On 4 February 2020, hundreds of second-level schools closed as a result of a strike by 19,000 teachers, members of the Teachers’ Union of Ireland (TUI). These teachers voted by a massive 92% to 8% to engage in a campaign of industrial action. The issue driving teachers to strike is a simple one: people doing exactly the same job should get the same pay. Yet this principle is violated throughout the public sector as a result of savage cuts imposed by the Fine Gael / Labour government that formed on 25 February 2011.

A two-tier pay system was put in place that punishes those who took up jobs from 1 January 2011 onwards, as a 10% reduction in basic pay was imposed on new teachers and all new entrants were obliged to start on the bottom point of the pay scale regardless of previous teaching experience. Additional cuts to certain allowances meant new teachers lost up to 15% of their pay. The pay gap in starting salaries between post-2011 teachers and those employed before 2011 is over €4,000 a year even when not taking into account the fact that before 2011 teachers started on the third point of their scale.

Unity among teacher unions is the way to win pay-parity

There are three teaching unions in Ireland, the TUI, the ASTI (Association of Secondary Teachers in Ireland) and the INTO (Irish National Teachers’ Organisation), while the latter focus on primary education, they too have been trying to achieve pay parity, by taking a court case to the European Court of Justice, claiming discrimination on the grounds of age. This case was lost so now the hope of INTO members will be that their colleagues in second-level schools win their strike and therefore pave the way for all teachers to win back equal pay. The INTO should also now ballot for strike action on the issue.

For the ASTI, the situation is similar, in that these teachers too consider the issue of ending the two-tier pay system an urgent one, the union describing it as a ‘shocking stain’. Unfortunately for teachers as a whole, the ASTI and the TUI have, up to now, not stood together in tackling the issue.  The ASTI went into battle on the issue in 2016 and were knocked back, having to retreat with only small gains and having incurred punitive costs. The government imposed penalties on ASTI members for having ‘repudiated’ the public service agreement and these penalties amount to some €15million in lost increments and other benefits.

Naturally, ASTI members have a great deal of bitterness about this situation but Independent Left urge them to direct that bitterness at the government not their colleagues. Now is the perfect time to push forward on this issue. This is not so much because of the election – although there is no harm at all getting candidates to commit to restoring pay parity – but more because right throughout the public sector there is a growing mood for action on this issue. The nurses who struck in February 2019 made some gains and, perhaps more importantly, the government was sufficiently worried that they didn’t try to repeat the punishment of imposing penalties. They know public sector workers are much closer to a major revolt across the board than they were in 2016. Since the ASTI took the lead on the issue, three years of rising rents, medical costs, child care costs and a general increase in stressful living has changed the mood of other workers.

ASTI members should be proud of being the first into this battle and welcome the fact that reinforcements are now joining the cause. Ideally, all three teacher unions should co-ordinate strike action on this issue for the same day. At a minimum, teachers have to respect one another’s picket lines.

The ASTI, TUI and INTO leadership cannot officially call for members not to cross picket lines as it is illegal to do so (highlighting the importance of the demand by Councillor John Lyons, who is standing in Dublin Bay North for General Election 2020, that the 1990 Industrial Relations Act be abolished). Independent Left have no such constraint and as we take inspiration from the lives of James Connolly and Jim Larkin, we appreciate how essential is solidarity and respect for picket lines to winning strikes. Moreover, the ASTI have said:

the union will support any member who does not pass a picket should disciplinary action be threatened or taken against them.

They have also asked members not to undertake any duties performed by TUI members and this alone should be sufficient on health and safety grounds to cause many schools to close, even where the numbers of TUI strikers are small.

Independent Left support the TUI strike on 4 February 2020

Probably, over 400 schools will be closed by the strike of 4 February 2020, including the 260 Education and Training Boards’ schools. This strike is a powerful way to bring the campaign for pay parity forward and regardless of who forms the next government, the new cabinet will inherit real pressure to make concessions.

From the point of view of parents, having to come up with a contingency arrangement for our children is a challenge. But it is very much in our interests to support the teachers. For one, the low pay in the sector is leaving schools short-staffed. Over ninety percent of secondary schools report difficulty filling posts. More generally, education is in desperate need of an injection of funding. And, of course, the demand of the teachers is an entirely fair one.

