Business Opinion: The outcome of the latest fight picked by Ryanair's combative chief executive, Mr Michael O'Leary, will be watched with the usual horror by his bete noirs, the Taoiseach and the trade unions. But some new faces will be in the crowd this time, including Intel, Dell and the other big multinational employers, writes John McManus.

In an interesting move Mr O'Leary has appointed himself the unofficial champion of multinational industry here and by inference the guardian of all that is good and noble about Irish industrial policy.

The Ryanair boss is characterising his latest attempt at browbeating his pilots as a titanic rearguard action against the establishment - by default - of a legal right to collective bargaining.

What has Mr O'Leary in such a lather is the Industrial Relations (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2004, which is a product of the discussions on union recognition in the negotiation of Sustaining Progress

It revises employee representation procedures and speeds up the process under which unions can obtain binding rulings against employers from the Labour Court and seek to have them enforced by the Circuit Court.

This is seen by some - not least Mr O'Leary - as granting the right to collective bargaining by the back door. This may be something of an exaggeration, but without doubt it does afford a mechanism by which employees of companies that don't recognise unions can act collectively via their unions.

Given its industrial relations record, it is not surprising that Ryanair should emerge as the test bed on which the limits of the new legislation will be established.

Impact, which represents around 80 per cent of Ryanair's pilots via the Irish Airline Pilots Association, is seeking a ruling on the conditions that Ryanair is attaching to the retraining of pilots to fly new aircraft types. Ryanair is insisting that the pilots agree to repay the €15,000 cost if they leave the airline within five years, or if Ryanair is forced to accept collective bargaining.

Impact has said it will go the whole way on this issue under the new industrial relations legislation. Its actions have engendered a typically measured response from Mr O'Leary who fired off a letter to the Labour Relations Commission two weeks ago threatening to challenge the constitutionality of the new Act.

With almost Churchillian hubris Mr O'Leary promises that his challenge, when successful, will "prevent any further interference by trade unions and the Labour Relations Commission in the affairs of high-pay, non-union multinational companies like Ryanair".

He adds that he will be relying not only on the constitution but also the "repeated statements from the Government and the social partners that this legislation would not allow union recognition to be imposed (through the back door of the Labour Relations Commission) upon high-pay, multinational companies who do not subscribe to the outdated "low pay/union recognition" model.

While it is unlikely that either the Government or the social partners used such language it is clear Mr O'Leary believes that the new legislation poses a very real threat to his business, which has the use of non-unionised labour as one of its founding principles.

He probably has good reason to be afraid given the pilots growing militancy which presumably is reflective of wider discontent amongst his employees.

What is interesting is his attempt to rally other unnamed high-pay, non-union multinational companies to his flag for what is set to be a long and difficult fight. Historically Mr O'Leary has never looked for allies and has revelled in the label of maverick.

His broadening of the battlefield could be seen as a recognition by Mr O'Leary that the campaign he is about to embark on will not be a popular one, given that at its heart it is about denying his employees something that most people assume is a right.

Mr O'Leary will no doubt dress it up as a fight to ensure that the travelling public can avail of the cheapest air fares humanly possible, and not have to pay over the odds because the company is being held to ransom by left-wing unions. This will strike a chord with many of his customers, but he risks alienating others. But such concerns have not weighed too heavily on him in the past and it is more likely he is mustering support for a long and difficult fight.

Ether way he cannot count on the support of the likes of Intel, Dell or the hundreds of other multinational companies based here, with whom he now claims a common interest. They may dislike organised labour every bit as much as Mr O'Leary, but adopt a different tactic to defeat it.

Big multinationals are by and large the best employers in the State. They regularly pay over and above the national wage agreements, they have sophisticated human resource policies and offer generous benefits to staff.

The festering discontent which lies behind the latest row at Ryanair does not exist to the same extent at these companies and hence the ground is cut from under the feet of the unions.

Intel, Dell and all the rest will watch Mr O'Leary's antics with interest, and may secretly wish him every success, but they will not be rallying to his flag.