Iceland workers occupy and strike against bosses' lockout

By Robert Cosgrave

IN MIDJULY, over 100 local authority water workers in multiple councils organised in Unite took three days of strike action. The responsibility for this strike lies squarely at the hands of local authority management, who have refused to engage with workers following their rejection of the ‘Framework for the Future Delivery of Water Services’, which deals with the transfer of water workers from the local authorities they currently work for to Irish Water.

These workers want real guarantees about the terms and conditions of this change. Those moving to Irish Water would keep their status as public sector workers and the conditions that go with that. Those remaining in local authorities should be guaranteed appropriate alternative work within the local authorities and not just forced to accept whatever the employers try to throw them into.

Unite also calls for a date set in Framework for a referendum guaranteeing water remains a public utility in the Constitution. The management has refused to budge on any of these issues, making this struggle inevitable as the workers are correctly not backing down either.

Need for a united struggle

The Socialist Party fully supports the struggle of water workers here. Their work is essential to maintaining a clean water supply – one of the necessities of keeping society running – and deserves to be treated as such. These workers, not the management, play the essential role of keeping our most important utilities running despite decades of underinvestment in the necessary water infrastructure. Equally, it is imperative that water remain a publicly owned utility that enjoys proper investment and is democratically run for public need, not profit.

The debacle of private water companies in Britain, where these companies spend more on shareholder dividends than investing in vital infrastructure, makes this all the more apparent. It is essential that workers in the other unions representing water workers see the importance of the fight those in Unite have taken and join this struggle. There is a tremendous amount of support for water workers organised in SIPTU for the action taken by Unite. SIPTU must now follow suit and ballot its members to take action and join the rest of the workforce in future industrial action. The tack of the local authority management would very rapidly change if faced with a united struggle across all 31 councils. A victory for the water workers would provide an important lesson to all workers across Ireland about what can be achieved when they get organised.

By Conor Tormey

FROM TUESDAY, 18 July, the work- ers of the Ballyfermot branch of Iceland will be on strike, with a potential sit-in to follow. This comes in the context of workers in Coolock and Talbot Street being forced to occupy the shops suddenly locked out; workers in Coolock have been forced to occupy twice now due to promises not being kept by the bosses. Iceland workers should be an example to all workers facing the threat of job losses not to go down fighting

Same old story

This story of workers being locked out and losing their jobs because of tactical insolvency is, unfortunately, all too common in the past number of years for Irish workers. In 2015 Workers at Cleary’s were let go suddenly and had to fight for severance packages. In 2020 workers in Debenhams were made redundant by a generic email and forced to take on an enormous fight due to tactical insolvency despite 25 million in stock value being in the stores at the time of the redundancies.

These are similar situations to the Iceland workers, Iceland has been determined to be insolvent and has yet to pay unpaid wages to the workers occupying the stores; this is despite stock still being held in multiple shops showing that the money is there for the workers, the only thing lacking is workers being a priority

No reliance on the WRC

The message from the capitalist establishment is one of referring to the workplace relations commission and labour court to decide on this issue; this is not good enough. Iceland workers can't wait until the WRC decides on the case; the Debenhams Bill put forward by Socialist party TD Mick Barry would have afforded Iceland workers better protections under these situations. The Bill would have ensured that workers’ wages and redundancies are the first priority when companies enter receivership. workers in precarious situations should take the example of the Iceland workers; if the bosses don't comply, the space occupied should be run by the workers under public ownership for the interests of the working class