It's against this background that a ballot of the nurses led to a rejection of the Labour Court enforcement of a 2 percent wage settlement. The government has been standing by the Labour Court ruling. As the nurses' leaders entered talks with the government, they issued a statement which significantly did not include any mention of increments, the central demand of nurses looking a decent wage. The stage is set for minor concessions by the government, leaving room for the trade-union leadership to call off the strike action. Yet even if this happens, the nurses' strike will have been significant.
Irish workers see massive private wealth and widespread public corruption.
They are now looking for their share of the cake, while government and big business know that the recipe for the cake is starvation wages for the working class. The chief weakness among the working class as a whole is blindness to the activities of the trade-union leaders, a blindness shared by the majority of the Irish left. But that blindness won't last. The long sleep of the Irish working class is coming to an end. Leadership calls it off As we go to press, on Oct. 28, the trade-union leadership has called off the strike after agreeing to a document that marked essentially no significant movement by the government.