LABOUR CONFERENCE 2013
Speech by Deputy Leader and Minister for Social Protection Joan Burton
Announcing the James Larkin Thirst for Justice Award
Saturday, 30th November 2013
Fellow delegates,
There is one more very significant award to be presented tonight.
It is one hundred years from the Lockout, surely the most significant moment in Irish trade union history.
Larkin, Connolly and the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union made their famous stand for the rights of workers on the principle of “each for all and all for each”.
Although some initial steps had been taken, there was no social welfare system then that might have protected the workers and their families.
The union members relied on themselves – and the fellowship of the British labour movement – in desperately trying to prevent starvation and sustain their battle.
As the labour historian Francis Devine notes, there can have been few more emotive occasions than when the food ships landed on the quays of Dublin.
As we all know, the employers claimed victory in the immediate aftermath.
But the ultimately victory was claimed by the trade union movement.
Because the ITGWU survived, and more than that, it prospered.
A century later, we know it as SIPTU – following the 1990 merger of the ITGWU and the Federated Workers’ Union, also founded by Larkin.
Its twin objectives are simply: fairness at work and justice in society.
And 100 years from the Lockout, those objectives remain as crucial as ever.
In a world where low pay and zero-hour contracts are becoming increasingly pervasive, the trade union movement is more important than ever.
As Padraig Yeates has argued: “1913 hasn’t gone away. Of all the centenaries we will be celebrating in the coming decade, this is the one where re-enactment could supersede commemoration because the issues of collective bargaining, union recognition, workplace representation and industrial democracy are even more contested today than a hundred years ago.”
SIPTU is at the front and centre of the fight for better living standards for workers and their families.
Labour in Government is committed to working with SIPTU in that fight – for full employment, for fair wages, and for a strong welfare safety net when people are out of work.
That is why a commitment to collective bargaining is in the Programme for Government and why Labour and SIPTU are united in their belief that this would be a hugely progressive step for workers.
In Jack O’Connor, SIPTU has an unflinching, courageous and compassionate leader in the very best traditions of the trade union movement.
Ladies and gentlemen, for those reasons, I am delighted to present the 2013 James Larkin Thirst for Justice Award to SIPTU and to call on Jack O’Connor to accept the award.