Picket on the Limerick Chamber of Commerce - We won't work for peanuts!

limerick | worker & community struggles and protests | event notice Friday August 07, 2009 12:17 by Limerick Socialist Youth - SY limericksocialist at gmail dot com 0877675890

Hand's off the Minimum Wage!

Socialist Youth are organising a picket/protest at the Limerick Chambe of Commerce as part of an ongoing campaign against pay cuts and in particular the threats to the minimum wage. As part of our campaign, we have been handing out peanuts to people, arguing that we are not monkeys – we need more than peanuts!. The protest, titled “We Won’t Work for Peanuts” is planned for next Tuesday, August 11th at 1pm outside the Chamber of Commerce on O’Connell St, opposite the White House.

For the past weeks and months there has been more and more talk from the government, and the bosses, that the minimum wage will be cut, and that pay rates I general should be slashed. We’ve organised this picket to give young people and workers a chance to say loud and clear: we didn’t cause this crisis, we won’t pay the price – We won’t work for peanuts!”

Limerick Chamber of Commerce 20% pay cut 'proposal'
We have decided to protest outside the Limerick Chamber of Commerce because they embody this attempt to make ordinary people pay for the crisis. Their recent attack on wages, and their proposal for a 20% cut of all wages is a disgrace, as is their support for the savage Bord ‘Snip’ Report.

They would be better off looking within their membership book for people to blame for the crisis. Amongst their ranks are all the major banks, including the toxic Anglo Irish, companies like De Beers/Element Six and RR Donnelly/Banta, who are massacring hundreds of jobs after making millions out of the region, and of course many of the construction companies whose speculation and greed helped crash the economy. Yet they have the cheek to turn around and demand that young people and workers take a cut in their wages out of “solidarity” with the bosses?

This is not only ‘unjust’ - it would be nuts to cut pay. Cuts to pay, jobs and services are making this crisis worse and must be stopped. The more pay is slashed, the less money people have to spend, which will just further deepen the downwards spiral of the economy. We are not going to watch on as the nutty ideas of the Limerick Chamber of Commerce, IBEC and the government wreck the future for young people. We appeal to everyone who agrees with us to come along to the picket, and show them that we are not monkey’s, and we can not and will not work for peanuts.

The picket is being organised to help publicise Socialist Youth & the Socialist Party's upcoming day of discussion and debate, being organised on Saturday August 15th from 1pm in Pery's Hotel, Glentworth Street. The public event features a debate with Ogra Shinn Fein on the "What is the left alternative to the Capitalist Crisis", and a discussion on "1930s crash all over again - was Marx right?

Organised by Socialist Youth