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

Naomi Klein wrote a book entitled The Shock Doctrinewhich was published in 2007. It outlines how political and economic elites, the capitalist class and their political representatives in this case use national or international crises to try to reshape social relations, laws and norms in their favour. The truth, which is very far from the "we're all in this together" rhetoric, is that substantial sections of the boss class in this country are taking advantage of the coronavirus to reshape things in their own interests. The most classic example is Debenhams in terms of obvious abuse of the coronavirus pandemic to engage in tactical insolvency. There are other cases.

I will give the example of Dublin Airport Authority, DAA, the workers of which are fundamentally ultimately employed by the public sector. The DAA is rolling ahead with further investment. It proposes to roll out another runway but it is attempting to get rid of 1,000 of its 3,500 staff. To do that, it is engaging in tactics which have been described to me by a number of different workers as terror tactics. It is putting real fear in people and telling workers they have the option of voluntary severance; a career break of up to five years or reduced hours, or alternatively remaining in their job and agreeing to new ways of working and threats of reductions in pay of up to 60%. The DAA made €150 million last year but it now sees the pandemic as an opportunity to get rid of directly employed, unionised workers. These workers will be needed in the future. The DAA is pushing ahead with the investment in the new runway and so on. This is about getting rid of unionised, directly employed workers and replacing them with contracted agency staff in the future that will be on substantially lower wages and conditions. The workers in the DAA will not accept this. They are going to follow the example of the Debenhams workers and they are going to fight to defend their terms and conditions.

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