It is possible to agree without qualification with one statement yesterday by Brendan Ogle, the trade union leader behind the strike - the first in 15 years - at the Electricity Supply Board. "This strike is totally unnecessary," he said. On the evidence to hand, it certainly is, but the solution lies with Mr Ogle himself.
Mr Ogle leads around 1,200 ESB network technicians who are members of the Amalgamated Transport and General Workers Union, the ATGWU. The company employs around a further 1,000 technicians who are members of other unions, Siptu and the TEEU, whose members do not support the ATGWU action. At issue, however, is the relationship between the company and some 1,700 freelance contractors employed by the ESB. Mr Ogle argues that too much ESB work is going to these contractors, work he says he believes should be going to employees of the company - that is, his union members. The agreement between the company and its various unions that has permitted the development of this parallel working relationship - work being carried out by employees as well as outside contractors - has lapsed but, as is common practice, remains in place until an alternative is negotiated.
Mr Ogle has an arguable case but he seems unwilling to make it in the one forum that counts - across the negotiating table with the ESB. The company offered talks if the ATGWU lifted its strike threat, a normal and standard demand in such circumstances. When it was not lifted the company, as Mr Ogle must have known, said it could not participate in talks with such a threat hovering in the background. And in the next, equally predictable move, the union denounced the company, saying it had "no option" but to go on strike. That is simply not true - Mr Ogle and the ATGWU had another choice: they could have lifted the strike threat and entered talks immediately.
This is not the first time Mr Ogle has been involved in fomenting a minority dispute in a public utility (with the public as victims) which escalated into full-blown work stoppages. This was the pattern five years ago when Mr Ogle led a group of train-drivers, members of a breakaway union, the Irish Locomotive Drivers' Association, or Ilda, which refused to work rosters agreed by two -thirds of the members of the main unions, Siptu and the NBRU, in Iarnród Éireann.
On that occasion, misery was inflicted for weeks on people trying to travel to and from Westport and when Mr Ogle did not get his way, illegal pickets were mounted on Dublin Bus and Dart depots.
It is a very serious matter when a monopoly public utility provider upon which the entire community is dependent is threatened in the way the ESB now is. Little damage has been caused so far but that situation will not last long. In such circumstances, all parties, not least the instigators of this strike, should act responsibly by resolving the differences between them.