Seizing the Moment - Patricia McKeown, ICTU President
7 Jul 2009
Patricia McKeown - ICTU President - Credit: Kevin Cooper, PhotolineSpeech by Patricia McKeown
President of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions
ICTU Biennial Conference 2009 Tralee
At the start of my Presidency, Congress sought the views of people across this island, both union and non-union. The results demonstrate that, despite the best attempts of our opponents, ordinary people hold the Irish trade union movement in high regard. They also have high expectations of us. That places a grave responsibility on us to make a difference, especially now.
Today we have arrived at a defining moment in our history. Events across the globe are impacting on the daily lives of the members we serve.
The old certainties have been swept aside. The ways of doing business for the past twenty years or so are over.
Save at our birth, there has never been a more important time for the trade union movement. More than ever people in and out of work need their unions. They look to us for leadership. What we do now will set the path for the Irish trade union movement for the rest of the century. We have before us the chance to shape a more just and equal society but only if we seize the moment.
The crises now sweeping across Europe, financial, economic, and political are mirrored here. For our members and their families there is no financial bail-out, only worry about an uncertain future.
This year alone, in a breathtaking few months over 170,000 workers have lost their jobs throughout Ireland and the figure is rapidly climbing.
In the Republic, one quarter of a million people are unemployed and almost half a million people are on the live register. For them, prosperity is over. For many of them it never started. In the North, almost one-third of the population is classed as economically inactive. They are ignored by Government and left to subsist at the margins of our society. No peace dividend for them. There is no one else to stand up with them but us, the trade union movement.
We know that we are facing the consequences of a corrupt capitalist system bereft of moral standards. A system which has always put profit before people. A system we warned about but a system that people all over the western world voted for, albeit mostly in ignorance of what is really going on.
It is time to seriously question what role we should play at the ballot box. We cannot continue to protest that we are non-political when politics is our real business and when there is such an imperative to change the political agenda in both jurisdictions and further afield.
In the North we have been continually praised for our role in the peace process. However, it is another story when it comes to regular engagement with Government in a formal negotiating structure. We are not viewed as so heroic or vital then. And indeed the government we engage with is not where fiscal power resides.
In the South, through social partnership, we gained influence in the corridors of power and while some good came from that, we now face the fact that we are doing business with a Government that has firmly signed up to the neo-liberal model and therefore responds to dual constituencies. The constituency exercising real power over the public agenda is the one Noam Chomsky calls the 'virtual senate'. They are the lenders and investors who keep up the pressure to ensure that all policies which put people before profit are blocked. They are the particular proponents of privatisation - not because it has any economic value - it does not. But it does take the things that matter to us in life - health, education, housing, transport, the environment, out of democratic control and reduces us to the status of consumer - rather than active citizens.
In both jurisdictions it is time for the trade union movement to go on the offensive. This can and will take many forms. It includes direct action. At this point I want to pay tribute to the workers and their unions who have taken and are taking direct action. I single out the Visteon workers who simply refused to be put out. Their occupation and international campaign proved that even those regarded as the most powerless can make a difference.
I pledge the full support of this conference to the TEEU and its members, who are now exercising their fundamental human right to strike having exhausted all other legitimate means. I dismiss with contempt the claims that this strike action is damaging the economy - others have done that job to stunning effect. Whatever disingenuous headlines the press may run with about an 11% pay rise, we know that they are out on strike because the employers have walked off with the money owed to them for their pay and their pensions. We wish them well and we will be with them to the end.
However, our most dramatic form of offense will be the direct participation of our members in piling pressure on government and opposition parties alike. To enable them to do so, we must bring our analysis of all that has gone wrong and our views on what will put it right, to workplaces and communities, to enable our members to make the demands themselves. I have heard scorn poured on such models of democratic participation in the past. It has occasionally come from within our own ranks but primarily it comes from right wing politicians who are busy serving the 'other constituency' and are utterly resistant to being held accountable by the people. But ultimately it is the only way to ensure that the trade union movement is a real force for social change.
Participation of the members has always been the key. When we called on them in January 2009, over 150,000 answered the call. It is time for us to determine where we lead them now. In the North over the same period our members have responded in their thousands to half a dozen Congress calls on issues ranging from the local to the global. They respond because they trust us and because we continually engage.
We have presented credible proposals to Governments North and South in an attempt to confront the immediate financial and economic crises. We do not pretend that these are perfect solutions but at least they are a start.
At a time when their people need them most the Irish Government has failed them and in the North, where a unified response is required, party politics and the old mantra of majority rule in place of power sharing is again re-surfacing. Shame on them all.
If we are to seize the moment there are also other things we must do. For a start we need to explore again what we mean when we speak of Congress.
