ASTI Members Are Right

ASTI Members Are Right

to Strike for Equal Pay  

People Before Profit want to express solidarity with teachers who are on strike today.

By taking action against pay apartheid, ASTI members are doing workers everywhere an important service. Following in the wake of Luas drivers and bus workers they are paving the way for pay restoration throughout the economy.

The idea of pay apartheid was never justified. It sold out new entrants at a time when workers everywhere were being hammered. Over the course of two budgets new entrants lost an extra 10% of their wages and suffered cuts to allowances given to their older colleagues. The result is between €6,000 and €8,000 per annum, or more than €250,000 across a working life. This is incredibly unfair.

Fine Gael want to have it both ways. They proclaim their role in creating a recovery, but insist that newly qualified teachers have to wait. This suggests that any recovery is not for workers. Announcing seven days of strike action was therefore important. It signals the depth of feeling within the union and follows the tactics that succeeded for transport workers. Most Irish people recognise the justice in the struggle for equal pay, but it is important to win the propaganda battle.

The government are already getting dirty. They are trying to pit teachers against one another, whilst rolling out conservative trade unions officials to condemn ASTI for making their stand. Keeping parents and the wider public on board will therefore be vital.

One way to achieve this will be to hold public meetings in every area to make the case about equality and justice. Another is to have an ASTI leaflet go into every house in the local area.

People Before Profit are willing to help in any way that we can. Contact 087 657 4100 to let us know what we can do to help. 

Bin Charges - Environment Before Profit

Why not choose a model that works?

Back at the start of this summer, following a very successful campaign by AAA-PBP, the government were forced to reverse the outrageous plans of former minister Alan Kelly, to impose charges on Green Bin recycled waste for the first time.

Alan Kelly’s plan, which effectively removed any incentive for householders to recycle green waste, was almost certainly prompted by the Private Waste Industry, who would be the only beneficiaries of such a step. This was a retrograde step and would have done immense damage to the environment had it been enforced.

The fact that the former minister even attempted such an environmentally regressive measure reaffirms the urgent need to take all waste collection and recycling services back into full public ownership and control. It has become increasingly obvious that the private waste companies do not give a damn about recycling or the environment – they are driven only by profit.

This point was compounded quite alarmingly when the private companies attempted to increase charges by as much as 300% in some parts of the country. Once again, in a move that reinforced the new strength of the left in the Dáil and in the local councils, the government were forced to intervene and put a temporary stop on the increases. Meanwhile, the waste companies are to spend the next year “educating” the customers on the new charging mechanisms.

This can be taken as Fine Gael speak for “we will bamboozle the people with deliberately unclear mechanisms for measuring and charging for waste, and once we have our foot in the door we will increase prices as and when we feel like it – In other words the “Thin edge of the wedge”. Their proposals will remove any pretence of a “Polluter Pays” policy or regard for environmental protection. They want a base fee annually, regardless of what you put out and pay by weight thereafter, for all bins.

At the moment people are being deliberately confused by these privateers, with different offerings and various explanations of what they can do. Consumers are to be forced to choose between a rock and a hard place – between one rip off merchant and another. 

The issues with these waste management and bin charges are almost identical for rural and city dwellers. However there are a couple of major, additional headaches, for those in rural Ireland.

Firstly, we face a distinct lack of choice. Many rural areas are confined to one service provider only. So it’s like it or lump it on the price. If you are not directly on their “route”, you will have to transport your bins, typically 3, to a central collection point which may be a few miles away. What will happen when the private companies decide that certain areas are not economical to service? Your central collection point may end up being many, many miles away. Different parts of the country are reporting various horror stories when dealing with these companies.

History tells us that prices vary but inevitably follow an upward trend. Regulation can be difficult to enforce in the Private Sector due to the differing number of providers, tariffs etc. It is not inconceivable to see scenarios where only certain bins are collected on certain days of certain weeks. We cannot arrive at a situation where the people of Rural Ireland suffer a sub-standard service, or no service at all, simply as a consequence of where we live.

To date, privatisation of waste management services has proven to be a disaster for all but the Waste Companies profit margins: For the citizens who have incurred ever increasing charges, for the workers who face a race to the bottom on wages and for the Environment because it has driven up occurrences of illegal dumping. The privatisation of the service must be reversed and it needs to be brought back into public ownership under the control of the councils. If not, a never ending cycle of charge increases will inevitably be the result, due to the voracious desire of these companies to drive up their profits. 

The establishment will tell you “you can’t do it, it won’t work, how will you pay for this”. Well, we can, it does work, and other countries are already doing it.