This is why Independent Left members went to the picket lines on 4 February to show our support for the striking teachers and we encourage parents and the public to do the same.

Strikes, especially general strikes, are the most effect form of protest we have.

Our education system discriminates against working class communities

Supporting teachers in the struggle to win parity of pay and, indirectly, to improve recruitment and retention rates is just one facet of a radical overhaul of the education system that is needed. As John Lyons highlighted in his election 2020 campaign as candidate in Dublin Bay North, we still have far too many schools under church control. My son goes to one where the principal circulates material against same-sex relationships, material which sees diversity as a plot by the UN to reduce population growth! John Lyons also is drawing attention to the need for meaningful supports to be put in place to allow all children equality of access. Although the government boasts of increase employment for SNAs, the fact that SNA hours have been reduced and the number of children requiring support has increased means the overall service is a long way behind that of 2013, when the Fine Gael – Labour government slashed SNA hours. The recent changes to the resource allocation model of NCSE is a particular disaster for visually impaired children.

Just looking at the school buildings in different parts of the city and your intuition will tell you something is wrong in Irish education. If you stroll past Wesley fee-paying school, for example, you’ll see two resurfaced hockey pitches, two cricket pitches, another for soccer. No less than four for rugby and if you got a glimpse inside you’d see two basketball courts a major hall and a gym. In 2018, Wesley obtained €150,000 from Shane Ross from the Sports Capital Programme to for those resurfaced hockey pitch. And for our kids on Dublin’s north side? Typically they play soccer on tarmac or, as in my son’s school, in a car park.

Research by Gerry Kearns, Professor of Human Geography, Maynooth University allows us to visualise the bias in education in Dublin. As he puts it:

There is a wedge of privilege extending southwards from the city centre. If we map the proportion of people going from school to college, the districts with the schools most likely to send students to college form a coherent band on the southside (Dublin postal districts 2, 4, 6, 6W and 14, and the local authority of Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown).

This discrimination can be overcome, but not without a challenge to decades of neglect for our schools from Fine Gael and Fianna Fail and their coalition partners.

On Wednesday 5 February thousands of childcare workers went on strike to march in Dublin in protest at the crisis in childcare. Independent Left members fully supported this action. Yes, it was a challenge to arrange alternative childcare for the day but action was urgently needed and the march was a necessity. Not only did the protest show how powerful and united is the sector, but it was met with a hugely positive public response as we all know how the sector needs radical changes.

The state needs to follow the example from the rest of Europe and subsidise childcare, treating it as an essential service, not a for-profit sector.

The march was organised by the Early Years Alliance an organisation facilitated by SIPTU and consisting of workers, providers, unions and parents.

I spoke to a childcare worker who participated in the action and shared our childcare policy with her. Her description of her daily life provides a powerful illustration of why this strike was necessary.

My husband starts work at 7.30 a.m. so it’s my job to get the kids up and to school. I have two boys, eight years and three years. I drop my eight-year-old off at the school gates at 8.30 to hang around until 8.50: no other way to get him to school and me to work. I got stuck in traffic on the M50 on my way to work as a childworker. I’m very lucky that my three-year-old attends the same creche as me, so only one drop-off for me.

Today, I got to work with five minutes to spare; I’m usually fifteen minutes early, I have to be. Planning needs to be done, the classroom needs to be set up, etc. I bring my son to his classroom where two staff are already setting up the room, completing planning sheets and general organising of the room for the children’s arrival at 9 a.m. Their shift doesn’t start until 9, we only get paid from 9, yet they’ve been here at least twenty minutes setting up. They are very kind to take my son five minutes early so I can get to my classroom and begin my set up.

As the day goes on, we have a first aid incident. We have a child protection concern. I am organising a Together Old and Young visit to a local nursing home. I speak with a parent who is concerned about her child’s development, all within the first hour-and-a-half. We are told we are short staffed today and full time staff need to take a shorter lunch to accommodate. This is not a bad day, just a regular one in this line of work. I also have to discuss the upcoming protest with parents.

Overall, they are very sympathetic to our cause and those who are able to will arrange other means of childcare for Wednesday 5 February to alleviate some staff to attend the protest.

My shift finishes at 1 p.m. and I go to collect my son. But as usual I don’t leave my room on time because someone always needs something: a hug goodbye, a form signed, a conflict between children that needs resolution or even a staff member who needs to go and use the toilet!

