Bord Na Móna Strike To Battle Privatisation

“We will now be moving what is a very good company, Bord na Móna, to work in, it has been over the years, to a private company which wouldn’t carry the same terms and conditions” worker Mick Gleeson told the Irish Indepedent.

But workers aren’t taking this lying down and have decided to take strike action with a one day strike on June 19th. The strike will escalate the following week and the week after.

In February this year, Bord na Móna said it had an agreement to sell its recycling business to private company KWD Recycling. “The fire sale of Bord na Móna Recycling is bad for workers, customers, and the environment,” said SIPTU Divisional Organiser Adrian Kane.

KWD Recycling have faced fines because in 2013 and in 2014 as well as 2015 and 2016, waste was accepted well in excess of the annual limit of 40,000 tonnes – sometimes twice the amount, a court was told by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Sean Murphy, director of Killarney Waste Disposal (KWD) Unlimited Company, pleaded guilty to two offences of breaching his licence under the Waste Management Act. KWD is one of the biggest waste companies in the country, operating since 1986.

Bord na Móna Recycling brought in €103 million for the year ending in March 2024. Why should we hand that revenue over to a private company? Bord na Móna as a whole cleared over €100 million in profit in 2023.

But SIPTU says the negotiation door is still open to Bord Na Mona Recycling after union members decided to reject a bad Labour Court proposal in favour of strike action.

For the last 40 years the economic orthodoxy of the establishment parties has been “neoliberalism” - the Thatcherite idea that everything public needs to be privatised, sold off or outsourced.

From housing to healthcare this has led to disastrous outcomes for workers and for the wider communities we live in. The union leaders act as if this economic background is inevitable and all workers can do is negotiate a retreat.

Their pessimism and lack of real opposition to privatisation and outsourcing is a massive contributing factor to the victory of neoliberalism - a victory the union leaders use to excuse further inaction.

Negotiating under neoliberalism is like negotiating with a shark. As James O’Toole wrote in “The Return of Class War Trade Unionism”:

“One day the shark comes to you and says: “Hey, I’m hungry so I’m going to eat you!” and the union leaders negotiate for the shark to just eat one of your legs. They declare victory and celebrate because they convinced their new “partner” to only eat on of your limbs.

But the shark’s hunger renews every day. He wakes up hungry the next day and says “Oh I’m hungry again so I’m going to eat you!” The union leaders step in and say “why not just eat an arm today Mr.Shark?” and the shark eats your arm. The union leaders celebrate their ingenious “strategy”.

The next day the shark comes back for more. In fact, he’s developed quite a taste for your flesh and bone. The shark keeps coming back until there’s nothing left to give. That’s the truth of neoliberalism and the union “strategy” of negotiated retreat is a strategy for dopes. You’ll end up being eaten.

Many of the union leaders accept Thatcher’s mantra that “there is no alternative!” Without any alternative to capitalism, they fail to stand up to it. They don’t have anything to fight for except less bad capitalism. They can’t even inspire themselves.”

If neoliberalism is about class war by the bosses to take away all the gains we workers had made over previous decades then, to be honest - they’ve been allowed to win the class war for the last few decades.

They’ve been helped by Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Labour Party. And our union leaders accept that neoliberalism is here to stay.

Every strike against privatisation, like the brave stance being taken by Bord na Móna workers, is a chance to involve the whole union movement in taking a stand against a relentless attack on our class.

Nothing moves without our labour. We need to remember the power we have - and use it!