Dear comrades,

The Workers Party of Ireland conveys its thanks to the comrades of the KKE and PCRF for facilitating this meeting.

Mass Struggle

The mass mobilizations, protests, strikes and industrial action in France in 2024 in response to proposed to changes in the pension system with benefit reductions and the proposal to increase the retirement age, the cost-of-living crisis, the attacks on social rights, demonstrated a sharpening of the class conflict.

Ireland has a history of organised labour. 2024 was also a year of trade union action in Ireland. The strike by public sector workers in Northern Ireland on 18th January 2024, the biggest industrial action in Northern Ireland in 50 years, represented a militant and determined stand by workers and their unions in an unprecedented escalation of their action over pay and conditions and the protection of public services.

The successful generalised day of action across Northern Ireland involved workers across every sector. This mass action was the culmination of a series of actions over the previous two years and was about much more than the specific demands. It concerned defending and ensuring quality public services in the face of a relentless campaign of budget cuts, austerity measures, low wages, poor working conditions, the rundown of public services and continuing attempts at privatisation, implemented by the bourgeois parties against the interests of working people and their families.

At present, in the Republic of Ireland, Fórsa, the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) and Unite have served notice of industrial action to the Health Service Executive with industrial action due to begin on 31 March. Other health service unions, including Connect and the Medical Laboratory Scientists Association have also expressed their opposition to the HSE's Pay and Numbers Strategy.

In Northern Ireland ambulance workers and paramedics have voted for industrial action in response to management proposals to impose a new shift system and the Northern Ireland Teachers’ Council which is comprised of the five main teaching unions is considering industrial action.

Across Europe, of course, the prospects for militancy differ. For example in Greece, PAME, from its foundation guarded its special character, as a whole, class Trade Union Front, which connects people who struggle and takes a clear class position, opposing the capitalist system of exploitation based on the principles of proletarian internationalism and solidarity. The WPI also welcomes the European Conference of WFTU which took place earlier this year.

Pact for Social Dialogue

The European Union, from its inception, has promoted the concept of “social cohesion” which effectively attempts to enmesh workers and their unions within the institutions of capital. On 5 March 2025 the European Commission and its “social partners” signed a new Pact for European Social Dialogue. The EU openly describes “social dialogue” as an integral part of “our European social model and plays a crucial role in keeping European enterprises competitive”.

The new Pact purports to establish a long-term framework with concrete actions to be taken by the Commission and social partners to strengthen, expand the scope of social dialogue, and promote a stronger consultation of social partners.


The term “social dialogue” attempts to suggest that the historic conflict between social classes has ended, that the power relations in capitalist society has changed, that class struggle is redundant and that the problems facing workers can be resolved by a consensus with the exploiting class within the existing social system. This is the false narrative favoured and advocated by the European Union and the prospects for the labour movement in Europe require this narrative to be confronted.

Social dialogue is an attempt to legitimise the existing order, whose ultimate aim is to preserve the dominance of the capitalist class. It implies that workers and employers are in genuine “dialogue” suggesting the end of the historical and social struggle between the oppressor and the oppressed.

In the Republic of Ireland from 1987 to 2009, unions, employers and governments in Ireland engaged in a series of seven social partnership programmes built around a centralized pay agreement. This format quickly ended with the global capitalist crisis in 2008. The Irish social partnership model gave rise to considerable debate about its effects on union membership, density and influence. From 1997 onwards Irish trade unions also sponsored a series of national framework agreements intended to foster ‘workplace partnership’ and to institutionalize at workplace level the kind of cooperative engagement with employers although even these met with employer hostility.

While some union members enjoyed improvements in real pay, unions continued to face fierce hostility from employers. Union moderation failed to promote union revival. It had the opposite effect. Union density levels decreased significantly. Employers continued to resist union recognition, reluctant to engage in collective bargaining within workplaces.

Bargaining activity at workplace level was marginal. Unions were perceived as disengaged from and lost touch with their members. Social partnership actually led to a decline in membership in trade unions.

The collapse of social partnership in 2009 led to a shift towards decentralized company-level collective bargaining across much of the private sector. Since the end of the social partnership arrangements, unions in Ireland have sought to “re-engage” activists and members to promote union revitalization under decentralized collective bargaining, recognising that social partnership weakened unions in workplaces by disengaging activists and members and marginalizing collective bargaining.

Unions have engaged in employing specialized organisers, investing in recruitment and recognition campaigns, involving activists and members in workplace organizing, promoting publicity campaigns, and forming partnerships with community and civil society groups. This has not addressed the significant problems.

Social Dialogue is an ideological tool

Social dialogue is not dialogue. It is an ideological tool designed to suggest that social struggles have transitioned from the contradiction between labour and capital to moderation, compromise and cooperation. It is a mechanism for keeping workers under control. The bourgeois states, their alliances and the monopolies wish to establish and institutionalise “co-operation” between labour and capital to disguise the reality of class conflict.

Within the context of bourgeois hegemony all the institutions of the state collaborate to conceal the predatory nature of class domination and to devise mechanisms to impede and frustrate class struggle.

The reactionary role of the European Union has had a significant impact on the trade union movement and workers’ rights. The deregulation of labour markets, the so-called “flexibility” or casualisation of labour has massively increased job insecurity, under-employment, low pay and low quality employment. Work in the public sector had been severely eroded by privatisation and sub-contracting work to private employers. The development of workfare as a mechanism to enforce acceptance of low quality jobs has been a planned strategy of the European Union and its Member States.

The everyday struggle, the struggle of the trade unions is inextricably linked with the struggle for class emancipation.