Striking Irish Train Drivers

The ILDA Rail Drivers Strike
Karl Carlile


For approximately eight weeks the members of the Irish Locomotives Drivers'
Association  have been on strike in defence of their living standards and 
conditions
of work. The ILDA strikers are rail drivers employed by Iarnród Éireann , a 
state
company. At the heart of the strike is the anti-democratic way in which Iarnrod
Eireann has sought to implement new conditions of work and pay. The train 
drivers have
been denied the opportunity to vote on the new proposals. ILDA, a trade union, 
that
represents 48% of the train drivers has been denied the democratic right to 
express in
a ballot their position in relation to the new proposals. The proposals have 
been
anti-democratically forced through with the joint collaboration of the 
leadership of
SIPTU and NBRU. The proposals are being implemented with less than the support 
of the
majority of the totality of train drivers in Iarnrod Eireann.

The striking train drivers have had some support from other workers in the 
public
transport sector. Many other public transport workers refused to pass the 
pickets -bus
and rail workers from SIPTU and NBRU. Consequently there has been ongoing 
serious
disruption of public transport services. Sections of the bourgeoisie and the 
petty
bourgeoisie in Ireland have been using this service disruption as an 
opportunity to
promote the neo-liberal agenda of both privatisation of state transport 
companies and
the introduction of more competition into the transport industry.

The ILDA  workers have had to face the savage hostility of the Iarnród Éireann
management, the state, the employers, the bourgeois mass media and the official 
trade
union leadership -particularly NBRU and SIPTU. Despite this they have remained
steadfast. Many transport workers have shown solidarity by refusing to pass 
pickets
and even, in some cases, joining the picket line. They have done this against 
the
instructions of their unions -SIPTU and the NBRU.  The Dublin Bus Workers 
Action Group
have been a valuable agency in mobilising solidarity around the ILDA strikers. 
Brendan
Ogle -the executive secretary of ILDA- , has been demonised by  the 
bourgeoisie, the
mass media together with the SIPTU the NBRU leaderships. Disinformation and 
confusion
has been deployed in the campaign to break the strike.
This ferocious attack by the forces of capitalism against the striking rail 
drivers is
a response to what is essentially a challenge to the state and the reactionary
leadership of the trade union movement. Their very act of unlawful secondary 
picketing
is, ipso facto, a challenge to the state. So far the state has been reluctant to
enforce the law. Its reluctance is an expression of its fear of the masses. It 
is
afraid that enforcing the law may galvanise other sections of the working class 
into
industrial action in solidarity with the ILDA workers. The state view the 
action of
this incipient union as a challenge to its corporatist strategy to keep wages 
down and
worsen conditions of work. Should such a breakaway union be successful it will
encourage growing numbers of workers unhappy with the present trade union 
leadership
to join ILDA or form militant breakaway unions. Such developments in the class
struggle will render it more difficult for the state to continue with its very
successful current  anti-working class strategy of which the Partnership for
Prosperity and Fairness is a concentrated expression.
A victory for ILDA may lead to the undermining of the corporatist leadership of 
the
trade union movement. The employers perceive such a development in the class 
struggle
as a threat to their success in their intensification of the exploitation of the
working class.  The trade union leadership have formed an alliance with both 
the state
and the bourgeoisie to crush ILDA. The President of SIPTU, Des Geraghty, has 
become so
desperate that he has even urged, unsuccessfully, his members to  perform the 
duties
of their striking colleagues -to engage in blacklegging.

In contrast communists must support this strike. They must expose the 
reactionary role
of the corporatist state and the trade union leadership. Communists support this
struggle by showing the working class in general that the ILDA struggle is their
struggle. By revealing the link that exists between this particular struggle 
and the
struggle of the working class in general the working class can come to 
understand that
the ILDA strike is their struggle.

 Should the ILDA workers loose this struggle then this particular defeat is a 
defeat
for the working class in general. It adds to the confidence of the unholy 
alliance of
the reactionary trade union leadership, the state and the bourgeoisie. This 
encourages
it in its strategy to further erode the living standards and working conditions 
of the
working class as a whole. On the other hand a defeat increases demoralisation 
among
the working class discouraging workers from mounting further opposition to the
bourgeoisie and the corporatist state. It encourages conditions that favour a
tightening of control by the pro-bourgeois trade union bureaucracy over the 
organised
working class rendering the conditions for further opposition less favourable.

