With Bord na Móna workers visiting in the Dáil gallery, Bríd outlines what a rotten job the government has done in safeguarding the workers in the peat industry as they face the end of peat production, in line with the need to cut harmful emmissions
Speaking up for NASRA paramedics who are demonstrating outside the Dáil today. Government must instruct the HSE to negotiate with the Trade Union of the workers’ choice
Special Needs Assistants do amazing work. The challenges of helping children with special needs through school, are immense. But these skilled, essential workers are undermined, underpaid and undervalued by the very organisation that should cherish them – the Department of Education itself.
Public Sector and Semi-state pensioners are being done down by the government, and lack a mechanism whereby their grievances can be addressed. Brid addresses a protest outside Dail Eireann, Oct 2019 called by the retirees.
IBEC is the bosses union and they have some neck. They wanted an amendment passed to proposed legislation affecting workers returning to the job after parental leave. If passed, it would mean the worker would NOT necessarily get their old job back. And Fianna Fáil, who like to pose as the ‘worker’s friend’, put the IBEC amendment!! I spoke against it in the Dáil recently.
We all heard about GOLD-PLATED PENSIONS. The impression given was that public service employees were being too well ‘looked after’. The truth is that only very senior civil and public servants (and politicians) got fat pensions – the remainder of nurses, teachers, gardai, defence force personnel, etc etc have very modest pensions and these are being undermined. The pensioners want access to the industrial relations mechanisms as is their due. I spoke to this yesterday in the Dáil.
Topics discussed were the recent health workers strike, defence forces pay, the public procurement process and the role of the Gardai and GSOC
Defining ‘self-employment’, bogus or otherwise, is part of challenging the double exploitation of precarious workers. Our Dail committee listened to IBEC and CFI reps – they are clever people who use weasle words to cover up for ruthless employers.
While the government never stops reminding us to be ‘pension ready’, they themselves have reneged on their responsibilities to CE scheme workers, who have to strike for their rights. I raised this yesterday in the Dáil