Rising to the top inside the capital’s most iconic skyscraper, you leave the central lift shaft and enter an office with magnificent views of Dublin.
“You get used to it,” drawls SIPTU President Jack O’Connor’s personal assistant.Pure wonder, however, is tenacious, and I point at the new Samuel Beckett Bridge through the gloomy greyness. “From up here, it’s beautiful. At ground level, Sean O’Casey’s bloomin’ bridge gets in the way.” Her head and shoulder meet in a sideways shrug. “Yeah. I suppose on a clear day, it can be spectacular.”
The same might have been said of Liberty Hall when it opened in its current form in 1965. Now the plan is to demolish it and replace it with an even taller building. But that’s a discussion for later with her trade union boss.
At this imperious height, one might think the mischievous ruckus over the collapse of social partnership is cowering among street-level shadows. Indeed, it is in hiding, but the issue has not gone away. A few hours before I got here, the General Manager of IBEC (the Irish Business and Employers Confederation), Danny McCoy, smiled ruefully at me as he stated: “We’re about to enter the 1981-87 era [of industrial action], but I really hope some form of social partnership [re-emerges].
“There needs to be a period of separation before it stabilises. The next phase will be a test of the relationships between us and the unions. I am confident they are good… and I would hope it will be the case that everybody is well motivated and there’s no desire to race towards the bottom.”
Waiting for the SIPTU President allows me time to absorb the importance of the organisation from this great vantage point. James Connolly, one of the founding members of the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union (ITGWU), along with Big Jim Larkin, bought this site in 1909 when it was the Northumberland Hotel. What they helped start is now the largest trade union in the country. Representing over 200,000 workers, the Services, Industrial, Professional and Technical Union was formed in 1990 by the amalgamation of the ITGWU and the Federated Workers’ Union of Ireland. Jack O’Connor, born in 1957, hails from North County Dublin and has led SIPTU since 2003.
When he appears, he ignores the view – of course – and apologises for being late.For a while, he is the interviewer. He is a compact man – warm, inquisitive and with a keen ability, seemingly, to assess both individuals and issues. “We are going through a very significant historical period, against an implosion of the capitalist model globally and, on a domestic level, the unquestioning way that we embraced the unbridled free-market model.”
Some might describe this as an opening salvo, just as comments by trade unionists are often categorised as inflammatory and antagonistic. “This is formed by those who are dominant in society,” O’Connor insists, “and by the interests that dominate in society, to condemn and stigmatise people in trade unions.
“The degree to which [our rhetoric] is challenged depends on the circumstances. In a buoyant economy, where there’s enough to go around, the challenge is less significant...Nonetheless, even in the credit-led property boom, there was a sustained camp against trade unions – that they were no longer necessary and that things were going so well that workers didn’t need to be organised by them.”
Siptu’s nursing Official, Louise O’Reilly, one of the union’s rising stars, is less intense than O’Connor; her words and sentiments seem to flow naturally, and happily. “There is power in the collective movement, but it’s tough to get the trade-union message out there. Media is closely associated with big business, not with working people and unions,” she grumbles, though her eyes smile.
O’Connor, meanwhile, scrunches his face intently as he assembles his words. “In the collapse that followed [the breakdown of talks in late-2009], the threat presented by people being organised in trade unions is perceived now to be more serious because it gets people away from the economic problems, and so the wealthy are pretty much insulated.”
IBEC’s Danny McCoy counters, “In terms of the wealthy getting away with not contributing, the trade unions tend to pick on a few tax exiles, but the vast majority of the rich are paying their share. The facts don’t match the rhetoric.”
But the issue of creating a fair and equal society is deeply personal for O’Connor. “What has happened globally will influence the shape of things for a long time to come… What has happened domestically will determine the shape of things for the remainder of my lifetime.”
“They don’t have the experience of [major industrial conflict] and would not think for a moment that trade unions would be capable of organising stiff industrial resistance.”
He reluctantly admits, however, that there may have been a missed opportunity to generate sustained public protest after the pension-levy cut and mini-budget early last year. “It’s an arguable point. There are people on the Left who would say that a sustained mobilising [of the public] was on the way, only for a request from the Taoiseach to go into talks.” He insists, however: “We had to exhaust all the possibilities for agreement.”