Firstly, let’s make the important point that Irish people have for some years now, shown a real appetite for recycling and environmentally positive waste management. Galway City Council, for one, have proven with published figures that, given the proper encouragement and facilities, households will recycle as much as possible. Figures from the council there show they have doubled the recycling targets set by the EU.  Having said that, many EU countries are still well ahead of us on recycling and waste management and even more so on their attitudes to same. Portugal, for example, this year powered the country for 4 days entirely on renewable energy!

However, I want to focus on another country in particular, which appears to be one that’s really leading the way in this field. They have a waste model that we should strive for, with immediate effect.

Sweden has a population of 9.9 million and while you couldn’t call it a “socialist” country, it has many socialist principles and socialist thinkers running it (“Sweden leads by example in corporate social responsibility. “ is a bold statement from its own website. www.sweden.se).

Waste management in Sweden is paid for through general taxation. Bulky waste is disposed of, for free, in recycling centres. Recycling stations for everyday household waste are, as a rule, never more than 300 meters from a residential area. In rural areas, it’s a little further but every effort is made to accommodate the users.

In 1975 only 38% of household waste was recycled in Sweden.

Today 99% of all household waste is recycled as energy or materials. Renewable sources now account for 52% of Swedish energy production. An excellent example of innovative green thinking is the city of Stockholm. Every month, 993,000kg of food waste is collected by the city. The waste is turned into 115,000m3 of gas, which is used to fuel their buses and taxis.

So how do we pay for it? We can maximise the potential for a return to the exchequer - from recycling the waste material and reducing both our reliance on imported fossil fuels and our energy bills, and as a side effect we create good public service jobs in every community through green energy initiatives, all of which feeds back into the local economy. A good number to remember is that three tons of waste contains as much energy as one ton of fuel oil… so there is a lot of energy in waste if reused properly. (source … Göran Skoglund, spokesperson for Öresundskraft, one of the Swedens leading energy companies) 

We take the “for profit” merchants out of the picture. Instead of some politically connected private entity creaming profit out at the top, an essential public service becomes self-funding and fairly available to all in society, and the environment is protected. Everyone wins. The Swedish model and many others in Europe focuses on making the essential service a success for its citizens, and not the profit making.

The inevitable response from the establishment parties will be “If it’s all publicly funded, you will have to raise taxes and everyone knows that Sweden is a high tax country”.  Relative to us at a base level, yes, it is a little higher, but they also have considerably less stealth taxes which impact the poorest people in society the hardest (https://iea.org.uk/blog/the-consumption-taxes-that-keep-people-poor). 

Also, as any Swede will tell you, their services reflect the taxes.  Their corporate tax is 22% and income from capital is taxed at 30%. Norway proposes to come in line with that 22% corporate rate by 2018. Guess what, neither country is in danger of closing down. Quite the opposite. Our government are too weak to demand even our lowly corporate rate of 12.5% be paid – in fact quite the opposite despite EU rulings!

The Swedes have shown what’s possible when waste management is freed from “for profit” speculators, is focused purely on the environment, and by treating household waste as an essential public service. This attitude is evident in all major policies - they also protect other essential public services from profiteering.  i.e. Health, Education, Housing & Transport. On the flip side, we pay for all these on top of our taxes! The Civil War parties, cheer lead by another party of little significance now, are all happy to put up the “For Sale” signs on all of our Irish services.   

We need to fight that agenda at every hands turn. 

Closures threatened

The shock news this morning on Boyletoday.com that two mental health facilities in Boyle are earmarked for closure is yet another example of the "close rural Ireland" mentality at any cost of this Government. 

Staff at Willow Grove day centre in the grounds of the Plunkett Home and Renbrack Hostel in Deerpark are understood to have been told of the closures at a meeting with HSE personnel on Wednesday.

Fears are growing over the potential closure of up to seven mental health facilities in county Roscommon.Day care centres and hostels in Boyle, Strokestown, Ballaghadereen, Athleague and Castlerea are among those set to be closed under the Vision for Change policy.

Here we have a situation where the most vulnerable in society are being used to save money.

Do the HSE have any bone of compassion at all? Do they stop to think what effect, the closure of establishments that service users have become familiar with, will have on those who use them? Do we have any compassion for the loyal staff who are also being affected?

It is sickening to see Minister Harris come to Boyle in a blaze of publicity four weeks ago to announce details of the primary care centre while less than 4 weeks later the HSE, which is under his remit, comes to the same location to inform staff that they are closing the facilities. Is there any interaction between the Minister and his departments?

While the staff may be relocated and the service users integrated into the community, the fact remains that here in Boyle we are faced once again with another closure.

How much more can we take? How much more fight is left in those who care for our town?

It would seem that rural Ireland and Boyle in particular is the forgotten child of this government.

We cannot allow this to happen and need to protest to the highest level or what will come next? Our Post Office? Our Railway Station?