Two journalists from Indymedia went to meet Ray O'Reilly from the Independent Workers Union, along with a couple of IWU members who work in Dublin Bus. This article covers part of that interview, the discussion on the Irish Trade Union movement and its constituent parts.

"Your job is yours as a right." To read this in a trade union statement makes you feel like it must be labour history, not a letter drafted by the IWU to be sent to the Aer Lingus Workers about their current predicament. And yet Ireland's youngest union is the one that was smart enough to register the internet domain: union.ie and the letter is up on their website. They have overcome the main legal hurdle to establishing a viable trade union (a negotiating license) and have an evangelical belief in trade unionism that expresses itself in language that comes straight from the 19th century proletariat that gave birth to the movement. Ray talks of "...restoring the Trade Union movement as the organised arm and voice of working people."

There is another funny thing about the IWU - When asked why they are different from other unions they talk of their principles as if they were a creed that was in danger of being lost. Anybody who has been following the Irish trade Union movement's squabbles over the last few years, especially ILDA's struggle for representation, will see the reason for the particular list of principles. But from the outside it reads like an indictment of the labour movement that these have become principles that differentiate one union from the rest. Surely the right to free association, the openness and transparency of the unions, the primacy of members decision making are going to be part of any trade union's core principles? Article continues here . . .

Audio Clips of Interview

• arm and voice - 16 seconds - 250k • I believe - 1 min 16 seconds - 1.2mb • IWU and Congress - 59 seconds - 937kb • In their place - 1 m 12s - 1.1mb • Indentured Servants - 16 seconds 263kb • SIPTU - 1 m 36s 1.5mb

Related Articles on Indymedia

• IWU Charter • Organising home helps in Cork • Inaugural IWU Conference • IWU members victimised in Dublin Bus
Blind Alley of the IWU A response to the article by Liberty Hall Langer

Other Background Material

• IWU Website • SIPTU website • Labour History of Ireland Archive • Irish Labour History Society