Don’t mention the [class] war… Irish Cement Strikes and private sector union activity...

Garry Breen made an excellent point in comments which follows on from the lamentable, but predictable, lack of coverage of the IC strikes.

Why the silence from the Sunday Business Post, the SINDO, Jim Power, Eddie Hobbs, Stephen Collins and all the other ‘defenders’ of the hard-pressed private sector worker? Can’t mention trade union members in a private company on strike can we?

I’ve been enraged by the same dynamic apparent in the crocodile tears shed for private sector workers across the last four or five years. Of course when those tears are shed they are done so not to improve the conditions of private sector workers and push them to higher levels of provision but instead to cut those in the public sector. And as has been stated by the OECD et al, this is done quite consciously for the exemplary effect this has on conditions in the private sector – in other words conditions in the latter disimprove further because unions are not as thoroughly organised.

Eoghan Harris had – perhaps the worst example of this, which I tried to address way back when here.

The basic point is that they/we, ie private sector workers, quite literally do not exist except as an expedient stick to beat the unions and the public sector with. Beyond that – as Garry says – silence.

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