Cllr. Éilis Ryan
The Workers’ Party has accused Taoiseach Enda Kenny and Tánaiste Joan Burton of having an ideologically driven aversion to creating public sector jobs.
Workers’ Party Dublin Councillor Éilis Ryan has said that the launch today of another Jobs Initiative was merely a further throwing of massive sums of money at the private sector to create pseudo-jobs based on exploitation, low pay and temporary contracts.
Cllr. Ryan said that the governments’ deliberate exclusion of the public sector as a source of job creation doomed the latest initiative to being another costly failure. “The history of this state has shown that only the public sector, including commercial state and semi-state companies, has a solid record in creating job and in driving real growth in the economy. That is why even the right-wing governments of Cumann na Gaedhal in the 1920s relied on the public sector and despite their ideology included the state sector in the mix”, said the North Inner City councillor.
“The government keeps throwing billions of euro on the losing chip of private job creation. At best temporary, low-paid jobs will result with a small proportion of more durable jobs for those with high-level qualifications. At worst we can expect another plethora of internships, zero-hour contracts and zombie work schemes which can only function at all by forcing people on the Live Register to sign up for them or get cut off.”
Cllr. Ryan concluded saying, “Relying on the private sector for job creation is expecting a miracle. The private sector has one objective which is profit and anything else is entirely incidental. The private sector regards employment as a burden and a cost to be kept to a minimum. When you have a state continuously throwing money at that sector to ensure the minimum becomes the norm it is obvious that full employment is an impossibility under such a system. That’s why the Workers’ Party believes that only the public / state sector can guarantee the creation of significant employment.”