Don’t Let Our Union Leaders Prematurely End Public Sector Actions

Be prepared for the upcoming strike:

The upcoming public sector battle with the government over pay begins on the 30th of September with a work to rule and then with strikes scheduled for the 14th and 21st of October.

Socialist trade union activists must turn their attention to the importance of strikes and how we should conduct them. At this time there is no information on what form the strikes will take, or if they will be full public sector wide or just in key areas, but one thing we know is that the union bosses will always want to end the fight prematurely to enter talks.

These are some arguments we might hear from our union leaders to end the fight prematurely:

“We must end the strike to enter talks and show good faith”

We will hear from our officials that we have made our point and must end the strike to show good faith before entering talks. The school secretaries and caretakers did this in 2025 after a week of fantastic strike action and were strung along for over a year between the WRC and Labour court before eventually getting a deal which didn’t give them anything close to what they wanted.

Can we wait for over a year for a measly pay increase while bills continue to rise due to inflation?

“People can’t afford to lose pay while on strike”

This is true but workers will continue to struggle for the next few years if we do not win a real pay increase. It will mean we will have to begin the struggle again for another pay increase in a year or two. Short term thinking will harm workers long term with a poor pay offer.

Previous deals were made only 1% or 2% increases because the government correctly predicted our unions did not have the heart for a fight. A one day token strike will not deter Jack Chambers.

And let’s not forget government started to waver when there was the threat of school closures during the School secretaries strike. It was the union who blinked first and ended the strike before the government was put under real pressure.

We can only win a real pay increase above inflation if we show the government our strength and determination.

“We need to return to negotiations”

Entering negotiations before we have broken the governments resolve will mean we will get a pittance. Our union leaders want to return to talks because that is where they feel comfortable - in a plush conference room surrounded by other men in suits, not out on the pickets with us workers.

If the strike continues, they risk losing control of the workers and that is the last thing they want. In 1907 Polish revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg talked about how trade unions are set up to discipline their members and restrain them from action.

We saw this in 2025 with the Fórsa head of education going on the Six One news on RTÉ to tell SNA’s to return to work when they started to refuse to cross the School Secretary & Caretakers pickets.

Rosa Luxemburg went on to say that “strikes do not exactly fall from heaven. They must be brought about in some way or another by the workers.”

It took a long time for us to get to this point and with us workers pushing the fight on we can grab this opportunity for a real win for workers on pay. The dispute and strike must be driven by us workers and not left to the officials and union bureaucracy.

This means applying pressure at every opportunity.

Union bosses see themselves as professional negotiators who want us workers to pay our dues and let them handle the talking. We can all agree that every recent pay deal has been completely inadequate.

When we got a 1% pay increase earlier in the year it wasn’t long before the price of petrol went up or an energy company announced an 8% rise in cost to us.

“A prolonged strike will make already out of control hospital waiting lists even longer, ordinary people will be affected”

This is not the fault of nurses and other health care professionals. The governments decisions and actions have led to this impasse and they can end the dispute at any time.

The government are responsible for ending the strike and any consequences – not you the worker. Jack Chambers and the government have refused to enter negotiations unless pay is off the agenda. They have shown zero respect for workers and are not acting in good faith.

“We will lose public support if the strike continues/the strike is causing negative public reaction”

The Russian revolutionary Lenin once said that strikes teach workers about the strength of our employers and what the true strength of workers united is. He went on to say that a strike teaches workers to not think of their employer alone “and not of their own immediate workmates alone but of all the employers, the whole class of capitalists and the whole class of workers.”

Imagine how powerful a public sector united and winning will look to other workers and how inspiring it will be for other workers to fight back against their own exploiter bosses?

The media is on the employers side because they have a vested interest in the economic status quo. Our papers are owned by billionaires like Yvonne Bauer who owns Newstalk, Today fm, Spin 103 & Iradio. Her net worth is over €2.5 billion.

The Irish Independent is owned by a Belgian billion euro media conglomerate who has revenue of over €95 million in Ireland alone. Social media companies no doubt will be working overtime to damage the workers confidence during industrial action.

They all have a vested interest in the workers being smashed and defeated and Lenin summed it up:

“When a factory owner who has amassed millions from the toil of several generations of workers refuses to grant a modest increase in wages or even tries to reduce wages to a still lower level and, if the workers offer resistance, throws thousands of hungry families out into the street, it becomes quite clear to the workers that the capitalist class as a whole is the enemy of the whole working class and that the workers can depend only on themselves and their united action. It often happens that a factory owner does his best to deceive the workers, to pose as a benefactor, and conceal his exploitation of the workers by some petty sops or lying promises. A strike always demolishes this deception at one blow by showing the workers that their “benefactor” is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

A successful strike could have the effect of inspiring other workers to action and threaten the whole system of exploitation we live in. Other workers will not be against us because of what we are fighting for, they want the same for themselves!

Polls show majority support for public sector strikes and for nationwide shut downs on the cost of living. Social media companies and traditional media will bombard everyone with messages that attack the strike until the union and workers lose confidence in the action.

The real struggle is between our classes, bosses and workers:

This is a struggle between us workers and our employers and unions are happy with the status quo. Their very job is settling disputes within the framework set up by the state within a capitalist system and their income comes from being an intermediary between employers and workers in the current economic system. They only benefit if that system remains.

Their cozy relationships with the employers and government will be threatened if the strike goes on too long. Their aim is to do a token strike if it comes to it to allow us workers to release some steam and retain control.

Russian revolutionary Lenin summed it up:

“As long as workers have to deal with capitalists on an individual basis they remain veritable slaves who must work continuously to profit another in order to obtain a crust of bread, who must for ever remain docile and inarticulate hired servants. But when the workers state their demands jointly and refuse to submit to the money-bags, they cease to be slaves, they become human beings.”

We must learn from recent strikes and work to rules that we must not give up the strike until our demands are met. This government has no problem acting in bad faith and giving nothing to workers once our leverage is given up. As Lenin said: “Every strike reminds the capitalists that it is the workers and not they who are the real masters” - let’s remind this government who are real masters.