For me the Irish Congress of Trade unions is the sum of its parts - its members, all affiliates, north and south, and all of its democratic structures. It has been too often too narrowly defined as the Executive Council or the Secretariat or both. That narrow definition confines our ability to be collective, strategic and strong. That narrow definition has resulted in what was recently described to me as 'two trade union federations loosely connected'.
We have let that happen over the past 20 years and it has been to our profound disadvantage. During the same period employers North and South have strengthened their links and developed their strategy. Capitalism knows no borders.
For a powerful example of what we can do when we resolve to work together, we need look no further than our equality work which was at its high point when the women in this movement were strongly committed to working together, strategically, North and South. Much of our policy on tackling sex discrimination, challenging poverty and low pay, campaigning for a minimum wage and our demands on equal pay came from that work.
Now more than ever we need to work together to face the growing challenges - economic, social and political.
We already have highly developed policies which recognise that economic and social rights are inextricably inter-linked. But because we have not yet pursued those policies collectively on a North South basis the agenda has developed at a different pace in both jurisdictions.
Now, when the crisis is hitting the people of the Republic with almighty force, a key component in the trade union response is under-developed.
The pursuit of fundamental human rights is not just an issue for the people of Northern Ireland, it is an issue for the whole Island. It is not just about trade union rights - important though they are - it is about the kind of society we want to build.
I have no doubt that there is a deeper awareness among trade unionists in the North precisely because of the central role played by Congress in campaigning for equality and fundamental human rights. And there is a deeper awareness amongst people in general because of our joint work with our allies in civic society who share our common interests in the struggle for justice.
I welcome the fact that new coalitions are now being created in the South but I have to say, in all honesty, that it we have not yet made the link in the public mindset. Little attention was paid during the period of growth but look what is happening now. The Irish Government embraced with fervour an economic and financial system which is predicated on the absence of rights. No coincidence then that when times got tough it made its first brutal spending cuts in the equality and human rights agenda. Its hostility to socio-economic rights in particular now leaves this society on the edge of the abyss.
The time is right for Congress to repeat the role it has played in the North. We can and we must do it together.
Something that has always made me immensely proud of the Irish Trade Union Movement is our capacity to rise above rightful self-interest and pay attention to the needs of others.
There is more than one great crisis sweeping the globe. Beyond the rich countries of the West there is a Food Crisis. As we meet here this week over one billion people on the planet are living in extreme poverty and are facing starvation, malnutrition and early death.
Much of the responsibility for that crisis lies at door of the West. Irish unions have long worked in solidarity with our brothers and sisters facing greater obstacles then we have ever faced. I am delighted that we have again taken our place with the international trade union movement. Now we must use it to build solidarity with the oppressed.
I want to pay tribute to the work of our members in the Global Solidarity Project. I want to pledge our support to our brothers and sisters facing repression and death in Columbia. I want to commend our work with the people of Lesotho. I want to celebrate 50 years of the Cuban Revolution but most of all I want to pay tribute to our members across this movement for their unflinching support for the Palestinian People.
It has been my great honour as your President to take forward the policies so rightly agreed at our Congress two years ago.
Since we last met we have visited Israel and the Occupied Territories and we have seen at first hand what real racist repression looks like. Our report has been disseminated around the world.
We have engaged in direct lobbies of political parties, governments and the EU. And we are currently developing our Boycott Divestment and Sanctions campaign materials and programme. You will hear more of that later.
Most significant is the direct involvement of our members. In early 2009 thousands of trade unionists joined the Dublin demonstration in protest at the war on Gaza. In Belfast, in a protest organised by Congress over 5000 workers joined us on the streets. Solidarity activity within affiliated unions has intensified and across the trade union movement workers have contributed with extraordinary generosity to the Congress humanitarian appeal for medical aid to Gaza. Over 100,000 euro has been donated, via Irish Medical Aid to Palestine, for a field surgical unit and for the first payment for a permanent surgical unit at Al Awda Hospital in northern Gaza. We are deeply honoured that it is to be named the James Connelly Surgical Unit in recognition of the solidarity work of the Irish trade union movement. Without doubt, the plight of the Palestinian People is engaging people on this island in a way which no other has done since the days of our involvement in the anti apartheid struggle in South Africa.
We have promoted our policy with other trade union centres and made it a particular agenda priority on the Trade Union Council of the Isles, a body which comprises ICTU, the STUC, the Wales TUC and the TUC. We warmly congratulate the Scottish TUC for adopting its boycott policy earlier this year. We have also promoted our cause to those who are critics of the ICTU position. Confident in the justice and morality of our case we engage all who challenge us.
There is major work yet to be undertaken but our small trade union movement, located on the western edge of Europe has proved once again that it is capable of punching well beyond its weight.
What we can do for our brother and sister abroad we can also do at home.
I commend all of you for the enormous contribution you have made to the life and soul of this movement over the past two years. We may face an uncertain future but I am confident that with your generosity of spirit and the determination of our members we can change this world for the better.