WHAT IS on my mind??? Well lots of things, but heres one. Its long - if youre challenged... I have photos of cats to post tomorrow. If you have benefited from the actions of UNIONS during your life - and thats millions of Irish people. SHUT UP about unions. Really... its appalling hypocrisy. Excellent column today in the Sunday Times by Myers demonstrating the inevitable ‘default conditions’ for employees when there is no appreciation of the social contract and no ethical standards in a society. When employees’ worth is decided solely by ‘market forces’. Myers finished by inviting diplomats of the UAE (and diplomats in general) to leave 1900 and join us all in 2014. Were we a Christian country concerned with people larger than foetuses, we would deport the entire embassy staff. Despite their “new money” the UAE has, apparently not ‘come far’ or ‘done all that well’ – seemingly, they still like to do Slavery. Maybe we should expel primitives from our country. Don’t we have any standards? The UAE ambassador and his missus seem to be intellectually and morally stuck somewhere around 1,000 AD. I would say ‘shame on them’ but, despite their excellent English, he and his wife wouldn’t understand it. What I wouldn’t give to meet them. I suggest our legions of graffiti artists stop improving the LUAS line and start spraying ‘we don’t do slavery in Europe mate’ all over 45-47 Pembroke Road, Dublin 4. Should ‘Where there’s muck, there’s brass’ be changed to ‘Where there’s brass, there’s muck’? It’s beginning to look like this. These are the default conditions of unregulated ‘market forces’ - The default conditions are well-known to anyone who has a functioning moral compass or who reads and thinks a bit (not much, just A BIT)… i.e. not Thatcher, Reagan, Cheney, Hayek or anyone like them. Having lived for several years in the post Reaganista US I was exposed to a constant drone of anti-union mythology from the “Vast Right-Wing Propaganda Machine – and in the US, it IS VAST, it is pervasive, it has unlimited funds and it is sometimes subtle; by which I mean most of your TV programmes and movies are infused with this message. Actually, sometimes its not so subtle. One night, I was a guest in the house of a former friend of mine in the US. Lubricated by his third goblet of red and completely out of context, he launched into a long (incredibly vituperative, prolix and uninformed) diatribe against unions.This was one of those occasions where someone you have spent much time with reveals how they really feel - mistaking me for some kind of Socialist in Sheeps Clothing (off the mark a bit), the diatribe was clearly aimed at me personally. I was expected not to respond – as usually happens in these circumstances. I suspect we humans are by nature ‘pullers up of ladders’ – no sooner have we benefitted from a system or a particular set of circumstances, but we set about ‘pulling up the ladder’ so the next generation cannot benefit from it. I’ve seen this many times – look at teachers… seemingly willing to strike (and go Christmas shopping of course) at the drop of a hat because the govt. wants them to mark the (dumbed-down beyond recognition Junior Cert… sorry parents, it’s TRUE… all those ‘A’s despite spending several hours a day looking at a phone and typing OMG!!!… surely you don’t really think your jizz has all that ‘fizz’. LOL) but they have no problem with the appalling treatment of new-grads and junior teachers (classic example of ‘ladder pulling’). This country is packed with people who benefited from weekends, holiday pay, sick pay, increments, pensions, defined working hours, lunchtimes and other breaks, the right not to be intimidated, beaten, bullied, abused or disparaged at work, who are healthy or alive because of health and safety regulations - or who have children who are in school and having a childhood at all rather than being employed as servants in other people’s houses or embassies (!) or factories; indeed, who had such an idyllic childhood themselves. If you have benefited from ANY of these advantages during your working life, SHUT UP about UNIONS or do the right thing and REFUSE your holiday pay, your FAT pension, your sick days, your increments, your weekends off and so on. It has always amused me to hear people griping and moaning about unions. I mean, where do they think all these things came from? Beneficence of the Market? Ask the Filipino women who were treated as serfs in the UAE embassy about “Market Forces”. I’m even more amused at the three or so generations of ‘ladder pullers’ here who are now realizing the HORRIBLE MISTAKE they have made allowing a creature that was a cross between Mammon and Uriah Heep to determine THEIR old age pension and THEIR aged healthcare and the treatment and prospects of THEIR CHILDREN (er, I mean interns) who will suffer because of their short-sightedness, their intellectual and moral weakness and their greed. I hate some of the silly things unions get involved in, like the ‘benchmarking’ process that has become a joke in Ireland, like those stupid situations in the office, where your light bulb has blown but you have to sit there like an eeeeeegit because only unionized electricians can replace light bulbs in the office. Like the ridiculous situation I benefited from in Australia where I was paid 18% bonus in addition to my standard pay (a pay that wasn’t fantastic by the way) when I took days off. The reasoning was that workers on vacation would lose any chance at overtime and so they should be ‘compensated’ for this. Clearly this kind of thing is ridiculous, and I have never approved of it. But I never lose sight of the alternative. We saw an example from the post and cultured and (one presumes selectively well read) ambassador of the UAE. Let’s not disparage Arabs for this – abusing employees in this way is standard