clan newspaper The Gaelic American , and brought Jeremiah O’ Donovan Rossa to speak at an ISF meeting. This collaboration of labor, socialism and republicanism was to have far reaching consequences back in Ireland a decade later.

In America Connolly witnessed breadlines, starving children, and police brutalising the unemployed and striking workers. During his time in America Connolly honed his radical ideas which were to sustain him in the fights ahead in Dublin during the Lockout in 1913 and the Insurrection of 1916 where he was brutally executed.

The Springfield Republican (Mass) October 9, 1902 refers to Connolly’s presence in Graves Hall, as a representative of the socialist party of Ireland, He is described as “a clear interesting speaker without the excessive ire of the socialist orator and was able to tell last night in an instructive way of the conditions of the present time f the little country from which he came”

Connolly is reported to quote from statistics showing the suffering in Ireland caused by starvation, eviction and forced immigration and in discussing the social and political conditions prevailing ”showed how his country would be benefited under the socialistic plan”

The exhibition continues till the end of February 2014.

On the occasion of the birthday of Seán O'Casey, marking the 50th anniversary of his death, a lively and dramatic tribute led by his daughter Shivaun O'Casey.

The programme combines a colourful selection of O'Casey's songs, music and writings with many of his characteristic 'blasts and benedictions'. These illustrations of his life and times are seen through the loving eyes of his wife, Eileen. With Peter Sheridan and Eimear Simms and music from Noel O'Grady, Liam O'Connor, Noel Pocock, Sally Corr, Jimmy Kelly and Pat Goode. The production is arranged and directed by Des Geraghty on behalf of the Clé Club.

Tickets €15, now available from the Liberty Hall Box Office, Tel: 0818 205205 or online at www.ctb.ie

For information, Tel: 087 9494949

Email: cleclub@gmail.com

***SELECTED AS A THEATRE HIGHLIGHT FOR 2014 IN LAST WEEK'S INDEPENDENT***

http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books-arts/theatre-innovation-and-energy-guaranteed-to-take-centre-stage-in-an-exciting-2014-29904876.html