Unity

From Unity, 25 April 2009

Interview with Jimmy Kelly

by Lynda Walker

Jimmy Kelly is the Regional Officer for Unite in Ireland. He comes from Waterford, and for about thirty years he was a glass-cutter at Waterford Crystal. He is proud of the fact that he comes from the shop floor and was a shop steward and then a convenor for over twenty years. After being elected to the Executive, representing Ireland, for three electoral terms he was elected chairperson of the General Executive Council of the T&G. He was a regional secretary of the T&G and then Unite since 2007. In the following article Lynda Walker, national chairperson of the Communist Party of Ireland, talks to Jimmy Kelly about his work as the Irish Regional officer for Unite and about recent losses in the manufacturing industry.
     When Jimmy Kelly took up the position of Regional Officer for Unite he recognised the double challenge that existed. The first is the historical precedence for both Amicus and the Transport and General Workers’ Union, “to bring together our members and to make Unite into a union defending its members.” He says that the task in hand is to move to a 100 per cent organising culture and to do away with any shoddy organisation. He feels very strongly that “the cancer of competition between unions for existing union members” should be a thing of the past, and he points out that there are “huge opportunities” for all trade unions.
     The second challenge also has a historic base. He says: “This post has two jurisdictions, a situation that does not exist in any other region of Unite. Unite is very conscious and recognises the special place that Ireland has, with an Executive that is based in Ireland. There are no differences regarding working-class issues, but the special needs have to be considered.”
     Responding to questions about the recent redundancies, Jimmy Kelly spoke about the Visteon workers from west Belfast, Enfield and Basildon who were treated disgracefully. In Belfast they were given six minutes to get their belongings and get out of the plant. After, in some cases, thirty years’ service the owners were not prepared to accept and mirror the Ford agreement of lifetime protection.
     Visteon workers fought back and occupied the plant. Jimmy said: “Visteon tried to abandon workers’ rights, and they thought that the workers would just walk away and watch the news that night telling them that they were sacked, without pay or pension rights.” When the Visteon shop steward spoke at a meeting of the Belfast Trades Council last month he told the audience that he was only in his thirties and that he had a family. He said: “I want my job back. I do not want redundancy pay.”
     He also said: “There have been horrendous job losses in Bombardier (Short’s), Nortel, F. G. Wilson, and smaller places, like Hughes Christianson. Nortel dismissed two hundred people out of its two thousand UK work force, on the spot, without consultation or redundancy pay, predominantly in Northern Ireland, Maidenhead, and Harlow. Jimmy Kelly said: “This is the era of the cheap, fast way to sack workers.” He also spoke about the situation in Newtrack in Antrim, where it was reported that “the names of the workers were put into a hat, a kind of ballot to see who would have to go on lay-off, and those names were all trade union members.”
     Of the politicians he said that whilst some individual members of parties are supportive, “we need a better response. They also have to look at how public money is being spent and to put down markers about what is acceptable regarding lay-offs and making training grants available. When we get through this year and the next we need to retain the skills. The Northern Ireland Assembly has to look at the fact that companies like Visteon are moving jobs to South Africa. Investment is needed here. There is no limitation regarding banks and the taxpayers’ money. The system doesn’t value the worker like it values the banks.”
     Waterford and Wedgwood is a good example of where the British and Irish Governments failed to step in with money to save the companies. Jimmy explained that one of the four areas that they are working on in Waterford Crystal is the pensions, because, unlike Wedgwood, the workers in Waterford have no access to the Pension Protection Fund, and therefore the Irish Government is out of line with EU legislation.
     Going on to to speak about the EU, Jimmy said that it was a strange form of democracy that cannot take “No” for an answer. Referring to the “No” vote in the Irish referendum last year, he said: “The Irish Government intends to revisit the vote regarding the Lisbon Treaty. They wouldn’t revisit a “Yes” vote. We as a union opposed the treaty, in support of workers’ and employment rights and in opposition to legal decisions made in the EU, for example Viking and Laval. We would like to open the battle up to apply to the North and the South, but the British Government reneged on a referendum.”
     What message does Jimmy Kelly have for workers on May Day? “The message to politicians is to increase the taxation: tax the rich and stop using our money to bail out the banks. On the 2nd of May we will be starting the May Day march at 10:45 a.m. from the Union HQ on the Antrim road in Belfast, and we will join with the main rally at the Arts College. Many of those who lost their jobs will be at the forefront of the march. We seek to build the fight-back for jobs and workers’ rights. We are moving to a position for a day of action in the North. We saw a massive response in the South, and the Northern Ireland Committee of the ICTU are working for the same action here.
     “All on May Day should extend a strong hand of solidarity internationally—and look, for example, at trade unionists in Colombia, who are shot by right-wing death squads. Any country that has a strong union must give principled support to those trade unionists.
     “We give solidarity also to Cuba, who is celebrating their fiftieth anniversary. We will celebrate with them and we know that in spite of the blockade they have free health and education, better than any in that part of the world.”

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