Workers from the tech sector to healthcare, civil servants and film workers queued up to talk frankly about the state of trade union strategy, government's destructive underfunding of services and the depth and need for a real revolt against the "partnership" model which does not deliver a liveable present or hope of a future.
Young workers cannot afford a house, and are often barely on the living wage. Those in the middle or nearer the end of their working lives have their wages and savings eaten up making up for government's service provision failures.
Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are walking away from working people and handing people's futures over to investors and landlords while gently letting Ireland's environment, public transport, health and education fall apart in front of us.
Legislation and a hesitant trade union leadership often held back by a toxic nostalgia for partnership with government and management hobbles the workers' ability fight and even discuss strategy like they did on Tuesday in the Dáil with People Before Profit TDs and trade unionists.
"We need plans not just outrage" was what one film worker said. But many unions still don't allow workers to meet to discuss their grievances, instead focussing their efforts on maintaining large workplace contracts, or accepting below inflation pay increases. When the focus is on making better deals rather than leading fights that build power for workers in the future, workers get disappointed. This standard transparent playbook has led workers to cynicism about their unions' official 'negotiators'. But real conditions on the ground have flipped the script.
One worker said he'd "never heard of other strikes in the media, but did see the Fuel Protests." A bus worker agreed the Fuel Protests were "very successful". Other workers spoke about the fact that they needed "solidarity actions" while acknowledging the hurdles this places for union officials who may see more more potential trouble in risking trade union finances rather than the thousans of members' finances. But if a member can't see their union getting a good deal or even fighting for one, the collective benefit of union membership looks hollow. Fórsa has been visibly fighting for wins and has grown to over 100,000 members. It'll need to go further in the coming public sector pay deal and be prepared to really provide a shock to the old partners who hold government pursestrings.
The fuel protests showed real disruption works, not partnership. Workers have to be prepared to strike and bring the political power of the nation down on a government that has abandoned from working people who depend on public housing, public transportation, public healthcare...
People everywhere need more basics like more funding for apprenticeship programmes, respite care, basic above-inflation wage increases, better staffing levels in public facilities. We need practical steps forward too like - an immediate programme for free, fast, frequent public transport - not a 15% increase on your bus or a return to private car drinking more fuel at prices that just can't stop going up!
Some analysts say the cost of paying off the hauliers and tractor owners (who protested for just a week) could nearly have made all public transport in the country free instead!
But it's not all just improvements. Dangerous underfunding by government leads to dangerous understaffing like in the workers Oberstown strikes were forced to demonstrate. Education, care workers, transport, civil servants, ambulance staff and all health staff know want to "build up, not just patch up" services in communities that need to work for everyone.
Sustained, coordinated strikes are the only way rebalance life for workers in straining facilities and understaffed services and get the sustained funding we need to repair and build up these services again.
Workers are facing new pressures too. Working from home alleviated some of that and was a real positive practical development in how work can work. But employers seem intent on chipping this away. It makes people angry. They one way they can make their lives work. The other means a full extra 10-hour day every week commuting. Fórsa's 4-day workweek plan is a good idea but needs more action for full implementation.
AI is taking jobs in one industry while restructuring roles and doubling work in others. On top of the compounding cost of living crisis, job insecurity from redundancies in the flagship tech industry employers has many angry and many worried enough to organise like we saw in Covalen. One-sided government policies are still allowing any pay increases to be robbed by landlords or mortgage rate increases.
Migrant workers suffer all the above only to suffer sidelining at work and or racist abuse going to and from. Now they may have had the dignity of a 5-year working pathway to citizenship stripped away by Jim O'Callaghan's hopes of winning over some racists and getting his name noticed by the dregs of the Fianna Fáil membership.
It's no wonder that the hard-working migrant-heavy INMO membership voted 99% for strike action this week. That's not even a week after Fórsa, the most significant and representative union in the public sector, voted over 96% for strike action bettering Ireland's largest union, SIPTU, whose public sector members also voted 97% for strike action at the end of August. Strikes look likely 30 September.
Workers are ready to fight and will stick up for each other, and Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael will try to divide them. Public vs Private. Part-Time vs Full-Time. Agency vs Direct Employee. Old contract vs New. Temporary vs Permanent. Irish vs Migrant. Male vs Female.
But on Tuesday night one fight was clear it was the workers and their allies vs the bosses and their partners. If they are not let down by their officials, workers can go the distance and change how the public sector pay deal works and change how work works in Ireland.
We need to see Solidarity In Action. The frequent references to the Fuel Protests show they don't think this will not be won by ballots. The quality of the strikes will win. Public support will be high. These strikes need to that have an impact on how government can operate, so workers can demonstrate their needs and their power.
People Before Profit says we need a real revolt for workers' real issues to be addressed with real funding let alone fundamental change. Workers have the power to make that happen.
People Before Profit agreed to organise another event like this next year. Workers attending agreed to build the Affordable Ireland Pre-Budget National Protest Saturday 19 September starting at Parnell Square in Dublin Saturday 19 Sep at 1pm.