Resistance breeds hope, passivity only breeds despair.

BAILING OUT THE RICH

The National Executive Committee of the Communist Party of Ireland, at
its first meeting of the new year on the 17th January , called on the
labour movement to resist any and all attempts to place the burden of
the growing economic crisis on the backs of workers, small businesses,
family farmers, pensioners, the sick, and the youth.

There is a constant and growing stream of attacks from the Government
and their hired guns, the bankrupt establishment economists who have not
one single idea about the nature or the extent of the economic crisis
enveloping our nation.

The present Government, all the establishment parties and the employers’
organisations have declared open war, ideologically and on the shop
floor, on working people’s wages, working conditions, and pensions. The
constant assault on health, education, transport and other public
services is now a daily feature of the mass media, coupled with the
employers’ organisations, such as IBEC and the Construction Industry
Federation, attempting to use the crisis to take back rights won by
workers over decades, including shift allowance, overtime payment,
pensions, and service increments.

The Government is running to the rescue of its financial backers,
exposing Irish workers to possible hundreds of millions in debt. They
have virtually doubled the national debt overnight. This is socialising
the debts while capital remains firmly under private ownership and
control. Working people are being asked to bail out those secret
visitors over the last decade who were wined and dined in the Fianna
Fáil tent at the Galway Races.

We have experienced over a decade and half of unprecedented economic
growth, and what have working people gotten from it. Over crowded and
run down schools, a health service that is not able to cope, a public
transport system underdeveloped, homeowners saddled with over priced
homes, tens of thousands of empty homes while the numbers of homeless
grows by the day. The divide between the rich and the poor is greater
now than ever before. Growing inequality is the order of the day.

There is a growing list of company closures, including Dell and
Waterford Crystal, as well as the announcement of substantial reductions
in the number of workers in such companies as Google, Seagate, F. G.
Wilson, and Nortel.

The decision by the Fianna Fáil coalition Government to nationalise
Anglo-Irish Bank has exposed the Irish people to unknown millions of
euros of debt. This is corporate welfare on a scale unimaginable. This
bank has been overexposed to the untrammelled greed of property
developers in speculative investment, not only here in Ireland but
around the globe.

The labour movement needs to organise now to resist these growing
attacks. Pensioners, teachers, pupils and parents have shown that
resistance produces results. The defence of public services is also a
defence of public-service workers’ terms and conditions of employment.
The political and economic forces that arrogantly told us there was no
other way for the last two decades now claim to have the panacea for the
growing economic collapse.

The state sector in the economy provides stability and is the biggest
purchaser of goods and services. Its many workers put millions of euros
into the economy every week. Allowing these attacks to succeed will only
further damage an economy already tottering on the brink and will plunge
tens of thousands of working-class families into deeper financial
straits than those in which they already are.

Public money should not be used to bail out bankers, speculators and
failed politicians but should be invested in the immediate establishment
of a state development bank to begin the necessary steps to rebuild our
economy and develop our infrastructure in a targeted and planned way.
Centred on the control and planned development of our natural resources
by the state. The strategy of over reliance on transnational
corporations is coming unstuck.

There needs to be a serious debate within the wider labour movement in
relation to the restrictions on our ability to take economic and
political decisions resulting from EU treaties. It is clear that EU
economic priorities are shaped and determined by the big economic powers
at the heart of the EU. We need to have an open and frank discussion in
relation to the repatriation of powers that a small open economy needs
in order to give us more flexibility in dealing with our growing
economic problems.

There is an urgent and growing need for an all-Ireland approach to
economic and social development. The reliance on foreign capital has
failed our people, north and south. We need to maximise the control of
capital so as to ensure that the economic and social priorities of
working people are met, not just those of corporate and political elites.

This Government is risking the livelihood, the homes and the future of
millions of working people. It is time for a different direction. It is
time those who created the crisis were made to pay for it, not working
people.

Our country and our working people are being sacrificed to bail out the
corrupt and bankrupt economic and political elite. Resistance to the
attacks on workers’ wages and conditions is the only forward. Resistance
breeds hope, passivity only breeds despair.