More November 2008

You are in > Archives » Headlines » November 2008

November 2008

November 10th 2008

Ireland: Union welcomes Obama victory, hopes for end of neo-liberal era

The trade union Unite has welcomed the election of Barack Obama as President-elect of the United States of America and expressed its hope that the victory will signal the end of the neo-liberal economic era, which was commenced in the 1980s by Ronald Reagan and supported in the UK by Margaret Thatcher.

‘This epoch also spawned the Progressive Democrats in this country and the rise of neo-liberal theories across the EU which has resulted in the current global financial disaster and given rise to anti-worker judgements such as Viking, Laval, and Ruffert from the European Court of Justice,’ said Jimmy Kelly, the Regional Officer for Ireland of the Unite trade union.

‘The people of Ireland and the EU, as the people of the USA have discovered, can now see that there is an alternative to the neo-liberal economic project which has benefited the very few and been a disaster for the vast majority of working people and the developing world, who are struggling to retain jobs, their homes and their incomes.

‘In the last election in Ireland the Irish electorate gave their verdict on the PDs, and they are now in terminal decline. Unfortunately, adherents to their discredited ideology are still in Government today and presented the Irish people in recent weeks with a Budget which attacked the young, the old, the low paid and working people generally.

‘It is time for progressives in Ireland to step forward and present an alternative to the dismal policies being pursued by the Government.  The trade union movement has no confidence in Fianna Fail’s economic policies and trade unionists and progressives must now work together to create a new strategy based on growth, investment and expansion.

‘Never again should a tiny elite of the rich and powerful dictate that the vast majority of the world should exist to pay for their lifestyles and increasing wealth. The redistribution of further wealth to the most wealthy in the US during the Bush era is well documented,’ added Kelly.

‘New leadership across the globe must regulate and control the financial services sector, deal with climate change, end the insanity of war and ensure a fair distribution of wealth across the world to those who create that wealth.

‘From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.’

 

Source: UNITE