Monthly Archives: June 2017

By Estelle Birdy

Many years ago, in the dark distant past, I worked for an organisation. The organisation (a business organisation, rather than a shadowy spy organisation) shall remain nameless. However, it was the type of organisation that might have been more than a little involved in economic and political ‘shock therapy’ in South America. Of course, I didn’t know this until much, much later but I hated this organisation and its management style, so maybe the Universe was telling me something all along.

Anyway, all of that is by-the-by. All of us, the founding team of this organisation in Ireland, were young (ish), no more than mid- twenties. We were mostly graduates with some work experience behind us. There were some really great people working there. One day, we were all having a chat, on a break, when someone said something like, “I would never dream of leaving work on time”. I thought this must be a joke, naturally enough. But no! The initial statement was followed by a raft of statements from others like “Oh no! I would never either! That would be awful! I have never in my life left work on time” As no one had actually had a very long life at this stage, it probably wasn’t that big a statement. Nevertheless, I thought I’d been dropped into a parallel universe, where people thought handing over your labour for free was the done thing.

So across-the-board was this declaration of intent, that I didn’t feel in a position to disagree with and say something like, “What in the name of God are you all talking about? Are you all taking hard drugs?”. So, I just stayed silent. In fairness to this particular organisation, during the start- up phase, there was a lot of extra time required and they paid proper overtime rates. If they hadn’t been paying, I wouldn’t have been working.  It seemed, however, according to what they were saying, that most of my colleagues would have done, and would have been only delighted to do so.

In the intervening years, I worked in several areas (flexible and resilient see?) most notably in recruitment. I had a lot of success in recruitment, which I attribute to liking and getting to know people pretty well. When I was in recruitment, the first time around, I made my way into fairly senior roles. So a lot of the time, I would have been meeting with senior management type people. When I was interviewing these kinds of people, ostensibly highly successful career people (if measured by the standards of patriarchal capitalism), they would fall over themselves to tell me how they wouldn’t think twice about working through the night, working seven days a week, never taking a lunch break, whatever it took, “to get the job done”. Now, if we were talking about Firefighters or Cardiac Surgeons, working in occasional life-or-death emergency situations, I’d have said “Fair play, well done lads”.  Sadly though, we aren’t talking about those kinds of workers.  We’re talking about, Accountants and mostly, although not exclusively, men.  Correct me if I’m wrong here, but no one has actually ever died for want of a Balance Sheet? Much as I admire the work accounts people do, because I can’t do it at all myself, I don’t think any of us genuinely think that a spreadsheet should ever keep you up all night, right?  In the case of these be-suited maniacs, with titles like Manager and Director, they wouldn’t even be getting paid for any of these extra hours. They had been led to believe, by some unknown entity, that offering their labour was not the same as someone offering their labour, on a building site, or in a restaurant, not dressed in a suit. Not alone that, they felt it would be shameful to even utter the words that they wanted to be paid for any and all work that they did. There’s a reason some workers always want to know what the hourly rate of pay is. That reason is, that that is the intelligent way to look at things!

Of course, times change and I left recruitment the first time, in 2006. When I returned, I found that there was a new phenomenon; these same types of ‘successful’ men were now often saying to me that they wanted jobs where they did not have to work all hours that the universe sends; where they could have a family-life, maybe work from home, part-time, play sports, see their friends.  Some of them, had already left their jobs and taken time out. The very fact that these people exist, I’ve met them, is heartening but also a tragic indictment of the system that we are all forced to endure. People are, quite literally, breaking down. They are being broken by the system. If I posted an ad for a Part-Time job of any kind, I would immediately be inundated with hundreds of applications. People desperate to get a break from the pressure. With no scientific backup whatsoever for this claim, I put this phenomenon of people wanting, en masse, to turn their backs on this inhumane system, down to 3 things; women kicking down doors for the rest of us, Millenials not giving a fiddler’s fart for employers wishing to strap them to their desks, and IT people knowing stuff the rest of us don’t and consequently, getting to do whatever the feck they like.

Back in the day, I’d meet women who had, quite literally, clawed their way to some semblance of seniority in organisations, by playing the patriarchal game. They too said things like, “I’ll work all hours” because they had to say these things, to get recognised for their work at all. Once they got to the top though, some of them realised that they’d been cheated by the system. An appalling vista now lay before them. However, through their sheer visibility, they made it possible for many other women to enter the work force and we are now, making a difference. You know all that lip-service that the Men- in- Suits pay to the importance of Emotional Intelligence? We women are just doing that on the daily lads. It’s called having some cop-on and actually caring about people and the world. Millennials, they’re another group the Men-in-Suits pay lip service to. They’re awfully important you know? They need autonomy. So, the Men-in-Suits offer them slides at work, a beer fridge and round the clock Quinoa-based meals. Meanwhile, Millennials are changing the face of work and they’ll only buy your bullshit for a short while, before they set up on their own in bean-bag filled, shared work space. IT people, I don’t know what it is you are actually doing; numbers and stuff? Just keep on doing it, in your combat shorts and flip flops, from your bed… whatever. Thanks to these 3 groups, in my opinion, I now had men coming to me saying they wanted out of their jobs where they had to work round the clock. They had seen that there was another way, and they wanted a piece of the action. Feminism and having some cop on, raises all boats equally, I find.

