Peace, partnership, women's issues and new leadership will dominate this week's ICTU conference in Belfast.
THE Irish Congress of Trade Unions has completed the most successful decade in its history. Membership has reached a record 690,140, it is setting the agenda for economic and social progress in the Republic, delivering significant increases in take-home pay to workers, and believes it is on the brink of giving employees a real stakeholding in the firms for which they work.
Even in Northern Ireland the haemorrhage of membership has slowed to a trickle over the past year. The fall was 303 last year, compared with 4,500 in the previous 12 months. With Labour in power, hopes are high that the trend will be reversed and the trade union movement brought in from the cold.
The first item on the agenda for the conference in Belfast this week is "Peace in Northern Ireland". The main congress resolution calls for "a complete and unequivocal" ceasefire from the IRA. Without it, the ICTU says, there is not the remotest prospect of progress.
The resolution is not expected to raise much dissent. But one from the Derry Trades Council, calling for an international trade union inquiry into Bloody Sunday, may raise some hackles.
Another key issue for debate is "Making Partnership Work" in the Republic. If an IRA ceasefire is essential for peace in Northern Ireland, many trade unionists believe union recognition is the key to preserving industrial peace in the Republic.
Continuing resistance to unions by many overseas companies, particularly in the hi-tech sector, is causing growing resentment. SIPTU, the country's largest union, has made it clear that if the new review group set up under Partnership 2000 does not come up with a solution, there will be no more national agreements.
ICTU returns show that trade union membership has increased by 55,000 since the advent of national agreements and take-home pay has risen by an average of well over 20 per cent.
But, at most, unions are recruiting only about one in five of new employees, and the growing shortages in some sectors of the labour market suggest that wage rates would be rising anyway. The current threat of action by electricians in the building industry is the latest sign of growing militancy among private sector workers.
What is more, many of the champions of the agreements have left or are about to leave the scene.
The incoming president of the ICTU, Mr Ed Browne, has just retired as president of SIPTU. The ICTU general treasurer. Mr Billy Attley, is due to retire as SIPTU general secretary early next year.
The outgoing ICTU president, Mr John Freeman, is also due to retire shortly as head of the ATGWU. His ICTU predecessor, Mr Phil Flynn, took early retirement as general secretary of lMPACT. Several future potential leaders are also departing the scene. The best known is the Communications Workers Union leader, Mr David Begg, who is going to head the international aid agency, Concern.
Another member of ICTU's key general purposes committee leaving is UCATT secretary Mr Noel O'Neill. He is joining the Labour Court. And the general secretary of the Civil and Public Service Union, Mr John O'Dowd, is going to the new national centre for partnership as the ICTU nominee.
Apart from the ICTU general secretary, Mr Peter Cassells, his assistant general secretary, Mr Kevin Duffy, and the Public Service Executive Union leader, Mr Dan Murphy, there are few of the original advocates of partnership left
Most of the next generation of leaders have yet to emerge. One will certainly be IMPACT's new general secretary, Mr Peter McLoone. Another is the new president of SIPTU, Mr Jimmy Somers. His likely successor as vice- president, Mr Des Geraghty, is also widely respected across the trade union movement.