Communists must show solidarity with the ILDA  workers to  ensure that the 
strike is
effective and call on the working class to generalise the strike into general
opposition against capitalism in defence of its living standards and working
conditions as a class. Support must be expressed at all levels: There must be 
support
in the form of propaganda; agitation; fund raising; sympathetic strikes; 
participation
in the ILDA picket lines and the organising of a defence militia; mass protests 
and
meetings; the organising of solidarity groups  in support of a settlement in 
which the
demands of the train drivers are met.  This is the only way in which the 
success of
the strike can be both guaranteed and developed into a struggle to advance the 
class
interests of the Irish working class.

The state, by means of the courts and industrial relations legislation, have
restricted conditions under which workers can form unions and function as 
negotiating
bodies. It has also restricted the conditions under which workers can 
picket-secondary
picketing has been outlawed. ILDA is a victim of these oppressive conditions.
Communists  should demand that these restrictions be lifted. Workers must 
challenge
theses impositions which would not have been introduced without the support of 
the
trade union leadership.

The state must be forced to negotiate with ILDA. The absurdity of a situation 
in which
the state and its subaltern, the Iarnrod Eireann management, cannot negotiate 
with
ILDA, even if wanted to, should be exposed and fought against as one more 
oppressive
capitalist contradiction. The state has been increasingly involved in the 
restriction
and regulation of industrial relations which means that the state has been
increasingly involved in the regulation and restriction of the class struggle. 
This
interventionism is meant to limit the struggles of the working class thereby
precluding their development into a revolutionary challenge to the capitalist 
state.
These  restrictions on the expression of the class interests of the working 
class form
part of a systemic attempt by the bourgeoisie to prevent the working class from
politically developing in a revolutionary direction. The working class must 
break
these shackles. If the working class is to effectively organise and fight for 
the
defence  of its living standards and conditions of work then it is necessary 
that it
extends its struggle beyond the procrustean limits imposed by the state. To 
break
these fetters the working class must organise against the current trade union
leadership. Without the connivance of this leadership no such limitations would 
exist.
Indeed these restrictions are the form by which this reactionary leadership 
seeks to
guarantee its own survival. The trade union leadership has formed an alliance 
with the
state to constrain the freedom of the working class to struggle to advance its 
class
interests.

The state, by placing legal impositions on the way the class struggle is 
conducted,
has rendered  struggle by the working class in defence of its living standards 
and
conditions of work ipso facto a matter of direct confrontation with the state. 
The
imposition of legal  constraint on class struggle invests such struggle with an
explicitly political character. Capitalism has thus put another nail in its 
coffin.
Because of the growing inherent contradictory character of capitalism the 
bourgeoisie
solve one problem by creating another. The state is forced to become 
increasingly more
corporatist in order to protect itself from the working class. The struggle to 
defend
living standards and conditions of work has increasingly acquired such a 
challenging
character that the state is forced to regulate and restrict industrial disputes 
within
the limits of the capital relation. This logically implies that the struggle to 
defend
wages and conditions of work is implicitly a political issue and consequently a
question of the nature of state power and in whose hands it should be.

The latest development is that the linesmen employed by Iarnrod Eireann have 
deferred
their threatened strike action in view of an apparently improved offer by 
Iarnrod
Eireann management. Clearly management were prepared to offer improved  
conditions to
the linesmen in an effort to break the ILDA strike. The offer was made as part 
of a
strategy to maintain and increase the isolation of ILDA.
ILDA demands that the minimal condition for a return to work must be  based on 
its
former conditions of work. Furthermore ILDA must demand the democratic right to 
vote
on the issue of  any new  proposals concerning working and pay conditions. ILDA 
must
demand that all of the three unions  involved in the matter organise a ballot 
of the
rail drivers. Acceptance of the proposals must be accepted or rejected on the 
basis of
majority voting. Before any proposals be put to the workers ILDA, NBRU and 
SIPTU must
form part of the committee appointed to draft new proposals. ILDA must urge 
NBRU and
SIPTU members to call on its leadership to put an end to their alliance with 
the state
and the bosses and to desist immediately from activity that undermines ILDA. It 
must
call on the rank and file of these two unions to condemn the treachery of their
leadership towards the ILDA workers.

Karl Carlile

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