Prominent among those supporting this chauvinist course was Jack O’Connor, president of the Services, Industrial, Professional and Technical Union (SIPTU) of Ireland. The Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) organized a massive demonstration in Dublin last December when SIPTU members at Irish Ferries struck against threats to their jobs and working conditions, and the bosses sought to bring in replacement workers from Latvia and Estonia.

Protesters at the February 14 Strasbourg march opposed measures in the European Services Directive that allow companies from across Europe to compete for contracts in any EU-member state, with fewer restrictions on employment regulations. Organizers of the action called for protectionist measures that would stem the influx of labor, rather than leading a fight to unite working people of all nationalities to resist the bosses’ attacks on wages and job conditions fueled by sharpening rivalry among capitalist powers worldwide over markets.

The Paris daily L’Humanite, which reflects the views of the French Communist Party, reports most marchers in Strasbourg were from France and Germany. The paper quoted Christophe Thomas, who led a union delegation from the French region of Lorraine, saying, “A social Europe can’t be constructed on the basis of dumping.”

According to the London Guardian, the defeat of the EU constitution in a referendum in France last year was partly due to chauvinism promoted by opponents of the directive, who stoked fear that “the stereotypical ‘Polish plumber’ would be at an advantage over his western European counterparts.” So far only the governments of the UK, Ireland, and Sweden have not restricted the movement of workers from eastern Europe.  
 
Irish Ferries dispute
SIPTU’s response to the Irish Ferries dispute was marked from the outset by chauvinist opposition to the movement of workers from Baltic countries into Ireland. In that regard, the Militant’s coverage at the time (see Dec. 26, 2005, issue) failed to point to this contradictory aspect of the fight there and its outcome. Not pointing to the dangers for working people of the union officials’ protectionist course was a disservice to the thousands who joined the Dublin action to defend union rights, and to other workers.

From the beginning SIPTU leaders promoted a reactionary nationalist response among workers fighting worsening job conditions. In early November O’Connor warned that moves by Irish Ferries to hire east European labor were “a glimpse of the neo-liberal nightmare” and called for maintaining the “social values at the heart of the European model.” It should have been no surprise then that the agreement struck by SIPTU officials allowed the bosses to pay the new workers from eastern Europe substantially lower wages than workers born in Ireland. The employers use any two-tier agreement to divide the workforce and undermine wages and conditions of all.

It’s true any massive influx of immigrants results in lower wages for all under capitalism. The bosses accomplish this through the law of supply and demand. They rationalize it through divide-and-conquer tactics. The job of workers is not to fall into the employers’ trap by opposing the movement of labor, which is neither possible nor desirable, but by uniting all workers, native- and foreign-born, through organizing everyone in the same trade unions and demanding better wages and conditions for all.

Since the settlement of the Irish Ferries dispute, this anti-east-European-worker course has gotten momentum in Ireland. ICTU is demanding a wage supplement “to protect unskilled workers in sectors where foreign labour is threatening jobs,” said the Financial Times. Irish Labour Party leader Patrick Rabbitte, who participated in the Dublin march, has called for a work permit scheme to restrict east European immigration and invoked the scare of hordes of workers coming from that part of Europe by saying, “There are 40 million or so Poles after all.” Some 160,000 east European workers have moved to Ireland since May 2004, when eight east European states joined the EU.

The fact that Ireland is a country historically dominated by British imperialism doesn’t make this course better for the exploited classes. The actions by SIPTU leaders tie working people to the chauvinist and reactionary course of Ireland’s rulers as part of an imperialist alliance within the European Union.

The main Irish republican party, Sinn Fein, has also accepted the framework of how best to run the EU. The March 2 An Phoblacht, its paper, reported that Sinn Fein Member of European Parliament Bairbre de Brun joined the Strasbourg protest and met with SIPTU and European TUC leaders over the issue. An article by Brian Denny in the same issue protested the “brain drain” from eastern Europe and said western wages are being dragged down by “social dumping” as “vulnerable and cheaper foreign labour replaces the indigenous workforce.”  
 
Massive immigration from east
Government figures record that some 345,000 eastern Europeans have come to the UK to work from May 2004 to the end of 2005. These changes in the composition of the working class not only break down national divisions, provincialism, and prejudices that sap the power of the labor movement, but also enrich the political and union experiences of working people and broaden their historical and cultural horizons.

At my job at Grampian Country Pork Halls near Edinburgh, workers from other countries were the exception until two years ago. About half of the 800 workers are now from eastern Europe. Initially the company hired these workers on the same terms as others, but more recently has moved to hire them through an agency at substantially lower pay. Nearly 140 workers are on this lower-tier wage. Many take home only about £120 (US$210) a week after the agency deducts from their wages expenses for a shared bedroom and travel. They can be laid off when production slows down and fired at will by the bosses.

All eastern European workers may legally work in the UK. But the bosses play on restrictions on their rights—such as not being eligible for unemployment and housing benefits until they have worked one year continuously and have registered with the government—to weaken resistance to their antilabor attacks.

These workers are labor’s allies, not enemies. Restrictions on their rights strengthen the employers. Rather than joining with the bosses, labor needs to demand full access to benefits for all foreign-born workers, removal of restrictions on movement across borders, and an end to all two-tier wages and conditions: the same pay for the same job. Let’s reject the chauvinism of the bosses and the union officialdom, and instead see every worker as a fellow toiler and reach out to organize all into the ranks of labor.
 
 
Related articles:
Fired for joining Chicago protest, 33 immigrant workers win back their jobs
Denmark enforces anti-immigrant laws
Marchers nationwide say no to bill in Congress that criminalizes undocumented workers  
 
 
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