The first thing Mr Jack O'Connor did when he took up residence on the top floor of Liberty Hall last week was to have a strategy board installed on which to list his priorities. "If you don't have deadlines, you're dead," he said by way of explanation.

The other item of furniture that stands out is an old mahogany chair that belonged to Jim Larkin. Mr O'Connor shares Larkin's ambition for workers to achieve their fair share of the State's wealth and he accepts that many workers believe the relationship between unions and employers under social partnership has become too cosy.

"This union played a pivotal role in the process of national recovery and to some extent we are now paying the price. People's expectations have quite justifiably increased and we have to respond to that."

At 43, Mr O'Connor is by far the youngest man to be elected a general officer of Ireland's largest trade union. He achieved a record 54,444 first preference votes, two-thirds of the total cast. He now has a strong mandate for radical departures on both the industrial relations front and internal reforms. He is anxious to pursue both.

Although he pioneered partnership agreements within SIPTU, he now eschews the term as misleading and believes employers and the Government are increasingly looking towards the trade union movement to "manage" national agreements. "I don't mind managing agreements in our members interests but I don't believe in managing them for the employers as well."

He sees his first priority as "ensuring as far as possible over the next two and a half years that the benefits of the economic boom are transferred into real, sustainable value in terms of quality of life. And I draw a distinction between quality of life and the standard of living.

"I think that, for most people, the standard of living is rising, but the quality of life is deteriorating. There is a social agenda implicit in the PPF [Programme for Prosperity and Fairness] in relation to housing, health services, childcare, proper care of the aged, proper treatment of the carers, education and training values."

His particular aim will be to "create the opportunities for thousands of workers in traditional, or threatened, industries to expand their skills range so that, when jobs disappear, they can find high quality alternative employment. They should not have to spend their middle years competing at the bottom end of the labour market."

A lifelong socialist Mr O'Connor's first public speaking engagement after his election was at the Jim Connell commemoration. Asked if the one-time fenian and author of The Red Flag would be overawed by the success of the Celtic Tiger he said: "I don't think so. I think he would have been struck by the shallowness of it all. In the middle of this orgy of consumerism, we don't seem to be using resources to build a better society.

"If we had built the best health service in Europe, or best care of the aged, or best range of education and training for our people, it would be something significant. My fear is that when the boom passes, and pass it will ultimately, there will be nothing of quality to show for it all."

He is "very concerned about the inflation problem and the entire agreement is predicated on it averaging no more than 3 per cent over the life of the agreement. It's not going to be possible, and it wouldn't be right either, to continue to comply with the agreement while the underlying conditions are askew. We will arrive at the point very soon where we have to say to our members, and the Government, that remedial action must be taken or the game is up."

He says his views on old-style national agreements have been confirmed by experience of the PPF so far. "There is a fundamental fault line in the new agreement and it is not inflation. It is the existence of two types of employers. There are those who have adopted the most miserly and minimalist interpretation of this and every agreement, and those who have adapted to the more participative aspects of agreements and are prepared to share the benefits of the boom."

He fears that miserly employers will hide behind Clause Seven of the PPF - the inability to pay clause. Their "minimalist, dead hand approach will collapse the deal", he says.

Mr O'Connor was shocked by a suggestion from Irish Business and Employers Confederation director, Mr Turlough O'Sullivan, last week that unions and employers agree to binding arbitration by the Labour Court on a range of issues for a trial period.

"I see no possibility for a departure from voluntarism," he says. "You can't have social partnership when the majority play by one set of rules and a minority by another. I will do everything in my power to ensure binding arbitration doesn't come about.

"This is not about sabre rattling or appearing militant to promote an image. We have to have the same rules for everyone. When the `Golden Circle' observes its responsibilities to society and we build real equality, I would be prepared to consider binding arbitration, but not before."

He sees nothing in national agreements "for unions as institutions. I don't want to be negative about what has been achieved in terms of employment and living standards for a great many people, but unions have derived no benefits from agreements. None."

The Industrial Relations Bill on trade union recognition currently before the Dail is "little better than useless" in Mr O'Connor's opinion because it will take at least two years for unions using the procedures to secure recognition.

However, he accepts that "neither the Government nor employers are going to organise workers for us. Unions are going to have to organise them and unions stopped being serious about organisation years ago.

"If we were a business, we would be more than happy our membership has increased by 23 per cent since the union was founded almost 11 years ago, but we are not a business. Our objective is to organise the workers of Ireland so that they can secure their fair share of the wealth of the country."

He instances the ineffectiveness of the Health and Safety Authority as an example of the way social partnership has failed to protect, let alone promote, the interests of workers. With only a handful of inspectors, Mr O'Connor says: "There isn't a ghost in hell's chance of effective policing. I deeply suspect there is an unwritten understanding between the State and employers that you can put anything you like on the statute books so long as it's not enforced."

Over the next six years of his vice-presidency, Mr O'Connor says he intends to see as much effort and resources put into promoting trade union membership as has been put into promoting participation in the workplace where SIPTU already has members. To do that the union has to be seen as a fighting, campaigning union.

If Mr O'Connor has finely attuned antennae when it comes to assessing the mood of members, no one could accuse him of opportunism. During the vice-presidential campaign, he was the only candidate to speak at length on the problem of racism.

"The train coming down the track in this country and all across the European Union is racism," he says bluntly. "The reality is that, if the economies of western Europe are going to generate the wealth necessary to provide for the ageing population, it will involve the employment of not just thousands but millions of workers from the Third World.

"Instead of perceiving refugees as a problem, we should see them as an opportunity."

The way the Government is repeating the mistakes of other EU states "to create conditions of racism and xenophobia frankly frightens me", he says. "If the long-term interests of the nation are to be provided for, we will have to devise an enlightened approach to utilising the potential of people arriving in this country.

"The principles of equality and fairness must apply, not just in fairness to them but because otherwise they will become a source of cheap labour and therein lies the seeds of racism."