There may not be many people on Downpatrick Road in Crumlin who remember Sid Ryan (45), but he has become a household name in Canada and particularly Ontario.
Mr Ryan is vice-president of the Trade Union of Public Employees, the largest in Canada with 460,000 members. He is also president of the 180,000-member Ontario division with which he organised the two largest work stoppages and "days of action" in Canadian history. That was in 1996. This year he is planning an even bigger protest at proposed cutbacks in public spending.
All of which does not prevent him keeping in touch with his Irish roots. Within a year of arriving in Canada in 1975, Mr Ryan had not only unionised the factory where he found his first job, but managed to fly home and marry "the girl around the corner", Sheila Kenny from Captain's Road in Crumlin.
They now live in Ontario and have three daughters; Lisa (18), Susie (14) and Amanda (10). Mr Ryan, who went to Scoil Iosagain in Dolphin's Barn and Clogher Road Tech, attributes his early interest in trade unions and socialism to his maths teacher, Jim Dorney now general secretary of the Teachers Union of Ireland.
Mr Ryan is struck by both the similarities and the differences between the problems faced by Irish and Canadian trade unionists. The most obvious difference is the way social partnership has developed in Ireland in contrast with Canada where relations between unions and government are at an all-time low.
The most obvious similarity, Mr Ryan believes, is the way the economic boom in both countries has failed to bridge the gap between rich and poor. "There is a wider disparity now in Canada between rich and poor than ever before, and I sense the Celtic Tiger's benefits are not filtering down to ordinary working people.
"Take the minimum wage. It seems to be a huge issue here. I hear taxi drivers, people in restaurants and on the public transport system, everyone talking about it. It's one of the more tangible ways people can benefit from the economy."
In Canada, the national minimum wage varies from province to province. Ontario comes around the middle, with the equivalent of £3.50 an hour.
Union recognition is another issue with which Mr Ryan is familiar. In line with the US, there is legislation in Canada requiring companies to recognise unions, provided they have succeeded in organising a significant percentage of the workforce. In the US the figure is 51 per cent, in Canada it is 46 per cent of employees.
"If they refuse to negotiate a collective agreement, arbitration can be imposed on the employer. It gets away from long and bitter disputes," Mr Ryan says.
However, he contends there is also very punitive anti-union legislation. When 40,000 postal workers went on strike last month against increasing casualisation, the Canadian government ordered them back to work and told the strikers to accept terms which were poorer than the final offer from management.
Union members who defy a government order face fines of $1,000 a day, their officials $50,000 a day and their unions $100,000 a day. Ryan, who does not represent postal workers, says such interventions don't solve problems. They simply leave workers "simmering" until the next dispute.
While legislation to enforce recognition is important, Mr Ryan believes unions have to rely primarily on themselves. He says younger people entering the workforce don't appreciate that most of the benefits they enjoy are only there because someone fought to achieve them.
"It's important for unions to take credit for their achievements. The Irish trade union movement should make sure it takes the credit for Partnership 2000 and the benefits flowing from it. "All workers are benefiting from the agreement, not just unionised workers. In Canada we have no tradition of national agreements. There's industrial turmoil there at the moment.
"I'm interested in the way unions here have agreed to surrender their autonomy in order to negotiate for gains at national level. There is no way unions in Canada would agree to that."
He talks with some envy of the role unions have in policy making here. "Irish unions have the ear of the Government. It approaches them for an input. "They are treated as equal partners who can come up with solutions to problems. In Canada, unions are treated as a special interest group and the government says special interest groups won't be allowed to dictate to it. So we've had to resort to the politics of the streets."
A difficult issue faced by Canadian trade unionists in common with their Irish counterparts is privatisation. In Canada, the government, at both federal and provincial level, has tried to use privatisation as part of its overall strategy to cut public spending and reduce its huge deficit. Inevitably, the National Union of Public Employees (NUPE) is at the centre of the conflict.
"Privatisation is the biggest threat we are now facing," he says. The Progressive Conservative Party (PCP), which holds office in Ontario, "takes Newt Gingrich and Margaret Thatcher as role models. The government has caused major industrial unrest and we've closed down nine cities in the last 1 1/2 years.
"The biggest shutdown was Ontario on Friday, October 26th, 1996. It was like a ghost town. The next day 250,000 demonstrators marched on Government Buildings. It was the biggest demonstration in Canadian history."
NUPE has developed a strategy of combining strikes with "days of action", usually involving mass demonstrations. The idea is to use the strikes, not just as a bargaining tool but to educate members and the public on why the PCP has to go.
A member of the New Democratic Party, Mr Ryan resigned as a member of the NDP premier's advisory council, and as president of the local NDP constituency organisation, before the last election, in protest at proposals to cut $6 billion off public expenditure. However, he remained an ordinary member of the NDP and believes the traditional alliance between what is Canada's "labour " party and the unions can be rebuilt. "It is imperative that the present government doesn't get re-elected. With a second term it will take the unions on and we'll face even bigger cutbacks."
However, he is confident that the current opposition parties will have an overall majority and that there might be a breathing space to discuss issues like "social partnership".
