Eilis O’Hanlon has some sage advice for both Minister Ross and the workers
Time somebody stepped in on the side of the travelling public who have nobody to champion their interests, writes Eilis O’Hanlon
‘This isn’t industrial action. It’s blackmail. It’s intimidation’
SECONDARY picketing belongs back in the days of Wanderly Wagon, along with tie-dye shirts, lava lamps and Raleigh Choppers.
It’s back on the streets nonetheless, thanks to what RTE News all last Friday continued to call “wildcat” strikes, though not a single person surely believes that these pickets, which stopped Dart, Irish Rail and Dublin Bus services for hours on the busiest day of the week, were not organised by the unions, for all their protestations of surprise.
Colluding in this farce, by pretending that the decision to radically escalate the Bus Eireann dispute was taken “independently” by strikers, only adds insult to injury.
If unions are intent on holding the country to ransom, they should at least have the integrity to admit that’s what they’re doing. Disingenuousness is not a good look.
The problem for the unions is that secondary picketing is only semi-legal at best, so admitting that’s what they just unleashed on the country could lay them open to a charge of engaging in disruptive and anarchic tactics which deliberately turn innocent parties into legitimate targets. It’s the action of thugs and bullies.
They have no choice, strikers insist whenever a microphone is shoved in their direction, making it sound as if they were dragged to bus and railway stations against their will, powerless to resist. Challenged, they mouth off some defiant claptrap about freedom of assembly.
What about thousands of their fellow citizens’ rights to freedom of movement? The bosses have their chauffeur-driven limousines. The middle classes have their cars. They’re no more than inconvenienced by strike action. Those on lower incomes rely on public transport to get to colleges and hospitals or access vital social services.
Snatching the ability to move around freely from them without warning is a kind of class warfare, made all the more deplorable because it’s being waged by those who claim to have the interests of the poorest members of society at heart. The unions don’t care about those struggling on low incomes. They never have. They care only about bolstering their own privilege.
Where does it stop? Dublin Bus and Irish Rail are not involved in the Bus Eireann dispute. There is no more justification for targeting them, just because they happen to also be transport providers, than it would be to bring Dunnes Stores to a halt, or branches of Abrakebabra.
Supporters of last Friday’s escalation of hostilities are already urging the Bus Eireann drivers to do it again. They don’t care how much trade suffers in Dublin city centre, or how many days’ wages are lost by those unable to get to work. Everything must be sacrificed on the altar of militancy. That isn’t industrial action. It’s blackmail. It’s intimidation.
By lunchtime, the country started moving again as the flying pickets eased their stranglehold on the public, no doubt expecting to be thanked for their generosity for not continuing the protest all day.
The issues at the heart of the dispute remained unresolved, the shutdown having contributed nothing to a settlement. If anything, they only added an extra element of uncertainty to the already simmering stew of passions.
Right now, Bus Eireann cannot sign off on its accounts because it’s a financial basket case. Its very existence as a viable company is at stake. It’s unrealistic to hold the line that all jobs can be saved, or that all drivers can go on as before. In no other struggling part of the economy are the terms and conditions of workers set in stone in perpetuity.
The National Bus and Rail Union waxes lyrical about saving Ireland’s transport network from privatisation; but those who actually rely on bus and rail services can hardly be expected to feel nostalgic about a part publicly-owned service which leaves them at the mercy of “wildcat” strikers determined to make it onto Six One News at any cost.
If buses were privatised, would thousands of people have been left stranded at the side of the road last Friday morning? Probably not.
Privatisation isn’t a magical panacea, but strikers can hardly complain if it looks slightly more appealing this weekend. Plenty of areas of daily life are in the hands of private enterprise, and it would be unthinkable for any of them to grind to a complete halt just because of a dispute by one small group of workers.
The unions lament the loss of solidarity that this fosters, but if camaraderie means be- ing held hostage by the most militant wing of the workforce, then its loss is a small price to pay — especially when solidarity only ever seems to cut one way. There certainly wasn’t much comradely feeling being shown by Bus Eireann drivers towards their fellow workers last Friday.
Meanwhile, Minister for Transport Shane Ross continues to insist that “it’s absolutely vital that I don’t intervene”.
His Cabinet colleague, Leo Varadkar, agrees, telling RTE radio’s News At One last Friday that intervention would only lead to more strikes as unions realised that escalation opened a direct route to the minister. In truth, it would only encourage further disputes if the unions got what they wanted as a result.
Shane Ross seems to believe that intervention means riding in with his ministerial cheque book, insisting that the Government would not be “giving any ground”.
No one bar trade union hotheads and populists on the Opposition benches in the Dail is suggesting that the Government concede to public sector unions’ every demand.
He could still step in on the side of ordinary members of the public who have no champion to defend their interests, caught as they are between unethical unions and a handsoff Department of Transport.
The minister should be clamping down on illegal strike action by the unions, rather than going along with the pretence that this was unofficial action. “I have to take it at face value about them having no part of it,” Ross declared last Friday.
He really doesn’t. He could call it out for the venal deceit that it is, making it clear the Government is not going to stand for it. Bus Eireann workers have the union fighting their corner. Long-suffering customers on the transport network have a right to expect someone fighting theirs.