Trade Unions and the CPI
Part 1
We understand that all political processes need time to develop and grow in strength. Allowing for this fact, we invite you to consider these extracts from a Communist Party of Ireland statement dated 11 January, 2022. Titled “The need to build working class unity and fight back” here it is a report on the first meeting of the National Executive Committee of the Party in 2022 and it “evaluated the current national economic, political and social situation and the challenges now facing the working class:”
“Halt the decrease! Pay the increase!
The Communist Party of Ireland makes the call to the trade union movement to launch a campaign to halt the decrease in wages by demanding an increase in pay to protect workers from continuing inflation. We call on the movement to instigate a mobilisation effort of its members of as many sectors to ensure the most effective weapon against this attack on wages. Working people across Ireland need to demand a pay increase.”
Question 1 How, exactly, was this call transmitted to the trade union movement?
“The trade union movement needs to develop a pro-active strategy to secure greater pay, terms and conditions for workers. The ICTU needs to move from passively adopting resolutions to actively begin to mobilise workers to demand and secure legal changes that give workers the power to defend themselves, including an end to precarious employment and bogus self-employment and to advance their collective interests in their place of work without fear of reprisal.”
And “The CPI call upon all trade unions across Ireland to support the Trade Union Freedom Bill which is going before the Stormont Assembly to ensure that it meets the needs and strengthens the rights of workers.”
Question 2 How, exactly, was this transmitted to the trade union movement?
“Workers must organise a relentless campaign for the trade union leadership to initiate a national campaign for a new workers’ rights act to tip the balance of power back to workers away from capital”.
Question 3 What did the CPI do to initiate or organise this “relentless campaign”?
“What is clear, as we begin a new year, is that the unity of working people of all-Ireland is more necessary now than ever before if we are to defend ourselves from the ravages of Covid, inflation on our living standards and autocracy from our democracy. Unity is what is needed to advance our interests in the economic, political and social spheres. Workers need to be actively involved in their trade unions, not to be confined by what they are, but to be empowered by what they could be by unleashing the potential that lies within our organised collective strength”.
Question 4 Exactly what role did the CPI play to ensure that workers are “empowered” and that this “unity” be initiated or advanced?
Indeed, there is one line in this statement that the CPI should first apply to itself: “The ICTU needs to move from passively adopting resolutions to actively begin to mobilise…..”
The incessant stream of demands that emerges from the CPI is not only embarrassing but exposes the Party to avoidable scrutiny about its own activities – or, in this case, what we believe is its lack of activity. As always, we concede that we may be wrong. It may be that the Party can answer these questions with detailed replies. If so, we will publish any reply we receive.
“The ICTU needs to move from passively adopting resolutions to actively begin to mobilise…..”
Otherwise, if the CPI does not answer the questions, directly or indirectly, we may seek answers from the ICTU and from individual trade unions to try to ascertain if they received any form of communication from the CPI and also try to ascertain how they responded to any communication, if such communication was made.
We cannot find any report anywhere in CPI publications concerning the success or otherwise of these particular ‘initiatives’. Either way, it would have been a big story: the ICTU and individual trade unions did – or did not – respond to the CPI campaign.
These are legitimate questions to ask the CPI to answer, no matter who is asking, as they refer directly to a declared statement published by the Party itself.
Over to you, CPI.