This retired American sociology professor examines worker responses to the aggressive neoliberal campaigns to dismantle Europe's system of social supports for working people and to burden European governments with debts that must be paid by sacrificing workers. To do this he visited and studied developments in Ireland and Spain and found two very different responses.
To learn first-hand about the capitalist crisis and the workers’ responses, I spent the better part of May in Ireland and the Basque country meeting with labor leaders, rank and file militants, unemployed workers, political activists, academics and journalists. Numerous interviews, observations, publications, visits to job sites and households - in cities and villages -provide the basis for this essay.What he learned was that in Ireland the classic divide and rule strategies of the ruling One Percent were effective causing thousands of talented young people to emigrate; whereas in Spain, particularly in the Basque country where independent working class organizations have developed over a long period, workers are staying and fighting back.