I collect my son and he is full of smiles and chats about what he has done that day. He says a fond goodbye to his teachers as if they were his friends!

All of this is so important in our society and I am sick and tired of feeling the way I do in this sector. Yes, I love my job but hugs and smiles and a child’s positive progress doesn’t pay the bills… never even mind the cost of childcare.

Upon reading your article, admittedly, I had a chip on my shoulder, ready to read about ‘tax breaks’ and ‘extended ecce’. I was nicely surprised. It’s nice to see childcare workers being mentioned more than once and in a positive manner.

Zappone says I should join a union if I have a grievance… my problems are not with the management team of the creche, it’s with the state and the ridiculously high expectations they are putting on me and my colleagues.

Sixteen years I’m working in this sector and I’m losing faith.

Everything that is in the link you sent me is true. The whole sector needs an overhaul, childcare should never be for profit! In all the different positions I’ve had, the worst practice I’ve seen has been in private centres and it is not through the fault of the staff.

Change needs to happen it MUST be done in collaboration with the people who are actually on the ground working directly with the children. All these new schemes sound amazing, but when they are put into practice it just pushes us further and further to breaking point.

Thank you for giving me a bit of hope for the future of my profession.

Councillor John Lyons expressed his full support for the strike.

Parents shouldn’t be paying such high costs for childcare and staff should be given increased pay and a proper career path with full training. This campaign can win and the protest on 5 February is the right way to go about forcing the new government, whoever is in power, to listen and to respond.

Interview with a community childcare worker ahead of the strike of 5 February 2020

In advance of the strike by childcare workers, I spoke to ‘Anne-Marie’ who works in a community childcare centre.

NMcD: Why are you going on the protest?

A-M: I’m going on the protest to support the early years professionals in the community and private sectors who for years have been under huge pressure, who are not treated as professionals, who are expected to hold the rest of the country by looking after and educating the children; for children with additional needs; for afterschool clubs; for everybody.

For all these years we’ve got very little extra funding, we’ve got more people coming an assessing us and making sure we are doing our jobs. We have, I think, eight different government bodies that come in at the drop of a hat to see what we’re doing and to make sure we are doing everything right. And that’s fine, we’re all about good governance and transparency but it’s just constant.

Then there is new childcare funding, which came out in November, is making it even more difficult for parents and for services to be sustainable. Every couple of years funding gets changed and we never know from one year to the next year if we can be sustainable and continue to run the community service that we run. It’s not good.

We’re a community. So we are middle of the road paid, compared to the girls that are on ten Euro-something an hour but it’s below the Living Wage and it’s not good enough.

NMcD: It’s a community creche that you run here. We’re in an area of economic deprivation in north Dublin. Can you tell me the kind of service that you provide and support you give to families in the area and why it is important that we need to fund community creches?

A-M: This community service has been running for a long time in this area. Like all the other community services out there, particularly in areas with disadvantage, we have children with a lot of additional needs, not just official additional needs but because of their lifestyle and home circumstances. We’ve a lot of homeless children; children whose parents have experienced addiction; who are in recovery; young parents who have left school early. A lot of single mums. And that just puts extra pressure on the children, because of whatever’s going on at home. The children all come here and get a breakfast; they get a proper home-cooked meal. Not everybody is going home to a cooked meal with fresh fruit and vegetables every day. They are really cared for and looked after here. It is the home from home, well that’s what we want it to be. But it’s very difficult to provide that when your funding and constraints are there.

I think in an area like this it should be like a DEIS service, where we have additional staff to provide the care and support that the children need. We have a lot of parents that would come to the office looking for different supports, whether it’s things going on at home. It’s more than just drop your child and run out the door. We provide additional supports: we have a lot of children that are referred to social workers, public health nurses, Focus Ireland. We do support the whole family. We do refer children on to psychologists, speech therapists for additional supports. It’s constant it’s full on.

When you look at the funding over the last few years, for example, the ten years since they put up the ECCE scheme (that’s the three hour sessions per day for the pre-school groups), that’s for thirty-eight weeks per year. When that started ten years ago it was €64.50 per week per child, ten years later it is €69. So that’s an increase of four Euro fifty in ten years. That’s the equivalent of forty-five cent a year. Now we give the children breakfast, we give the children lunch, we have to pay the staff when they are on holiday because it is not covered by the funding, these staff possibly have to go and look for jobs in the summer or sign on in the summer, so that’s a lot of women – predominantly – who are signing on through the summer. We want permanent jobs, proper wages and we want support from the government to make that happen.