Having said all that, the old ideas about work have not gone away. For every one organisation with some interest in us all living in a functioning society of care, there are twenty that still seem to think that it’s a badge of honour for an employee to work 60 hours a week, for no extra pay. For every person who tells me they want to work for a smaller portion of their waking hours in order to have a fulfilling life, there are many others who tell me “I’m a Manager so, of course I don’t get paid for working those hours! I’m on a Management Salary!” Really? You’re on a Management salary, are you? Does that make you no longer a worker? Are you telling me, my friend, that you would be away from your family and/or friends and your house, with the mortgage that’s breaking your back, even if you weren’t getting paid at all? Or are you a worker, just like any other worker and if so, why are you allowing yourself to go along with this abuse of yourself? This wage theft? It’s as if these people have been programmed to think that it is somehow shameful to expect to work and get paid for it.

And listen up women, Millenials and IT workers! Freezing your eggs so you can have someone painfully re-insert them into your hormone destroyed body, once you’ve worked until you’re dead inside, is not a ‘Company Benefit’! Getting all of your meals at work, doing your yoga classes at work and being given a slide and a giant ball to sit on, while wearing a kaftan, doesn’t change the fact that you spend nearly all your waking hours at work!

It seems that there is an idea abroad that if you wear a suit or something similar and are perhaps desk based, that you should no longer think of yourself as a worker. Certainly, if your employer gives you a title like Manager or Director, you must cease, immediately, thinking of yourself as a worker. In this way, you can be divided from all others who are workers. People like bus drivers, retail workers or nurses. You don’t need a union, because you aren’t a worker. Never mind that you get up at the crack of dawn and leave your home and family, perhaps to do something you love, perhaps to do something you don’t care about. Either way, you’re different. You may very well be earning considerably more than a bus driver (or you may not) but I think you should think carefully about what your role is. We can assume that you are, like most of us, a fair- minded person who expects to work for the money given by the employer.  Your labour is, after all, all that you have to give. You exchange your labour, whether you get a great buzz out of that labour or not, for something. Money, usually. For every hour you work, you are exchanging your labour for some kind of monetary compensation, or at least you should be.  If you’re earning €80K per annum, no one’s going to argue that that isn’t good money. If you work a 40 hour week, you’re earning €38 Gross per hour of your labour. That goes down to €25 Gross per hour if you’re doing that 60 hour week you’re so proud of. Still nice money but not that nice anymore, is it?

Every time you don’t take your lunch break and stay at your desk, your wages are being stolen from you, whether if you are working in a suit, a cool T-shirt or a boiler suit.  Every time you cross a workers’ picket line, you weaken your own position as worker, even if you’re wearing a suit. Every time you start work early and stay late, you’re handing your labour over for free and getting abused, just like any other worker, even though you’re in suit. If you’re so generous with your labour and happy to give it away for free, why not next time, give your three hours per day for free to the fella setting up his tent along the canal? Or the Women’s Aid Shelter? Voluntary work is voluntary work; your big multinational employer does not need or deserve your free labour.

The upshot is, if you work for money, you are a worker. Whether your work involves you wearing a suit, smart casual (which apparently means Chinos, i.e. worse than a suit) a swimsuit, or not a damn thing. Don’t work for free, don’t separate yourself from other workers and don’t fool yourself that you’ll get that you’re being ‘looked after’ by your employer when they freeze your eggs for you or get you that ball pit to play in. Work should always be a fair exchange and no work should ever keep you away from the people you love and care about without proper compensation.  Stop acting the goat.

DUP MP William McCrea (right), sharing a stage with notorious loyalist murderer Billy ‘King Rat’ Wright in 1996, in a public show of support for Wright, on the grounds of ‘free speech’.

Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan, today.

Whatever the shortcomings of the Good Friday Agreement, one of the main reasons Labour under Blair was able to secure that agreement was because it was not, unlike the Major government that preceded it, beholden to unionist MPs for support.

May’s deal with the DUP effectively steamrollers that whole edifice: the British government can no longer adopt a convincing pretence of impartiality, let alone act impartially (there is no such thing) with regard to politics in Northern Ireland.

