Ireland - Major union lobbying for general strike - January 5, 2011

The Unite trade union is lobbying within the ICTU confederation in support of a general strike as a “clear message to the government in waiting” that it must change the country’s economic direction. The 60,000-member union’s motion for a general strike was presented to the ICTU executive council in December and was referred on to the confederation’s powerful general purpose committee, which will meet on 11 January. In a letter to the ICTU, Unite Irish secretary Jimmy Kelly said the massive turn-out for the ICTU protest march last November indicated that “a consensus is emerging over an alternative economic, fiscal and banking strategy to that of the government’s and the prevailing austerity orthodoxy” (See also this Collective Bargaining Newsletter Year 3 November 2010).

English: http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/union-leader-wants-general-strike ...

This article was published in the Collective Bargaining Newsletter. It aims to facilitate information exchange between trade unions and to support the work of ETUC's collective bargaining committee. For more information, please contact the editor Maarten van Klaveren, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies (AIAS) M.vanKlaveren@uva.nl. You may find further information on the ETUI at www.etui.org, and on the AIAS at www.uva-aias.net. © ETUI aisbl, Brussels 2011.