Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

If the Government will not provide real relief for working people and ordinary families, unfortunately working people will have no alternative but to seek real relief themselves. We are calling on working people to organise in the workplace to submit pay claims which at least match the cost of living increases and to fight to achieve them. In the UK, the Unite trade union has won cost of living increases in 25 workplaces by balloting for industrial action and by taking industrial action where necessary. In many cases, the threat of industrial action was sufficient. That is an example that should be followed in this country. If workers go back and delve into the best traditions of the labour movement - the traditions of the 1960s and 1970s and the traditions of the founders of the movement, Connolly and Larkin - to fight for pay increases, we can achieve the cost of living increases that the Government seems set to deny us.

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