practice in the US and conservatives here (a breed who can only handle one idea at a time) have been flirting with the same idea for decades… look at Homer…er I mean John Bruton and Enda! Intellectually and morally barren non-entities. How easily we forget where we were before there were unions (don’t even think of starting me off!) and how readily we turn our faces from the plight of our fellow humans whose situations are rapidly deteriorating now that unions have been effectively emasculated (a process facilitated by their own leadership watching for ‘the big job’ after their union career is over: but this has become standard practice amongst our public ‘representatives’ and it is called ‘career development’ in the private sector, so can we blame them?). How easily we pretend not to be incensed that so many of our university educated children (some with graduate degrees) are being used as disposable, unpaid or risibly paid labour by businesses who, infuriatingly, adopt the attitude that they are to be congratulated for ‘giving young people the opportunity to gain experience’. We have re-jigged slave labour and indentured servitude so it looks like a service to the community! Only conservatives of the Hayek-Reagan-Thatcher mould (i.e. hypocritical amoral sociopaths) – and it IS a ‘mould’, can manage this level of cognitive dissonance. Swift would have had a field day with this material. IN THE MEANTIME – a public letter from one of those crooked union guys From: Michael Wall Sent: 24 November 2014 15:19 Subject: Fwd: Water To all Sector Committee/ Water Committee and Officials “A Chara, It is said in any war the first casualty is the truth. It seems no different in the water war! In last Saturdays Irish Times your Mr. Cliff Taylor is regurgitating some old unfounded and inaccurate statistics which he seems to use to justify his own beliefs. So he gets two plus two to equal five. As the person who has been the lead negotiator for the largest union in the water service I would like to, again, put the record straight and correct the inaccurate references in Mr. Taylors article. The unions in the Local Authority sector have campaigned since the daft idea of pulling apart the existing water delivery system was proposed in 2010. Our members are those who have been working to deliver water and sanitation in a massively under resourced system for a generation and in 2011 we outlined to PwC of the necessity to first develop an integrated system through Regional River Basin Management Systems before ever attempting to dismantle the existing delivery system. This was ignored. We did shout stop…. At the beginning! Existing employment numbers in the Local Authority water service has reduced by some 500 staff since January 2014, how does Mr.Taylor claim that the employment levels are cemented for 12 years? Mr.Taylor also quotes the Prof. John Fitzgerald and his reference to staff numbers, he subsequently withdrew this statement, perhaps Mr.Taylor should also. The Service Level Agreement which he refers to also includes an Annual Service Plan which he ignores. Its purpose is to evaluate efficiency annually, not after 12 years. As trade unions our priority was to defend maintaining water in public ownership during a time when nobody, in the media or politics, had the slightest interest. In 2011 how many made submissions to PwC? In 2013 how many made submissions during the 3 month period of public consultation? The sector unions made a direct 19 page submission to Minister O Dowd in March 2013 in which we warned of the cost of metering, the consequence and cost of setting up a new company, the duplication which would arise and the mayhem that would arise in the time scale the Minister proposed. It was not as Mr. Taylor states that no one shouted stop… its that no one was listening! He then refers to the recent report from the very expensive US multinational consultancy firm NERA, privatisation specialists! Here he selectively quotes that our water system has a 25% higher operational cost. In the very same report it highlights that our water system has 3 times higher power costs, double the number of connections, double the population, double the kilometres of mains, double the number of treatment works and 4 times the area! Interesting that Mr.Taylor also left out another statistic, which is that between now and 2021 one cost of water will increase by over 25%. Not bonuses, not wages but the cost of paying for the Public Private Partnerships that successive governments handed over to private operators. Finally Mr.Taylor, you fundamentally fail to understand why the 12 year reference arrived on the scene. When it dawned on the then Minister that once the legal obligation to provide water and sanitation was removed from the responsibility of the Local Authorities what was preventing any Local Authority who wished to withdraw from the water area? So the 12 year clause was to give the Minister the power to compel Local Authorities to maintain water services – nothing to do with the trade unions. Throughout this entire process from 2011, the unions have consistently warned of the consequences of this policy which has led to the current disaster. In looking for people to blame those who were looking the other way in 2011 should look in their own back yard. This was a conservative and ideological project of Fine Gael with little or no basis in engineering, economics or efficiency and indeed runs contrary to the norms of international and European practice where the general trend is to a return to the municipal delivery of all water and sanitation services.” Mise le meas, Michael Wall Sector Organiser Local Authority Sector SIPTU [email protected] 087 6776672 SIPTU, Liberty Hall, Dublin 1
Posted on: Sun, 30 Nov 2014 23:50:10 +0000
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