Amid all the razzle and dazzle of recovery and the claims that we have never had it so good there stands one document that tells the truth. It tells workers of some of the measures that have been taken to help the Coalition stay in power. More significantly it tells of the reality that will face us after the election promises have come and gone. That document is the Lansdowne Road agreement, as approved by the trade union leadership to extend until September 2018 the period of their collaboration in the Public Service Stability Agreement. None of the political actors, filled with election frenzy, have made any effort to alert workers to the content of the document.

Lansdowne Road is an extension of the previous Haddington Road deal in the Croke Park series that has witnessed the Irish labour movement capitulation to the Troika programme, justified as saving jobs and services while agreeing speedup, wage cuts and the decimation of public services,

Haddington Road included emergency legislation, FEMPI, which allowed the coalition government to seize wages and pensions from workers who rejected the deal. 

Easing off on the bit.

There are claims on all sides that we have exited the bail-out and returned to the days of the Celtic Tiger.  There is, however, no intention to relax their drive towards privatisation and the sell off of state assets. 

The sweetener in Lansdowne Road is a rigging of the pensions levy which will allow workers some increased income and a minimal increase in wage as the result of the partial reversal of the pay cuts of 2010.  The union side concentrates almost entirely on the pay element which they insist will ‘restore a total of around €2,000 to most public servants’.

This is to be achieved by adjusting the threshold at which the pensions levy is paid, raising it from the current threshold of €15,000 to €24,000 from January 2016. 

For lower paid workers on €24,000 or less who will have benefited little from the shifting of the threshold a 2.5% pay increase will apply. This is the component that is being trumpeted as wage restoration but when we consider that cuts of up to 20% were imposed in 2010 the 2.5%, €11.54pw or less pro rata that it represents or the maximum of €5.96pw for those benefiting from the 1% increase for those earning between €24,001 and €31,000 is paltry. 

The second phase of the deal comes in on September 2016 when the pension levy threshold increases to €28,750 which will push the pay increase on most full time incomes up by €19 per week approximately. The following year on the same date the same increase will be activated meaning another €19. 

Pay restoration for those earning more than €65,000 will remain as has been negotiated during the Haddington Road deal and will apply on Jan 2017 and again on the January 2018 pay  anniversary.

For lower paid workers and part time staff this is not a large sum of money, it will not be fully realised until the end of 2018 by which time inflation which is widely predicted to rise considerably by the end of this year and to continue rising will have begun to erode part of its advantage. 

In the meantime the amount that public sector workers will have gained before election time will amount to little more than the price of a coffee and a sandwich and even when the full increase is rolled out, if the government strategy is successful, it is nothing that could not easily be clawed back through changes to taxation or to the successful implementation water charges which the agreement also addresses.

The Better, Fairer political manoeuvre.

The bureaucrats at ICTU, however, are keen to convince workers that we are en route towards their ‘Better, Fairer Way’ and its Public Service Committee has trumpeted the deal as having “achieved the objective of fairness” but the pay offer being presented as a ‘restoration’ is not even retrospective. To restore the pay they would need to repay what they have taken, so any talk of restoration is empty. Since 2010 the bondholders have pocketed five years’ worth of workers money at the rate of up to 20% of their annual income, not to mention the €17.5 billion contained in the national pension fund reserve, and no mention is made of restoring it.

The claims of restoration serve a political purpose. The role of the labour party is being played up with the story being put around that the pay increase was their doing and that Brendan Howlin intervened with the Taoiseach ‘personally’ during negotiations. 

Howlin is claiming great things for the deal, announcing that “We now want to map out a path for pay recovery.” The Troika’s slackening of the reins which is being portrayed as the beginnings of a wage recovery is in reality designed to buy time at a crucial moment in the political cycle and act as a shot in the arm for the Labour party and Fine Gael, rallying their middle class support and gaining a marginal hold on their electorate or at least limiting the damage. 

What is not in the deal is also of importance. There is no let-up in speed-up, promotion bans, selective recruitment bans and extra hours added to work. The workers will pay many times over for the limited restoration given to them.

And in the fine print is a long standing rationalisation agenda. This is actually a demand that any profitable or saleable elements of public service will be sold off. The same goal is set for all of Ireland’s publically owned natural resources and public property – the fire sale of property to vulture capitalism in New York is well advanced.  

