SIPTU Activist

Crumlin, Dublin, Monday 21st July 2014

Joan Collins TD, Local Councillors Pat Dunne and Brendan Young and past President of the Dublin Council of Trade Unions Mick O’Reilly protest against strikebreaking bin collection at Stannaway Ave and Rutland Grove in Crumlin, Dublin, this morning.

“If a body of workers are on strike the question of whether they are winning or losing is settled in the long run by their success in stopping their employers’ business. If they succeed in stopping that business they win, if they do not succeed they lose. If their Union is able to pay Strike Pay for a year or two years they would still lose if the business can go on without them; nay, if the Union could pay a Strike Pay greater in amount than the weekly wages they had earned they would still lose if the employer’s business was going on without them. But if the business cannot go on without them then they win. Hence, and this is the pivot of the whole question, whosoever enables the employer to continue his business without the striking workers is scabbing upon those workers.”

James Connolly, ‘What is a Scab?’, Workers Republic, 10 July 1915

https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1915/07/scab.htm