Labouring under a misapprehension
WHO knows what Foreign Affairs Minister Dermot Ahern must have thought when Socialist Party leader Joe Higgins rang him at home in Dundalk on Easter Sunday.
The pair have frequently sparred venomously across the Dáil chamber and are poles apart in every sense.
Nevertheless, after both men met in a Dundalk hotel on Easter Monday, Mr Higgins had been assured Mr Ahern’s department would provide emergency visas for former Gama workers to travel to Holland.
The way had been cleared for the kind of audacious direct action rarely, if ever, seen in Irish politics.
In a move akin to a Michael Moore stunt, Mr Higgins and four former workers arrived unannounced, media in tow, at the headquarters of Amsterdam’s Finansbank last Thursday.
The discovery of up to €40 million in lost workers’ wages which ensued has set in train the most extraordinary labour movement story of recent times in Ireland.
Ever since labour abuses at Gama were first brought to the attention of Socialist Party South Dublin councillor Mick Murphy earlier this year, activists had been secretly meeting with a handful of terrified Gama workers on a weekly basis.
But on Sunday, hundreds of angry Gama workers spontaneously swamped what was to be a secret meeting of no more than a few employees.
Quickly forming a new representative group - the Turkish Workers Action Group (TWAG) - the men cast aside suggestions that a protest be held on Wednesday and demanded action immediately.
Catching unions and Gama by surprise, the workers downed tools the next morning and took to the Dublin streets in an unprecedented show of determination.
Then yesterday afternoon, with SIPTU and other unions on board, the men voted unanimously in Liberty Hall to step up their protest and bring it to Gama’s largest construction project - a power station in Tynagh, Co Galway.
The move is significant given that Tynagh is Gama’s largest project in Ireland, and one that the company is anxious to keep free from industrial disputes.
Management’s concern at the development was exemplified late on Sunday night when seven workers, who had organised themselves into TWAG’s Tynagh committee, were unceremoniously thrown out.
One of the men, Mustafa Eken, told the Irish Examiner he had been offered money to tow the company line, before being threatened and intimidated.
“They used really bad words and told us we had betrayed them,” said Mr Eken.
“They said ‘just get your stuff and get out of here, you can’t work on our site’.”
Gama says it knows nothing of the incident but gardaí have confirmed to the Irish Examiner that the men spent the night in Loughrea Garda Station giving statements.
An investigation into allegations of threats is now underway.
Meanwhile, Gama continues to fight the publication of a Government report into allegations against the company in the High Court.
As reported by the Irish Examiner last month, the report fails to clear the company and calls for Enterprise Minister Micheál Martin to sanction further investigations by the Director of Corporate Enforcement and the Revenue Commissioners.
But in many ways the report has been overtaken by events. Regardless of whether the report is ultimately published, the future of Gama and its workers in Ireland is now in the hands of the company’s employees.
