u/Unionmanofireland

Dear readers,

Many of you are for the first time in your life embarking on a strike. Many of you have joined a trade union for the first time. Here is some general advice that you might find useful on being a more active trade union member. Majority of this applies to all trade unionists no matter where they are working.

1. Make time to attend the AGM of your branch/structure and vote. Active participation is crucial to ensuring the union reflects your views in their activities.
2. To take it slightly above 1, attend your unions Biannual Delegate Conference as a delegate and participate in the proceedings. Pay close attention to the financial report, ask questions and talk to other delegates. The members are the union.
3. Go to meetings with people who need support. It's daunting going to a meeting alone - offer to attend investigations/grievances/disciplinaries. (It's on company time anyway!)
4. Do your bit in sticking up stickers, handing out flyers to coworkers and talking to people if something is coming up.
5. Challenge your union officials if they're wrong. Yes, officials get it wrong or make mistakes. Don't just rage quit because it's not the way you want it to be, challenge your official. If your official is obstructive then every union has a process where you can lodge a grievance against an official.
6. Keep up to date on what's going on. You don't need to care about everything the union is doing, but keeping on top of the newsletters/information is useful and helpful for yourself and your co-workers.
7. Record / take note / document issues that take place in the job (even if they're for other people). a short email to yourself or a note in your app is good. You never know what will come up. Vigilance for potential breaches of employment law and breaches is key.

Many people don't know this and automatically assume it's simply the way certain companies (Dunnes, Tesco, Lidl etc) operate but a statutory instrument inserted into the Organisation of Working Time Act (S.I. No. 57/1998 - Organisation of Working Time (Breaks At Work For Shop Employees) Regulations, 1998.) stipulates that:

EXPLANATORY NOTE.

My suspicion is that outside of major retailers this is hardly known and many of us, our friends, family members and children are not given the benefit of this mandatory and legal requirement.

By way of background I may or may not be a trade union organiser.

I would like to share a small reflection:

The majority of workers, Irish and non-Irish alike do not understand or know their employment rights.

Google AI is not a substitute for this, neither is Chat GPT. AI will tell you what you want to hear not what you need to hear.

If you are a worker coming to Ireland ( or indeed already working in Ireland ) then join a trade union. A trade union is not just about getting employment advice, it's also about getting a real insight into how employers actually operate versus how they are supposed to operate on paper.

DMs open if anybody has questions/queries about unions.

Thanks!

Hello everybody,

I hope everybody is doing well. I wrote up another post about unionisation being the primary method to take on unfair work practises and exploitation some time ago so I thought I would lean into another underdiscussed topic. The way most of you will be aware of it is around budget day when ministers talk about how their departments budget is the biggest budget it's ever been and how great that is (health, housing etc). The question that arises is about the money and where it is actually going.

As a union official who deals with a lot of companies whose main bread and butter is government contracts I can tell you. The state relies on middlemen outsourcer companies in almost everything it does. The ESB outsource to Circet. The HSE outsource to about a thousand different companies to perform work that the HSE ostensibly should be doing. Department of Education, Housing, infrastructure developments etc- to be more specific you'll find hospitals, the courts, Garda, Irish Rail, Bus Eireann and even some trade unions are engaged in outsourcing of services instead of keeping them in-house.

The primary arguments in favour of outsourcing tend to be that:

1. There are niche skillsets that don't need to be hired on an all year round basis and;

2. It's more expensive to hire people in-house and pay them all the perks/etc that the civil service pays.

I think the first argument is sometimes correct but a brief evaluation of what is outsourced in Ireland will show that outsourcing everything from healthcare assistants to major and minor infrastructure projects (childrens hospital, housing, bike sheds) has only been lucrative for the parasitic outsourcer companies who cream super profits from overpriced government contracts.

In a workplace / union setting this manifests very simply through low wages and lack of any union recognition. There is no reason the HSE/eToll/Electric Ireland/Teaching Council/SUSI should enrich the owners of Abtran who use off-shore company accounts to conceal their income and pay minimum wage with no union recognition. The difference that would be paid to workers on better t/c's isn't being "saved", it's just being hoarded and this is replicated across the board.

The HSE are paying out hundreds of millions if not billions to private care companies (both for profit and not for profit) for service agreements that the HSE should be performing itself. All it is doing is duplicating senior management roles + creating a profit motive in essential services. This should not exist and is a waste of money.

There's many other examples - if one takes time to study public purchase order agreements of semi state and state entities you will see that there is a massive transfer of wealth taking place every day, every week, every month and every year from the public purse to private companies whose owners are reaping the rewards and enriching themselves from the states coffers.

In Britain some trade unions, particularly the RMT, actively fight against outsourcing in the train and tube stations because it only benefits the company owners. They've won many battles. The IWGB a smaller union has successfully won against outsourcing of cleaners in universities through taking strike action.

Unfortunately there is no similar impetus from unions here in Ireland, if anything they've watched services get outsourced and said nothing.

It is a re-occurring theme on reddit and in general for people to raise issues about things happening in their job. You will often see that the advice from many commentators is to take a case, talk to a solicitor or find a new job. In all three instances the solutions are individual, short term and don't fix the primary problem in Irish employee-employer power dynamics.

The problem is very simple. Workers are negotiating from a weaker position, with less leverage and in isolation instead of doing so collectively, together and with the threat and ability to execute industrial action to leverage their demands.

The power imbalance in Irish society skewered heavily towards employers is not balanced by the Workplace Relations Commission. Employers all have a budget for doing people in and make an active calculation before dismissing someone if they can dangle a few grand over their head in the knowledge that a low income earner needs that money more than they do and will accept it. Very few workers get back into their jobs ( or want to ) and the financial compensation that's given is often far below expectations. Medium to large employers know all of this and are not afraid of cases being referred there.

The power imbalance can only be tweaked by regulation, for example if a right to access piece of legislation was brought in that allowed trade unions to access workers in a job with no unions, to talk to them and hear their grievances, but that is nowhere near in sight and will not shift the culture of exploitation and abuse that is rife in many workplaces and jobs. Culture of employer unipolarity does not change overnight, but through time and through struggle.

Workers have all the power in this country. They make the food, they serve it, they clean everything, they manufacture everything, they unload the ships, they drive the busses the fuel the planes. Organising your workplace and taking those first steps can be daunting and it can be easier to jump to a new job in the hopes it'll be better. Organising your workplace takes time and effort that many don't have capacity for. I understand all of these obstacles.

But it's not complicated.

It doesn't need martyrs.

Everybody can play a role in kickstarting the unionisation process in their job.

The organising model is flexible and easily transferrable to most jobs.

Fight for yourself. Fight for your mates. Fight for your co-workers.

Unionise.

"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."

https://preview.redd.it/qp43op8v9p0h1.png?width=1080&format=png&auto=webp&s=043af2d8089a17858441fc4c839226d7ffe226ce

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The Independent Workers' Union invites its members and supporters to attend what is going to be a smashing fundraising and social event hosted by the team over at www.soundguys.ie

Everything raised will be used towards the dispute and in support of our members who lose a days wages when they go on strike.

All union members of all trade unions are invited to come along in support of our brave and courageous healthcare assistants who have been out on strike in the rain, hail and cold in pursuit of reasonable pay increases and pay parity.