A major delegation of power to shop stewards is likely to take place within Ireland's largest union when it begins its biennial conference in Tralee this morning. However, this is unlikely to translate into instant revolution.
Normally union rule-change debates are not only obscure enough to defy the best efforts of Enigma code-breakers but also totally irrelevant to the outside world. When 450 SIPTU delegates gather behind closed doors in the Mount Brandon Hotel today the debate may well prove arcane but the end result could profoundly affect industrial relations in this State.
If, as expected, the proposals of the rules-change committee are accepted, any new national agreement to succeed the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness will be referred back to a special delegate conference for consideration. At present SIPTU, like many unions, holds a special delegate conference before entering talks on national agreements, but whether to accept the outcome of negotiations is a matter purely for the National Executive Council.
The other change likely to be adopted is that members of the NEC be elected by delegates to the union's regional conferences, rather than by a postal ballot. In practical terms this will increase the power of shop stewards and branch activists. Whether more power to this group means more militancy on the shopfloor, or simply a better-informed electorate, remains to be seen.
Ironically, it comes at a time when militancy is taking a bit of a back seat. Suddenly SIPTU's long-standing defence of social partnership against all comers within the union movement looks like sound strategic sense.
The impact of the attacks on the World Trade Centre and Pentagon is causing reverberations to the world economy that make even the most militant shop steward hang on to whatever job security is available.
Up until September 11th there had been a rising chorus of discontent about the extent to which workers were being short-changed by social partnership.
In the first decade of social partnership, wage restraint saw their share of national income fall from 73 per cent to 63 per cent.
There has even been talk of a new trade union, unaffiliated to the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, which would vacuum up the discontented. The main target for such a union would inevitably be SIPTU.
In the new economic climate the value of a national agreement with guaranteed pay rises and a say for the ICTU in major Government policy decisions has risen dramatically.
This does not mean plain sailing ahead. In fact SIPTU leaders are likely to use this week's conference in Tralee to warn both the Government and employers not to use current economic difficulties to wriggle out of out standing commitments in the PPF - such as the need to take all workers on the National Minimum Wage out of the tax net.
The issue is particularly important to SIPTU because 28 per cent of members earn less than the average industrial wage.
These are mainly women, unskilled service workers and part- time employees - usually the first casualties in a recession.
But this time around job cuts threaten across the economy, from semi-state companies such as Aer Lingus, to high-tech firms and construction. Not surprisingly, one of this week's motions calls for statutory redundancy payments to be increased from the current maximum of one week's pay per year of service to three weeks.
That sort of demand can only become something more than rhetoric in the context of a national agreement like the PPF.
The state of the health services is likely to dominate much of tomorrow's proceedings, reflecting not just public discontent but the fact that SIPTU is the main health service union, covering groups as diverse as nurses, radiographers, porters and community welfare officers.
Because SIPTU membership is so broad, it tends to reflect the concerns of workers across the full spectrum of society.
The rights of immigrant workers and union recognition will also loom large. SIPTU will unveil its own plans for action on both these issues.