The Irish Trade Union movement learns samizdat.

national | miscellaneous | news report Saturday April 26, 2003 23:50 by seedot - yes please

I have in front of me a document issued by the National Bus and Rail Union. It’s one page long and makes one of the most impassioned, informed attacks on the ‘privatisation’ mantra at the heart of this governments approach to public needs. I didn’t get mailed it, read it in a newspaper – it was handed to me as a single A4 page that someone picked up on a bus.

The photocopier shook the foundations of an empire that couldn’t live with free information flows – now we’re left with the empire that owns and manages information flows. RTS communications challenge this hegemony – it is multi-voiced, networked and subversive - because a call to party is hard to demonise. Their message is seen by everyone who lives in the city – which overcomes a weakness of Indymedia and other, technological forms of samizdat – with our new omnipotent photocopiers.

So when bus passengers can pick up a document which says:

‘Our members are currently balloting for industrial action precisely because of the Minister’s pigheaded approach. … Forcing our members onto the streets may make him look good with the Government’s ‘Fat Cat’ backers who want to privatise lucrative routes, but it achieves nothing else.’

I think we are seeing some parts of the labour movement have realised the world we live in, and are learning from either our current samizdat practitioners or the information revolution that their brothers and sisters in the east of this continent won.

I’m sure someone has a soft copy – if so, post it here – otherwise I’ll scan / type what I have in. Also – is this a one way flow, or can partnership with the unions means something other than sell out.