Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

I support Deputy Healy's amendment. I remind the Minister of State and the Government of the slogan that I am sure they now want to forget, namely, "Keep the Recovery Going". How can they justify having gone to the people almost two years ago with that slogan while continuing with measures that were implemented under the guise of a supposed financial emergency? How can they square the two at once? I am intrigued to know how the Minister of State can stand over it.

The so-called financial emergency was a crisis of the capitalist system, bankers and bondholders, who were bailed out by ordinary workers, with public sector workers in particular being blamed and facing the price of that. As Deputy Boyd Barrett stated, that emergency was used as a shock doctrine. Around the world, people saw the opportunity presented by the crisis to shift wealth from labour to capital, to shift the terms of the relative power between working class people and the capitalist class and, on those bases, to restore profitability from the point of view of the 1%.

The legislation before us takes some of those attacks, which were supposedly temporary, and enshrines them in an obvious way. The Bill makes no mention whatsoever of No. 1 among those attacks, namely, the pay apartheid between long-standing members of the public service and new entrants. "New entrants" is now a broad term encompassing a large number of workers. Not only was that about the savings generated by penny-pinching and not paying young workers the appropriate rates for their jobs, but it was also about undermining solidarity between workers, thereby creating an intergenerational divide between younger workers and older workers in the trade union that could be exploited in future in order to undermine workers and their ability to fight back. The Bill enshrines that pay inequality and continues that pay apartheid.

Similarly, it continues the pension levy, which is being slightly amended but made permanent. It is a pay cut, and always has been. It was a pay cut dressed up in the language of "What good pensions public sector workers have." They paid for those pensions. That pay cut is now being made permanent, which illustrates that the levy was always a pay cut for public sector workers.

The most substantial issue is the draconian and undemocratic nature of refusing the right of workers to reject deals that are put to them. It is an attempt to undermine the basis of free collective bargaining, under which workers have the right to negotiate collectively with their employers - in this instance, the State - and to reject a deal that is put before them. Instead, a gun is put to their heads and they are told that they can accept the deal or reject it, in which case it will be imposed on them in any event and the State will punish them even further. That is incredibly draconian, repressive and undemocratic, and it is one of the victories for the 1% stemming from the crisis period.

Unfortunately, it has been acquiesced to by a significant section of the trade union leadership. Being able to point to how other unions that refuse to take bad deals are being treated assists that section of the leadership with keeping its own members quiescent when it tries to sell them bad deals. It is scandalous behaviour.

Think back to the language used about public sector workers at the time and how attention was turned away from the bankers, bondholders and developers who were responsible for the crisis for which all workers were paying. Think about the demonisation of public sector workers that the Government of the time engaged in and the attacks in which Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Labour Party participated. It reminds one of the quote from Malcolm X: "If you aren't careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing."

The FEMPI legislation, the attack on public sector workers and dressing up pay cuts as pension levies were all part of an attempt to divide and rule working class people between private and public sector workers in order to undermine the collective position and power of workers as a whole for the benefit of the rich in our society.

Low paid workers who are seeking a decent standard of accommodation face a financial emergency. Low paid public or private sector workers who are trying to pay for crèche fees face a financial emergency. There are real financial emergencies from the point of view of ordinary people, but that is not the case in the economy as a whole.

Household net wealth has risen by 45% since mid-2012. Household net wealth totals over €650 billion, but the problem is it is not going to ordinary public or private sector workers. Rather, it is going to the top 5% and 1% in our society. Let us think about the fact that the richest 300 people have doubled their wealth over the course of the crisis. Their wealth increased from €50 billion in 2010 to over €100 billion in personal wealth right now. The same applies to profits, which doubled over the same period of time from €75 billion to €150 billion. Companies such as Apple, Google, Facebook and others can make massive profits and avoid paying any tax, facilitated by the Government.

It is not credible for the Government to reject the amendment and suggest that in some way a financial emergency is continuing. Of course, it exposes the reality of what happened. This Government and previous Governments saw an opportunity to attack the interests of all workers and took it. The only way to defeat that is for the union movement as a whole to take a stand against this, and to say it rejects all such Draconian legislation, apartheid pay inequality, which is a significant blow against the solidarity that is necessary to defeat employers and the State, and the ongoing pay cuts to public sector workers which the so-called pension levy represents.

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