NMcD: In an ideal world, how would you like government support to run to make life easier?

A-M: At the moment the inspectors and regulation people that come out to see us are TUSLA, Pobal, Department of Education and Skills, Department of Health, the Revenue, Workplace relations, Building Control and Fire Control. So all these people can come at any point through the day when you are trying to support and look after children. Any of them can come in and look for a huge amount of paperwork. We need one government body to run us and support us and understand. There’s overlapping, so they are looking for that and then the next week someone else can come in the look for basically the same thing. We all want the same thing: we want children to reach their full potential.

Early intervention is the key. We have six children here with undiagnosed additional needs. We won’t get any AIM support staff to support these children until they are three. We have six children that are under two that, in our opinion, have additional needs. That puts extra pressure on staff in the room. Two members of staff with ten children in the room and there could be three or four children with additional needs. Nobody is recognising it. We all talk about early intervention but it’s not happening. If we had an extra member of staff in the room as the DEIS model, we could provide better care for the children.

NMcD: Would you say the waiting lists for children seeking early intervention affects your work as well?

A-M: Definitely. If we’ve got a child and the parent has maybe said, ‘I’m a bit worried about her speech’, it’s fourteen months on the waiting list, depending on when they go on it, then they have to go in for an assessment, then it could be another six months before they are seen and go through a stage of intervention. That child is nearly two years older at that stage. So if you saying it at two, two-and-a-half, that child is nearly at school before they are getting any intervention.

NMcD: And the formation of language is vital in the first three years?

A-M: The first three years is just massive for every area of the development of children. It gives them the bottom of the pyramid. It gives them the basic skills to build on over the years. People think that their child starts their education at school but they start during pregnancy and certainly during the first three years. That’s why it is essential. We have over a hundred children on our waiting list at the moment. We are a seventy children service. Most of those on the waiting list will never see the inside of this building because people stay for four or five years. We are one of the only services in this area that takes children under two. We take children from six months. That’s the early intervention that they need. We need extra staff in each room because the biggest cost to childcare is the staff, and even though they are paid way under what they should be paid, that’s the most important part of your money because ninety percent of your money goes on staff.

NMcD: A final question, how has the feedback been from the parents when they know you are closing on Wednesday for the protest?

A-M: A couple of them are disappointed because obviously they want continuous good quality care for their children. But most of them have been supportive because they understand, because they know us, know what we provide and how essential it is for their children’s development. Also for their own time, headspace and development. So some of the parents will be coming and marching with us. Which is great.

If the new government that forms after the election on 8 February does not respond to the sector, then another day of strikes and protests will be necessary.

Large strikes in Ireland as elsewhere are the most effective form of protest we have.

Back in the late 1980s, after the defeat of the air traffic controllers in the USA and the miners in the UK, a great many activists gave up on their hopes that working class people could lead a revolt against capitalism. Andre Gorz, for example, had written a book, Adieux au proletariat (Farewell to the Working Class) which became popular on the left. His argument was that the traditional working class had changed in such a fundamental way that we would never again have the power to lead a transformation of society.

What the book (and those influenced by it) failed to appreciate is that the working class is always changing. Industries rise and fall, with consequences for patterns of employment. But the fact that all companies exploit their workers to maximise profits is a constant. And it is a constant that means after a new company has been running for a while, its employees will try to organise themselves.

Take Google and Facebook, two very important examples of new workforces, especially for Ireland. Right now there is major unrest by staff worldwide in these companies along with a drive to unionise.

The struggle for trade union rights at Google

At the end of October 2019, a row broke out at Google over a new tool for Chrome that automatically launches a pop-up when staff book a room capable of holding 100 people or more. Google says that it’s just a roadbump to stop unnecessary invitations but employees anonymously leaked news of this tool with the allegation that it was designed to warn management of attempts to hold organising meetings.

