Only decisive action by the SIPTU president averted massive travel disruption on Thursday, writes Chris Dooley, Industry and Employment Correspondent
It all began on Monday with a letter to the Taoiseach. There were just three days to go before hundreds of thousands of people faced having their post-St Patrick's Day travel plans disrupted by air, rail and bus strikes. From his office in Dublin's Liberty Hall, SIPTU president Jack O'Connor wrote a five-paragraph letter to Bertie Ahern. It was to be the start of a turbulent week for the man who succeeded Des Geraghty as the head of the country's biggest union only six months ago.
Initiatives such as O'Connor's letter do not come out of the blue, but follow informal contacts between the parties. Union leaders conduct this kind of business through the secretary general of the Department of the Taoiseach, Dermot McCarthy. Only when the two sides have established that there is sufficient room to manoeuvre will the letter-writing begin.
O'Connor began his letter by assuring the Taoiseach that his union's members had no desire to disrupt public transport and aviation services "next Thursday or any other day.Indeed clear assurances on the Government's approach, which may already have been offered in a general way, would greatly assist in averting industrial action and facilitate more stable engagement".
The letter went on to note previous commitments and assurances given by the Taoiseach regarding the future pay and conditions of Aer Rianta and CIÉ workers. But these assurances, O'Connor wrote, required a coherent policy to protect employment standards, including trade union rights and arrangements for collective bargaining.
"Accordingly, we seek confirmation of your Government's willingness to engage with the trade unions in order to reach agreement on a means of bringing this about," he continued.
The final paragraph of his letter concerned the promise given by the Minister for Transport, Séamus Brennan, that unions would be provided with the key financial information supporting the decision to break up Aer Rianta. The unions had also been promised that they would have time to examine and respond to this information before legislation on the break-up was introduced in the Dáil, O'Connor reminded the Taoiseach. Brennan's stated intention to have the legislation introduced before the Easter recess had been greeted with alarm by the unions, he said, given that they were still waiting for the information promised.
"It will improve matters immeasurably," wrote O'Connor, "if the Government would make it clear that it will honour the undertaking to make the key financial and other relevant information available, that it will endeavour to agree appropriate time-frames to enable us to evaluate it and to lay out our position and that accordingly any proposed legislation will not be finalised before the end of this Dáil session."
"A reply in the affirmative in respect of both requests would greatly improve matters," he concluded.
In his reply that evening, Ahern did not make specific reference to collective bargaining rights, but he did offer two strong assurances. The Government would engage with unions on measures to assure standards of employment were protected and a "race to the bottom" avoided. And it would "of course" honour the commitment that unions would have a reasonable opportunity to examine and respond to the financial information on the Aer Rianta break-up. It was now Brennan's intention to introduce the legislation in the Dáil "early after Easter", the Taoiseach stated.
Knowing that the Dáil does not return after the Easter break until April 27th, O'Connor was satisifed that this provided enough time for unions to receive the information - expected next week - and have it examined by their consultants. The commitment to engage with unions on employment standards was also judged by the SIPTU leader to be highly significant.
Convincing his union's Aer Rianta and CIÉ strike committees, however, was never going to be easy. It had taken O'Connor and senior officials three days, after all, to persuade Aer Rianta activists to call off their previous threatened stoppage in January.
With the union facing a Ryanair challenge to the planned strike in the High Court on Tuesday morning, there was no time for a repeat of the previous scenario. O'Connor and senior colleagues acted decisively and called off the airports stoppage without consulting the strike leaders. The decision only became known when the union's counsel, Richard Kean SC, stood up in the High Court to say the strike was off.
By that stage, industrial relations consultant Phil Flynn had been engaged by Aer Rianta in the hope that a formula could be found to avert the strike. This was despite Séamus Brennan's decision the previous Friday to reject a proposal by the Aer Rianta board that Flynn be invited to act as a mediator.
SIPTU's Aer Rianta shop stewards, convinced - erroneously - that Flynn was about to deliver more significant concessions than those offered to O'Connor, were furious when they heard that the airports stoppage had been called off. At a meeting attended by the president that afternoon, they insisted that "further clarifications" be sought from Ahern, who was by that stage en route to Washington DC.
The first "clarification", concerning the need for time to examine the Aer Rianta financial information, had already been given by the Taoiseach in his letter to O'Connor. The second was far from a clarification; instead it was effectively a demand that any change to the Shannon stopover requirement for transatlantic flights be phased in over a six- to 10-year period.
At least some of Aer Rianta's SIPTU activists remain under the impression that this demand was about to be "delivered" through Flynn's involvement. Flynn confirmed yesterday that this was not the case and said there was either a genuine misunderstanding of the situation or else people were being mischievous.
In any event, the clarification sought from the Washington-bound Ahern was given short shrift. In a reply to O'Connor on Wednesday, he refused to go beyond a general commitment to the future of Shannon Airport and said he was "surprised" that there could be any doubt about his position on the provision of information.
O'Connor, meanwhile, had moved on to persuading the union's CIÉ strike committee to call off its public transport strike. Having failed in this endeavour, he and the union's other general officers invoked a little-used rule to impose a cancellation of the action.
The move was denounced by the committee as "treachery", but moves to heal the rift have already begun. Providing internal relationships can be restored, SIPTU may emerge with its negotiating position enhanced.
O'Connor delivered his side of the deal suggested in Monday's letter to the Taoiseach. Positive responses from Ahern, he had promised, would "greatly improve matters". Having secured a strike-free Thursday at great risk to his own standing, he is entitled to think Ahern owes him one in return.