we need a one day national stoppage!!

(people in iceland protesting daily)

Socialist Worker Leaflet

• No Pay Cuts or Pension Levies

• Bail out Jobs and Services not the Bankers

• Support the Waterford Crystal Sit In.

The pension levy on public sector workers is an outrage. Many low and middle income employees, who have taken out large mortgages, simply cannot afford to pay it.

The levy is another name for a pay cut:

• An employee on €45,000 will pay an extra €63 a week.
• An employee on €35,000, €43 a week

This pay cut is on top of a 1 percent levy on gross income and the deferment of all wage rises due under the current partnership deal.

Public sector workers did not cause the economic mess.

Nor are they the ‘bloated’ over-paid sector portrayed by the media. According to the OECD, Ireland has the third lowest rate of public expenditure compared to Gross Domestic Product, just ahead of Korea and Mexico.

Public sector workers already pay a 6.5% contribution to their pension. The real problem is not public sector workers but private sector employers who want to pay nothing to their employees’ pension funds.

While public sector workers are being attacked, the government is putting up €8 billion to ‘re-capitalise’ the banks. Despite all the talk of a ‘national effort’ to solve the crisis, no extra taxes have been imposed on the super-wealthy.

Instead of bailing out bankers, the government should put money into saving the jobs at Waterford Crystal and other areas where workers are being made redundant.

We need a massive programme of public works to help people who have been made redundant.

In this ecocomic crisis, workers are once again being asked to carry the can - while the super rich, who helped to cause the economic collapse through speculation, get off scott free.

A NATIONAL SHUT DOWN

This is entirely unacceptable. The unions need to organise serious action to resist these pay cuts. Talking and complaining is not enough when the very future of the trade union movement is at stake.

We need a one day national shut-down - and French style protests to demonstrates our opposition.

Public sector workers should initiate this one day shut down and invite private sector workers, who are facing pay cuts and redundancies, to join the action.

If such action is not organised by union leaders, it will have to come from the grassroots.

The over-70s showed how ‘people power’, how a mass movement from below could bring about some measure of social justice. Now is the time for the trade unions to do the same.