Skip to content
2007

SIPTU President says hospital co-location represents strategic shift against ordinary citizens and in favour of private enterprise

Date Released: 02 Oct 2007

“The most dramatic strategic shift of the balance against ordinary citizens, especially the ill and infirm, in over a generation, has been the drive towards privatisation implicit in the move to co-locate hospitals”, SIPTU General President Jack O’Connor told delegates at the opening of the Union’s Biennial Conference in Tralee today.  Co-location had been marketed on the basis of freeing-up capacity in crowded general acute hospitals, but he warned that “the ruthless law of the market will ultimately prevail.  The private side will flourish while public facilities will be gradually starved of resources because those who depend on them will not command the political influence to assert their interests.”

He also criticised the Government for being one of only three EU countries that “refused to legislate for the principle of equal treatment for agency workers”. He pointed out that wage rates in one sector where use of agency workers was widespread, hotels and catering, had actually fallen in the first quarter of this year. Unless it was rectified, the abuse of agency workers “will grow like a cancer threatening the quality of everyone’s job.”

In the light of “the ongoing assault on security and quality of employment across the private and public sectors – the question of our ongoing participation in social partnership arises”, he said. The process was “only legitimate if it reconciles the objectives of maintaining competitiveness with simultaneously enhancing fairness at work and quality of life in society.” The focus was “entirely on the wrong question.  The real issue is the extent to which we are really serious about building a strong trade union movement.”

Referring to the powerful impact of the Irish Ferries mobilisation on employment protection reform, he said, “Sometimes we can become too reliant on the structures evolved under social partnership to address our needs but we, as a movement, must never lose sight of the fact that we draw our mandate from organised workers or let our opponents forget it either.”  There was a danger of focussing on “the growth in membership rather than the fall in density.” 

The fundamental flaw with this approach was that “we concentrate all our energies, all our resources, and all of our pressure on employers who recognise people’s right to organise, whilst those who don’t get off largely Scot free. We must get serious about marshalling the resources needed to support workers who want to organise and demand their rights from employers who interpret the ‘can do’ culture of modern Ireland as a licence to walk on others.  There can be no equivocation on this.  It is way past wake up time for all of us.  We must deploy resources, change strategy and tactics, and ensure a degree of co-operation never attained between trade unions before.”

He criticised the “privatisation juggernaut” and the failure of the Government to learn anything from the eircom debacle, before “the sale of Aer Lingus was rammed through”. Those opposed to privatising the national airline had been vindicated and “near absolute control” of our aviation sector now rested with Ryanair. The Government also needed to deliver on its commitments in the ‘Towards 2016’ national agreement to address the pressing issue of occupational pensions.





Previous and Next: 2008 | 2006