Hva slags økonomisk mirakel er Irland i virkeligheten? Se nedenfor.
----- Forwarded message from John Hermann <hermann@picknowl.com.au> -----
Date: Mon, 05 Mar 2001 22:11:27 +0000
To: John Hermann <hermann@picknowl.com.au>
From: John Hermann <hermann@picknowl.com.au>
Subject: Hypocrisy of Social Partnership
Economic Reform Australia
ERA EMAIL NETWORK
Subject: Hypocrisy of Social Partnership
Source: Welfare Protect Network
Contact: <welfare_protect@yahoogroups.com>
Date: Wednesday, 28 February, 2001
Hi everyone! Take a look what the Celtic Tiger has really achieved.
This is where social partnership (mutual obligation and industrial
reform) may lead. Yet Ireland is praised as the country with the
highest economic growth in Europe and often called an economic
miracle. See if that is true! Kind regards, Monika
----- Original Message -----
From: "UWG Dunlaoghaire" <uwgdl@hotmail.com>
To: <welfare_protect@yahoogroups.com>
Irish Times Article
Wednesday, February 14, 2001
Hypocrisy of social partnership
By Kieran Allen
'Tallaght is no Beverly Hills, but a carpenter cannot afford to buy
a house there." This is how one striker put it at the Sisk site in
Swords last week.
Thousands of houses have been built in the construction boom
of the past few years. Carpenters, bricklayers, labourers have
worked hard and long to meet the demand. Yet the people who
build the houses cannot afford to live in them. Is it any wonder
they are angry?
Once any group of workers act like Oliver Twist and ask for a
little more, they are told they will destroy social partnership and
kill the Celtic Tiger.
Those issuing the condemnations never seem to blush at their
inconsistencies. Bertie Ahern can lecture teachers on their
outlandish claim and then enjoy a pay rise of £36,000 - more
than most teachers earn in a year.
Social partnership is a nice idea. It implies co-operation and
sharing. It suggests all sections of society should pull
together to look after "the excluded". Unfortunately, it is also a
myth. In reality, the Celtic Tiger has seen a major increase in
inequality.
According to the United Nations Human Development report,
Ireland has the second highest level of poverty in the developed
world. Casualisation and low pay have become major features of
our workforce. Between 1988 and 1997 part-time, temporary and
short-term contract employment has risen by 165 per cent.
Ireland now comes second to the US in having the highest
proportion of its workforce categorised as low-paid. An occupational
pension has become a thing of the past for nearly two-thirds of all
private-sector employees.
Far from social partnership, the past decade has seen a one-sided
class war where there has been a determined effort to redistribute
wealth to the already privileged.
When social partnership agreements began in 1987, the share of
the national economy going to profits, dividends, interest and rent -
in other words to owners of capital - was 31 per cent. A decade later
it had risen to 41 per cent, with a corresponding fall in the share
going to PAYE employees and social welfare recipients.
This transfer of wealth has occurred even though Irish workers have
shown extraordinary increases in productivity, often at the cost of
increased stress and more unsocial hours of work.
The main reason for this growing inequality is that wages have
been restrained for over a decade through the partnership deals.
Everything else is deregulated. Rents can shoot up, the price of
building land can go sky-high, profits can soar but wages are to be
strictly controlled. It is claimed this is done on a "voluntary basis",
and hence regulation is legitimate.
But this argument is wearing thin. Last February the majority of
trade unionists voted to accept a 5.5 per cent pay rise mainly
because they were told by Government Ministers, economists and
union leaders that inflation would not rise above 3 or 4 per cent.
Those assumptions were proved wrong and a new PPF review
agreement was put in place. But workers were never given a vote
on this new review. It was assumed the ICTU knew best.
SOME will undoubtedly reply that workers have been compensated
for low pay rises with significant tax cuts. But the major tax cuts
have gone to those who have shown least restraint.
In 1987, when social partnership began, tax on company profits
stood at 50 per cent. By 2002 this will have fallen to 12.5 per cent,
the lowest in the European Union.
Banks making over £1 million a day in profit will pay out a lower
proportion of their surplus in tax than workers who get up in the
middle of the night to clean offices.
We now have corporate welfare as well as social welfare. Each
year about £2,500 million is given out in tax breaks and grants to
business. While social welfare recipients are periodically scape-
goated, there is little discussion on who is paying for corporate
welfare.
In the aftermath of the British miners' strike, social partnership
was accepted by Irish workers as an alternative to Thatcherism.
It was a con-trick. The political establishment changed the
formulations but kept the formulas of neo-liberal economics.
There has been a type of Thatcherism by stealth where public
services are being sold off and a fabulously wealthy Golden Circle
enjoys the fruits of an Atlantic tax haven. The aim and achieve-
ment of social partnership was to disarm the labour movement
by co-opting its leadership.
There are signs this is changing. An international anti-capitalist
movement has arisen to challenge the type of globalisation
synonymous with putting profit before people's needs. And
ironically labour shortages have led to a new confidence among
workers.
The Golden Circle may no longer have it all their own way. And
that is something worth celebrating.
--------------------------------------
Kieran Allen is a lecturer in sociology in UCD and is author of
Celtic Tiger: The Myth of Social Partnership
Contact email: <Kieran.Allen@ucd.ie>
----- End forwarded message -----
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