Union boss calls for general election

THE leader of the country’s largest trade union has demanded the Taoiseach “call it a day” and name a date for a general election if he cannot “rein in” the Department of Finance from its “slash and burn” policies.

The comments come amid cabinet disquiet over the path of the current economic recovery strategy and following comments by Finance Minister Brian Lenihan that the Government could review the minimum wage if it were a barrier to job creation.

Responding, SIPTU president Jack O’Connor said: “I am calling on the Taoiseach to exercise some control over his colleague before that department does irreparable damage and closes off all prospects of recovery.

“I have always been reluctant to call for a general election but given that the Government has no mandate for these slash and burn policies that it is pursuing without regard to ordinary people and the most vulnerable people in society, if Brian Cowen cannot rein those people in he should call it a day and call a general election.”

Mr O’Connor said talk of reducing the minimum wage was just the latest in a line of “reprehensible remedies” to the crisis.

“Colm McCarthy’s Bord Snip Nua report did not drop out of the sky in isolation. It is an element of a recipe of reprehensible remedies that are being put forward by those on the hard right that extends from the socialisation of the bank debt — so that it becomes a problem for all the people and not those who created it — right down to attacks on pay, on public services, social welfare and now on the minimum wage.

“It is combined with proposals at the same time that the state’s surplus assets as they call them, held in trust by the state, should be sold off in a market that is already grossly oversupplied with property. What this is about is putting them on the market so they can be picked up by those who still have money for bargain-basement prices.”

Referring to the “hawks” in the Department of Finance, he said they had presided over the creation of the economic problem in the first place and sabotaged every effort that had been made not only by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, but also by IBEC and the Construction Industry Council to find a means of economic recovery.

He said that a social partnership search for an economic recovery strategy would be over if the minimum wage was cut.

“I don’t really believe they [Department of Finance] intend to wait around for that to happen. They have sabotaged any attempt to conclude an agreement by the way they dealt with the jobs initiative. They have been promoting the most inflammatory language for months. It is quite clear that people are working very hard in the Department of Finance to sabotage it.”

He also compared Mr Lenihan to a predecessor.

“The Minister of Finance is now well on the way to following in the footsteps of his illustrious predecessor Sean McEntee, Fianna Fáil Minister for Finance in the early 1950s, who virtually turned off the lights in this country and condemned it to a decade of zero growth,” said Mr O’Connor.

A Government spokesman was not willing to even countenance calls for a general election. “The Government mandate is derived from the 2007 general election,” he said.