Gateway, Irish unions and state

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Gateway in Dublin was the headquarters of its  European operation. It also
served part of the Asian market.  It employed over nine hundred
workers. Its Dublin operation was union free. The closure of Gateway
offers us the opportunity to examine the character of the relationship
between the multinational companies, such as Gateway, the state and
the trade unions in Ireland.

It is clear that one of the conditions of Gateway investing in Ireland is that
it be permitted to operate its plants independently of the unions. Obviously the
Irish governments in question accepted this conditions in return for the massive
capital injection. The trade unions, as represented by the ICTU, were prepared
to co-operate with this arrangement and not make an issue of the relatively high
number of large American corporations investing in Ireland and refusing to
entertain trade unions. The trade unions in Ireland have conspicuously made no
serious attempt to establish a membership in these corporations.

It is clear that in return for such co-operation the governments of the day were
prepared to trade off the co-operation of the trade unions here in return for
certain concessions of one sort or another. Who knows what these concessions
were? A softer stance  by the state concerning aspects of the parnership
agreements over pay and conditions, increased subsidies to the trade unions! As
well as that the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) was prepared to pander to
the state and capitalism itself in return for increased capital investment in
Ireland. The ICTU  has a vested interest in promoting the development of foreign
capital in Ireland.

The very same trade union movement figured prominently in the attack and
demonisation of the ILDA train drivers, a very small group of Irish train
drivers, who were fighting for the right to join a trade union of their own
choice. Yet they preserve a silence when it comes to the policy of American
multinational corporations policies of not recognising unions and forbidding its
workers from participating in trade unions. Clearly one of the factors
explaining such foreign investment in Ireland is support by government and trade
union movement for anti trade union policies on the part of these corporations.

It is clear that so called Irish prosperity has been heavily dependent on a form
of foreign investment, hight tech as it is called, in Ireland. This leaves the
Irish economy very vulernable to any adverse economic changes. In a downturn it
is  clear, given the conditions of that market, that high tech commodities and
its software will be among the first to suffer. The withdrawal of the Gateway
corporation from Ireland is evidence of this reality.

Because of the lack of organisation of over 900 hundred industrial workers it is
likely that these workers will be sacked from their work with a minimum
statutory redundancy package. Had they been organised their is a greater
liklihood that they might have been able to secure, at the very least, a better
redundancy package. Guinness workers, longstanding union members, have secured a
redundancy package that is much more than the statutory minimum. The statutory
minimum is a half week pay for every year worked if the worker is under forty
one years old. Above that one week for every year. Exaccerbating the problem is
the fact that Gateway has only been in the country nine years which means that
the statutory minimum will turn out to be quite low.

The case of the Gateway workers who have been abandoned by the trade unions is
evidence of the incapacity of the bourgeois trade union movement to serve the
needs of the working class. This appalling situation reveals the need for
workers, such as those working  for Gateway, to organise workplace committees as
a revolutionary alternative to the decadent trade unions.

Support the setting up of workplace committees!

Regards
Karl Carlile
Be free to join our communism mailing list
at http://homepage.eircom.net/~kampf/