MASS RALLIES at eight locations around the country to encourage the Government to adopt an alternative strategy for bringing the public finances back under control are to take place on Friday, November 6th.
The demonstrations are being organised by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, whose general secretary David Begg and president Jack O’Connor yesterday urged all workers and citizens to take part.
The protests will take place in Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galway, Sligo, Waterford, Tullamore and Dundalk.
Mr O’Connor said unions would encourage workers to take time off to attend the rallies. However, he said the day of action did not represent a strike.
As part of the Ictu campaign in favour of its strategy of seeking a fairer way for dealing with the economic crisis, it also plans a mail drop to 1.9 million households in the State.
It is also to distribute 1.9 million sheets of stickers and undertake a press campaign.
Mr Begg said that under broadcasting legislation it could not promote its campaign on television or radio.
Ictu is proposing that the Government should deal with the public finances over a longer period than the five years currently proposed by the Taoiseach.
It also argues that there is greater scope for borrowing by the Government and that higher taxation for the wealthy will have to form part of the equation. Mr Begg said it was true to say that the Government saw the problem of the public finances through a different prism to the trade union movement.
“We are launching this advocacy campaign in the run up to the budget because we are aware from all of the utterances of Government that they intend to have a very severe budget, that they intend, basically, to take €4 billion out in public spending, and our fear is that the consequence of that will wreck the delivery of public services and impart a huge deflationary shock to the economy.”
“We are in a very tight window of time. There is no point doing this the morning after the budget.
“We want to try to explain our view on this to the people and to mobilise people in general to just stand up and say to the Government that we have a view on this, that this is a country and not simply an economy and you have to be concerned about the social implications of your policies as well,” he said.
Mr Begg said that the Government should not try to make the economic adjustment “in one brutal fell swoop” but rather over a number of years.
“In that way, if there was a recovery, it would ease the pressure.”
Mr Begg said the trade unions believed that, although there would be difficulties regardless of the approach taken, “handled in a certain way the adjustment can be less damaging to social infrastructure than the approach the Government is taking now”.
He said that with the day of protest on November 6th people had “a once in a generation opportunity to express their opinion in a very coherent way to the Government”.
This had to be done in advance of the budget as afterwards the die would have been cast, he said