The mechanisms of class collaboration.

The deal outlines the continuation of ICTU’s policy of compliance with austerity in to the foreseeable future. It states that “Just as public sector reform has been a key element in Ireland’s recovery, it must be sustained in to the future.” This is to be underpinned by the extensive ‘reform’ programme that is in place as part of the agreement and which, under the heading of ‘Delivering Greater Productivity’, includes a recognition that to achieve the objectives contained in the reform programme a ‘commitment’ is needed to the participation in ‘jointly supported mechanisms to resolve disagreement’. 

These ‘jointly supported mechanisms’ routinely find for government and employers and are there to facilitate agreement on a broad raft of cutbacks in health, education, local government and the civil service and it specifically includes Irish Water. The labour movement leadership is signing up and giving a commitment to the government to resolve any difficulties surrounding the privatisation of water while national mass rallies and hundreds of smaller protests around the country demand that the plans are scrapped. 

Contradictions for the ‘left bureaucracy’.

Up until the agreement of Lansdowne Road working class discontent had produced sharp strains in the union leaderships. The majority wanted to tough out the anger and force through water privatisation by arguing that there was no alternative. The left, while having signed up to the new company, arranged for their members to transfer over, and agreed to the privatisation goal, felt it was possible to work outside the union structures to lead public protests on the narrow grounds of charges. They were successful beyond their wildest dreams.

The water campaign then divided into an initial phase, where the government sharply reduced charges but major unions fought against the mobilisation. In the second phase, with the Lansdowne Road agreement mapped out and water privatisation agreed, saw a restoration of unity among the bureaucracy. The demonstrations were led around the houses and a new aim of a constitutional protection against charges agreed – this had initially been put forward by SIPTU as a way of demobilising the protests. The final demonstration declared no aims at all and fitted with a long-standing tradition of a show of force to strengthen the union hand in advance of final budget  negotiations.

The final phase has seen Right2Water mothballed and replaced by Right2Change. It has produced a Programme for a Progressive government that contains no real demands or calls for action but that substitutes any mention of a socialist alternative with the rhetoric of human rights. This was to produce an alliance for a left government, but it has become clear that its real function was to build a lifebelt around Sinn Fein that would substitute for the collapse of the Labour party element of the current coalition.

Build trade union opposition and struggle.

We must begin building opposition to ICTU’s policies instead of attempting opportunist electoralist and populist short cuts. The trade union movement, whose leaders have made these treacherous deals at Lansdowne road, is the largest working class organisation in Ireland, it cannot be bypassed and its reactionary leadership cannot be ignored out of existence, they must be confronted. Neither is there a distinct strategy particular to the ‘left’ of the bureaucracy, the essential interests and strategy of the bureaucracy remain the same, only the relationship with the Labour Party and the tactics differ. 

The tragedy of the current situation is that not only is the next period of austerity laid out in front of us in the Lansdowne Road agreement – there is also substantial opposition. A number of unions have seen the agreement voted down but have announced they will accept the majority decision of ICTU in the face of their members’ wishes. Other major unions, including secondary teachers have said that they will not comply and the Coalition has threatened their members with wage cuts under the FEMPI legislation. ICTU silence is scabbing in the face of intimidation.  The potential of the situation is shown by a massive rejection by Garda rank and file. 

Our duty should be clear. Publicise a critique of Lansdowne Road and of ICTU collaboration with the Troika. Build solidarity movements with the workers. Demand that the leaders of the opposition unions come up with an action plan to meet their members’ demands. Sadly what we have is capitulation to the left bureaucracy and raging election fever. 

Before we can begin to expect success in the conquest of political power we must first conquer and democratise our own organisations. The trade union movement must be rebuilt, this can only be done from the bottom up by openly building a democratic rank and file movement and campaigning for a fighting anti austerity programme. No small task but unavoidable. 

Such a fighting organisation anchored in the heart of the organised working class would serve as a rallying point for other campaigns which must organise on the most thoroughly democratic basis, building unity with all communities and all groups involved in the resistance to water charging, to austerity and to imperialism. Such a struggle can give birth to a new revolutionary movement but democracy and openness is essential. Most importantly the protesters must stay on the streets and raise the demand that the trade unions withdraw from Irish Water and take immediate industrial action against austerity including a refusal to co-operate with further state ‘reforms’, which is code for cuts and mass privatisation.