This deal -whether the DUP forms part of the government or not- has taken place months after assembly elections in which unionist parties, for the first time, failed to secure a majority of seats. What’s more, a majority of people in Northern Ireland did not vote for Brexit last year, whereas the DUP did support it, with the lure of Saudi money.

The wholesale contempt for the North was crystal-clear in an election campaign in which Jeremy Corbyn was pursued relentlessly for his supposed IRA links, and for being supposedly equivocal in condemning ‘all’ bombings.

In all this, the entire history of British state support for loyalist paramilitary violence and murder was almost completely ignored; implicitly, Britain gets to kill whomever it wants. Explicitly, Theresa May declares she wants to get rid of human rights legislation that ties this Britain’s hands.

People in Britain, educating themselves on who the DUP are now that they have come into national view, are right to point out the history of DUP associations with loyalist paramilitaries. They are right to point to the endorsement the party received from the combined loyalist groupings in advance of the elections just past.

But they should also be wise to the effects that May elevating the DUP will have on loyalism. Loyalist paramilitaries will take all this as a sign that they were right all along: that their campaigns of terror -including the murder of 836 civilians from 1969 to 1994- were fighting the good fight, in defence of the same Britain that Theresa May claims to defend.

It is to this Britain -militarist, jingoist, anti-democratic, vindictive- that May -or whoever succeeds her-, that the Tories and the DUP will appeal in the months ahead (as well as homophobic, creationist and thoroughly corrupt, the DUP are also deeply Islamophobic).  They have nowhere else to go, and their appeal ought to be viewed as their conscious and considered response to the democratic revival that Labour’s surge represents.

I hope very much that Corbyn’s Labour Party wins. Observed from afar, the campaign feels like a decent country of tens of millions, forever submerged, contending with a death grip of greed and military jingoism.

Friday night’s spectacle, on Question Time, of belligerent and pompous middle-aged men demanding Britain remain willing to incinerate millions ought to be seen as an excellent argument for getting rid of nuclear weapons. They bring forth genocidal urges in the population of the state that maintains them. They promote haughty indifference to the needs of other human beings, whether at home or abroad. Even though its manifesto proposes to maintain nuclear weapons, a Labour victory would provide some relief from this.

The mudslinging aimed at Corbyn with regard to the IRA is intended to stem any potential flow of older voters from Tory to Labour. Most younger voters in Britain, in the words of that lad’s mother, ‘don’t give a shit about the IRA’. Perhaps it is also supposed to sway men with memories -distant and not-so-distant- of singing ‘No surrender to the IRA’ in the pub after a football match.

It is also a means of shifting the focus away from discussion of actual policies, and from the possibility that matters such as funding and priorities for health and education ought to be decided democratically. This is clear from the response of Conservative politicians to the murderous atrocities in London last night. By seeking to make ‘security’ and ‘extremism’ the over-riding concern, the intention is to dampen deliberation and dissent with regard to vital matters in which the Tories and their backers currently hold the upper hand.

The use of the spectre of terrorist violence is not peculiar to Britain. But it is something common in other countries too. The ETA bogeyman was frequently raised in connection with Podemos in Spain, based on an even more tenuous connection than that of Jeremy Corbyn meeting Gerry Adams. People in the Republic of Ireland, too, are well accustomed to the IRA being brought up with dreary regularity any time the government of the day finds itself backed into a corner on any matter that might cause political embarrassment.

It is a way of browbeating people into not thinking about or discussing politics. “It’s all very well for you to want to safeguard the NHS, but hand it over to someone who has consorted with murderers? Really?” And, in the wake of an atrocity such as the one in London last night, this urge tends towards suspending politics -democratic politics- altogether. Talking about how the NHS is being destroyed is transmuted into an act of being in league with terrorists.

The influence of the military is palpable. Let’s recall how Army chiefs made their presence felt when Corbyn was elected Labour leader, muttering darkly about the possibility of taking action to rectify things if he ever got into power. If, as is often claimed, there is some British tradition of ‘fair play’ -though I have not seen anything there that I haven’t seen in other countries- it isn’t a tradition observed by the British establishment, which has no qualms resorting to any means, including murder, as we have seen in Northern Ireland, to achieve its ends. Unsurprisingly for those of us who have witnessed the effects of loyalist paramiltary violence, which killed 836 civilians –civilians, not members of the IRA or any other organisation- in the 25 years from 1969 to 1994, the entire controversy over Corbyn and his supposed links to the IRA in recent days has included little or no consideration of how the British State colluded with loyalist paramilitaries.