Workers have mocked the tool, circulating memes such as one showing Professor Dolores Umbridge teaching a defence against the Dark Arts class. Beneath her, it says: ‘Google decree number 24: no employee organization or meeting with over 100 participants may exist without the knowledge and approval of the high inquisitor.’ Another shows a bunch of male managers in suits laughing as one of them says: ‘and then we told them “we will not make it appear to you that we are watching out for your protected concerted activities” as we pushed a Chrome extension to report when someone makes a meeting with 100+ people.’

This came shortly after a meeting, 21 October 2019, in Switzerland, where for several months, over 2,000 Google staff had been attempting to organise a meeting addressed by the trade union Syndicom. Management attempted to thwart the meeting and at one point sent a message around to employees saying, “we’ll be cancelling this talk.”

In the end, some 40 workers insisted on their right to hear the union representative and this issue is likely to culminate in a fierce battle for recognition.

To some extent the drive to unionise was trigged by the massive walkout on 1 November 2018, a strike that was very well supported by Dublin Google workers at the Barrow Street headquarters. Google employs around 7,000 workers in Ireland. Over 20,000 workers in 47 countries held a wildcat strike to protest at massive severance payments made to male executives accused of sexual harassment.

Google workers have recently leaked information on issues they feel are morally wrong in the direction of the company, such as censored search engines for China; co-operation with armies, or with the fossil fuel industry.

On 25 November 2019, the New York Times reported that it had seen a memo where four Google workers associated with organising their colleagues were fired.

Facebook has over 4,000 employees in Ireland and here too there have been leaks, not least in regard to making contracts public. This has been an important contribution to a legal case against Google contracts where the plaintiffs want end to compulsory arbitration of workplace discrimination cases.

One Facebook worker described to Independent Left how the company started in Ireland in a non-traditional way, making an effort to create a team spirit through twenty-four hour, free access to a variety of food and drink, including a bar. But now, most of that has gone and the company manages its workers much like any other.

Life in Google and Facebook for workers is unrecognisable in the Hollywood versions of these companies (e.g. in The Social Network or The Internship).

What this discontent among workers in the giant tech companies shows is that although the decline of old industries can indeed shatter working class organisation and confidence for a few years, the rise of new ones (and, indeed, the return of confidence to traditional ones) brings back the fight to organise against exploitation and unfair practices.

And what this means for the big picture is that the potential for workers to lead a massive, fundamental change to how the world currently works is as great as ever.

Facebook Staff Protests Against Trump: Update 2 June 2020

It is not only the issues of working conditions that is driving Facebook workers to organise themselves. The wider social role played by Facebook is leading to its own workers attempting to instil ethical values on their practices. In particular, there is a growing desire by workers to curtail the use of Facebook by Donald Trump to promote his side of the growing social split in the US. Many staff held a virtual walkout on 1 June 2020 to challenge the way that the US President was using Facebook to spread misinformation and incite violence.

A design manager tweeted:

I’m a FB employee that completely disagrees with Mark’s decision to do nothing about Trump’s recent posts, which clearly incite violence. I’m not alone inside of FB. There isn’t a neutral position on racism.

Placing a logo of a fist with a hart on their posts, another Facebook team joined the walkout en mass. It is widely reported that Trump spoke to Zuckenburg on Friday 29 May after Zuckenburg asked him to amend a post.

While the head of Facebook holds back from acting against Trump, his staff are sharing a quote from Anti-Apartheid leader Archbishop Desmond Tutu:

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.

Young people in Ireland played their part in the massive world-wide strike against Climate Change on 20 September 2019. The energy and determination as well as the frustration of the participants was evident in the chants and slogans on the placards.

Fair play to the anonymous students who posted on Reddit that they had to go against the principal to participate:

Obviously have to keep this anonymous so I wont say what school but today out school refused to let us out of school for a few hours to the protests for climate change
I think this is a joke like seriously. It was only from 12-3 like its ridiculous. The school didn’t even mention it to us at all that this was happening or suggested we take part in it ourselves.
Needless to say we weren’t taking this shit so we grouped together and about 80-100 students rushed out the doors and ran to protest anyways.

Here are some of the images and videos from the day.

View of the 20 September 2019 climate strike, from above, south side of Merrion Square, Dublin.

The Irish Times concentrated on very young protesters but nevertheless captured the sense of determination as well as anxiety among protesters in their coverage of the climate strike in Dublin 20 September.