Ctu Fails to Force No-strike Pay Deal

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Right wing leaders of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions were last week heavily defeated in their bid to force through their capitalist government.

By 318 votes to 119-nearly 3-1 _the Congress threw out the Understanding, which offered a package comprising a 15% pay rise over 15 months, promises of reforms in the PAYE tax system, and talk of government measures to ease unemployment in exchange for a stringent no. strike agreement.

But it began to run into trouble as the Irish Transport and General Workers Union-the biggest union in the Republicvoted for rejection, mandating its 65 delegates at the ICTU to oppose the deal.

What was conspicuous about the ICTU debate last week was the absence of delegates prepared to oppose the deal on principle.

Rather the issue at stake appeared to be the exact price at which the independence of the trade unions should be sold to Lynch's pro-imperialist government-which has become a by-word for massive profits among the world's bankers and industrialists.

One delegate who seemed to break from this pattern of argument was NUJ speaker Brian Trench, who described the Understanding as littie more than the old National Wage Agreement "with knobs on • He questioned whether the ICTU had been given any mandate to draw up such a deal, and challenged ICTU leaders to reveal whether there had been secret talks with the employers prior to the March 9 delegate conference, Trench called for a return free collective bargaining.

Praise negotiators

Other speakers however were at pains to praise the negotiators and to avoid ruling out the possibility of reaching agreement with Lynch.

ITGWU Vice-president John Carroll, making the keynote speech against the deal, was careful to state that while its terms were unacceptable the emergence of the Understanding was "a very significant and historic event" in the relations between the unions and the State.

He haggled most over the no-strike clause and the minimum pay increases of only £4 under Phase One and f2 under Phase Two, which do nothing towards the ITGWU's stated policy of alleviating the conditions of the lowest paid.

The ITGWU, he said, would pursue its own policies on pay.

There is no immediate evidence of what these policies are -or, for that matter, what the ICTU bureaucracy will do now to retrieve the situation.

Many pay reviews are already overdue from April 1 this year-and workers are likely Lynch (second from left)

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proposed "National Under- standing' with Jack Lynch's