Most people do not want to be associated with terrorist violence, and may feel uncomfortable getting into an argument over it. How does one even process a claim such as that of Theresa May this morning, that there is ‘too much tolerance of extremism’ in Britain? There is nothing to debate here. It defies rational consideration. Willing the incineration of millions of people in other countries, or murdering hundreds of people out of loyalty to the Crown is not entertained as ‘extremism’, of course, even though it is certainly tolerated, when not encouraged. These facts have no part in any debate, because the whole point is not to have any debate. The overall intent is to suggest that those who ‘tolerate extremism’ are her opponents -and opponents of Britain- in the upcoming elections.

Democracy, if it means anything, entails facing down authoritarian threats from any quarters. The actions of the ruling Partido Popular, following the Atocha bombings in Madrid, led to its ousting days later in the elections as it became clear that the party had sought to manipulate public responses to the atrocity for its own electoral ends. The Tories deserves to be exposed in this light for what they are doing right now, and kicked out come Thursday.

‘There are no longer social classes, only levels of consumption’ – El Roto

A Waterford Whispers article bears the headline ‘Leo Varadkar Becomes Ireland’s First Openly Classist Leader‘.  The joke is that all previous holders of the office of Taoiseach were of the same disposition, but just kept it in the closet.

It’s worth thinking about what ‘classism’ really is. To me at least, it seems to mean prejudice towards members of an identified social class, or towards that class on the whole. No doubt that such attitudes really do exist, with real effects on how people are treated. Certain accents or clothing that reflect class background are felt as synonymous with stupidity or laziness, for example. Other accents may be heard on occasion as bearing hallmarks of privilege and class condescension that have little to do with the speaker.

But it’s possible to have a system of class domination and exploitation without any outward signs of classism. One example is the State.

The liberal State proclaims a society without classes by separating the political realm from the economic realm. Everyone is proclaimed equal before the law, and a relation of explotation and domination -having to produce a profit for someone else in order to live- is made appear a contract freely entered, a matter of choice and an expression of freedom. Thus the ruling ideology across many capitalist societies proposes that we live in a ‘classless society’, or that ‘we are all middle-class now’.

Here lies the danger of considering class as an ‘identity’: a person from a working class background may arrive to a position of power and influence, and still consider themselves proud to be working class, even if they live off the rents that come from being a slum landlord, or from hosting a radio show that defends established power at every turn.

A more typical experience would be for someone from a working class background, who, on reaching a point of material satisfaction and status, disregards the network of social supports that allowed them to reach this point, and considers that they must be in possession of something special that the system has recognised. An example of this would be working class children who are selected at an early age to go to grammar school, and then, upon reaching a middle class profession as adults, look upon the system of selection as something that must be good, since it recognised them as worthy.

When ‘working class’ appears as nothing but an identity proclaimed by an individual and is happily greeted as such, rather than the expression of a class consciousness with the abolition of class society at its heart, we might well be free from ‘classism’, but certainly not from class exploitation and its effects.

Though the international press story of  ‘a gay son of an immigrant‘ will be viewed primarily through the lens of LGBT rights, it is important to point out that Leo Varadkar’s election as Fine Gael leader, and his elevation to Taoiseach, does not mark any kind of progress for immigrants to Ireland.

As minister at the Department of Social Protection, Leo Varadkar called for parents working in Ireland whose children are living overseas to be paid less than those whose children are living in Ireland.

He did this to pander to anti-immigrant sentiment. The amount of money ‘saved’ by doing so, even if it were not a violation of any commitment to equality, is trivial. He openly admitted he was doing so in response to public resentment towards ‘Europe’.

The Department of Social Protection is rife with arbitrary bureaucratic measures that target people on the basis of their nationality. For him to do such a thing as minister amounted to a vicious attack on some of the most marginalised people in Irish society. It is worth stressing, however, that in doing so he was continuing along the path set out by his predecessor at the department, the then Labour Party leader Joan Burton. Burton’s former advisor, Ed Brophy, recently wrote in the Sunday Independent that

‘a standing joke among Labour ministers and advisers in the last government was that one of our under-appreciated achievements was to make a social democrat of Leo. While this was facetious, his liberalism is for real’.

Quite.

Varadkar’s ascent to Taoiseach will bring no small amount of self-congratulation in elite political and media circles in Ireland. They will see it, and present it, as one more chapter in the story of a new, outward-looking and tolerant country with equality of opportunity, and treat it as yet more cause for glorification of a State that, by their lights, cannot be racist.

But this story excludes, for example, the Citizenship Referendum of 2004. Its function was to strip certain people of rights and the formal status of citizen, on the basis of their parents’ nationality. The son or daughter of two immigrants to Ireland, born in Ireland in the present day, has no automatic right to citizenship. Hence they have very poor prospects of ascent to the pinnacle of political life in Ireland, even if luck has it that they or their parents do not get deported.