In Memory Of The Dublin Lockout

One hundred years ago, the laborers of Dublin organized, after a fashion, and went on strike to protest working conditions. The tram drivers stopped driving their vehicles right where they were at the time called, and walked away, leaving Dublin commuters to walk...or find a ride with a friend who had an automobile. So the rich were not inconvenienced while the poor had a difficult time getting to work.

1913 was a time of socialism trumpeted as the cure for all of capitalism's evils, long ago before anyone actually tried out the theory. We all know how Russia ended up at the end of the great socialist experiment.

Here we are, one hundred years later, and now the bus drivers are feeling put upon by the government that controls their wages. It's the same government that's gone broke paying for social welfare programs when the income has declined but demand hasn't.

Bus Eirann is losing money and something must be done to cut the expenses, but the drivers don't want it to be them, or their wages and benefits.

It feels like the mirror image of one hundred years earlier, where the overworked and underpaid have been replaced by the pampered and petted. The pendulum has swung over to the other side after a century's journey. This time around, the boss is oppressed because there isn't enough coming in to feed everyone. Meanwhile, the workers cry poor and claim the government is lazy and shiftless.

Back in 1913, the bosses turned the tables on their striking workers and locked them all out, closed the doors on the poorest of the poor who earned a pittance, but a desperately needed pittance. The end result was that the strike was broken as the children of Dublin went hungry and fathers abandoned the action.

Will the government follow suit and lock out their employees?

Would it be as effective? The unemployed could just collect benefits from the government they are striking against, and no children will be left crying from hunger. Not exactly the threat it was in 1913, is it?

One hundred years after the Dublin Lockout, times are not quite what they were. And neither is the life of the bus driver.

What remains is the fact that the government has no money, and cannot take from one group to fund a unit that cannot turn a profit, let alone break even.

Then too, the unions are already organized and there's no replacement for Jim Larkin to stir the masses. And the well-to-do who once came out to feed the starving children of the striking workers aren't keen on paying more taxes when their own pockets are being pinched by a depressed economy.