Danny McCoy of IBEC laughs when it’s put to him that Brian Cowen and Brian Lenihan may not have the necessary experience to deal with the unrest ahead, given that they weren’t TDs during the last era of industrial dispute. “That’s chutzpah [shameless audacity], isn’t it? That’s like murdering your parents, with a plea for leniency then that you’re an orphan.”
Thinking back on those dark days, McCoy continues: “The main resonance from that period of industrial unrest that will haunt us is emigration. I think it is a lesson to learn from the 1980s. It was a thing that galvanised people into a social partnership action. It took up to 1987 to bring that reality about, and it would be a great source of despondency if we are to be that slow on this occasion… We all need to be pulling together when we have this sharp wind against us.”
Mick o’reilly is recently retired, although he remains on the executive of the Dublin Council of Trade Unions and is a former leader of the Unite trade union. “I’m a socialist of the old school. Looking back at history, the unions believed an agreement would be done before Christmas. But the Government has led them into a ditch. They have to look now for a partnership with their members. [Social partnership] was just a vehicle for lazy union officials.”
The trade unions were propping up the policies of the Progressive Democrats and their right-wing colleagues, he says. “The Irish unions are the only ones in the world that committed themselves, over years, to cutting tax. And remember, that was the great slogan for Thatcher and Reagan! I do think Jack O’Connor’s heart is in the right place, but there’s a big executive council and that is not true of all of them on it.”
Eugene McCartan, the manager of Connolly Books in Temple Bar, agrees that the unions’ close affiliation with Government policies has come back to bite them. “If you don’t oppose the Government’s tax-cutting policy,” he says, “then you are going along with it. That’s anathema to the trade-union movement, which espouses social cohesion and the creation of solidarity across the board. It went against the basic principles of trade unionism.”
Although ordinary union members are finding things tough at the moment, most of those I spoke to still had faith in their leadership. An active member of the Prison Officers’ Association, which is attached to the ICTU, told me: “The recruitment wage for a prison officer is €485 net a week, and with the pension levy and reduction of the basic wage, and the knock-on affect on allowances, it’s very tough. But as for a strike, I wouldn’t say that’ll happen – it’s the nuclear option.”
A fellow officer, however, was more abrupt and abrasive. “I think the unions are crap. I’m looking at my pay packet now and it’s bloody awful.”
In returning, finally, to the issue of Liberty Hall, it is difficult to associate SIPTU with aggrandising developers. Nevertheless, I ask O’Connor if he feels at all sensitive about the union’s plans to develop a taller building at a time when high-rise projects by Sean Dunne and the Docklands Development Authority are being shelved. After all, this could become a key point in how SIPTU and other unions are perceived by the public over the next few difficult years.
“The decision around the plan for the building has nothing to do with some kind of a statement,” he stresses. “It has more to do with the best use of resources that the site represents... I acknowledge that our responsibility extends to the cultural dimension and that the people who founded the trade union were conscious of that. We do have a responsibility to the city and to posterity.”
O’Connor accompanies me to a lift after the interview. I notice quickly that the building’s utilisation of space is completely inefficient. The elevator shaft is the central spine, reducing the office area in the building to less than 60 per cent; this in a tower that occupies only 40 per cent of the site’s footprint.
On the way out, we meet SIPTU General Secretary Joe O’Flynn. He is returning from a meeting with city councillors, where the design aspects of the new Liberty Hall were discussed. “The reaction from councillors across the political spectrum was very encouraging,” he tells us. “The new building will be a more elegant landmark – more iconic. We’re going for planning permission [in early-February] and are looking to have it secured by the end of the year.”
And what of taking on a project like this in the middle of a recession? “When we opened this building back in May 1965, we were also going through a very difficult patch. It was a statement of confidence then and it is equally so now, on that basis. We have no doubt that we will emerge stronger and better from the present difficulties.”
I ask O’Connor if he feels the weight of history – the political, cultural and historical ties that this building represents – weighing down upon him. “I am conscious of the legacy that our generation has inherited. I am conscious of the role played by people before me, people in positions of leadership in the past, within the TU movement. I am very conscious of the obligation to live up to that responsibility.”
He pauses before continuing. “I think of the great figures, the founders of the movement, and the enormous challenges they were faced with, which were immeasurably greater than those challenges I have been faced with thus far.”
He screws up his eyes and leans a little bit closer, stressing: “Notice I say ‘thus far.’”
I nod, shake hands and descend back down to the street-level shadows.
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