Profile/Jack O'Connor - SIPTU vice-president: With major changes proposed for Aer Rianta and CIÉ, expect Jack O'Connor to fight every step of the way on behalf of union members, writes Chris Dooley, Industry and Employment Correspondent
SIPTU vice-president Jack O'Connor is a man who chooses his words carefully, as he made clear in a radio interview this week. Reminded that he had called Minister for Transport Séamus Brennan's plan to break up Aer Rianta "institutionalised vandalism", he told the interviewer he would have to correct him.
"I described it not just as 'institutionalised vandalism', but as a 'reckless piece of institutionalised vandalism'."
O'Connor was not being facetious. He is widely regarded, by fellow trade unionists and employers alike, as a straight talker who measures his words. When he had said Brennan was being "reckless", that was what he meant.
He had an opportunity to make the point directly to the Minister yesterday when the two faced each other for talks on Aer Rianta's future.
As vice-president of SIPTU, O'Connor is specifically in charge of industrial relations and is therefore the union official with most responsibilty for opposing Brennan's plans for both Aer Rianta and CIÉ. The responsibility is an enormous one, and not just in terms of the mayhem, through airport and public transport strikes, that is inevitable if talks break down.
The reputation of the trade union movement itself is at stake. If unions stand by helplessly while Brennan pushes ahead with his plans, they will be a permanently weakened force. But if they push the "nuclear button" and bring airports and public transport to a halt, they could also suffer a loss of public support from which it would be hard to recover.
No-one is more conscious of this than O'Connor, who made organisation of new members a priority theme of his election campaign three years ago, when he secured the vice-presidency with a record vote.
Now 46, his de facto role as leader of the opposition to Brennan's plans has catapulted him to public prominence. But his is no overnight success story.
Born in January 1957, he grew up in Lusk, in north Dublin, where his father was an agricultural labourer and his mother worked at home. O'Connor was 12-years-old when his father was forced to retire, through illness, without a pension after 30 years' service in a dairy. That, he has said, was his "first lesson in class politics".
He left school at Swords CBS at the age of 15 with an honours Inter Cert and "a total commitment to trade unionism and socialist politics". After obtaining employment as an agricultural labourer, he joined the Agricultural Labourers' Union at the age of 16.
In the evenings, he maintained his education by studying Leaving Cert history and economics at Plunkett Comprehensive School in Whitehall, Dublin.
In 1975, he secured a job as a labourer on a major water pipeline construction project in north Dublin. By the end of the year, he had unionised the workforce and had become shop steward.
When the project was completed, the union secured an agreement to transfer the workers to Dublin County Council's mainstream operations. Then aged 20, he became a binman and was elected a shop steward. Within weeks, the place was said to be in turmoil as the young radical confronted authority in pursuit of his members' grievances.
He also became active in the Labour Party - then under Frank Cluskey's leadership - and founded a branch of the party in Lusk.
As an activist in Labour Youth, he was part of the left-wing which opposed the party going into coalition. Unlike some of his fellow militant members who were expelled, however, he remained in the party and is now a member of its national executive.
He became a full-time union official at 23, when the Federation of Rural Workers, as it then was, merged with the Workers' Union of Ireland to form the FWUI. When this union in turn merged with the ITGWU to create SIPTU in 1990, he was appointed regional secretary of the new body in the midlands.
O'Connor's election as vice-president in 2000 saw him become the first SIPTU official from the old FWUI wing to be elected to one of the top three posts in the union.
Organising new members has always been one of his strongpoints, and between 1990 and 1998 midlands membership of SIPTU rose by 20 per cent, compared to 15 per cent for the union overall.
By his own admission, progress in that area, with fewer than 30 per cent of private sector workers now in unions, has been slower than he would have wished since becoming vice-president. He paraphrases former British prime minister Harold MacMillan to explain why: "events keep getting in the way".
The fight over the futures of Aer Rianta and CIÉ may provide him with his biggest "events" yet.
In interviews, O'Connor gives the impression of being someone who has just enough patience left to continue negotiations, but is almost angry enough to pull the plug right now. Associates insist that while he would "not walk away from a fight", he will always try negotiation until that option is exhausted.
"He will stay at the table for longer than anyone I know," says a union official who knows him well. "He will keep going back again and again to get a deal if it is at all possible. But once he takes a position he will stand over it and he won't back down."
Those who have sat opposite him at the negotiating table echo those views. "He's a very reflective individual," says one employers' representative who has dealt with O'Connor on a number of occasions. "He weighs things up very carefully and he is also very straight. If he has something to say he will say it, so you always know where you stand with him."
Colleagues also describe him as exceptionally hard-working, even by the standards of trade union officials, who tend to have a vocational attitude to the job and work long hours.
"You could easily get a phone call from him at 6.30 in the morning, or 1.30, after you've gone to bed. He can be a bit of a worrier and will have something on his mind he needs to go over," says one.
But while he brings an intensity to the job few can match, he is described as having a razor-sharp wit and is good company. One union activist described meeting O'Connor and his wife, Paula, at a social function recently and being surprised at how entertaining he could be. "To be honest, I had regarded him as a bit dour, but he was very amusing that night."
Apart from weekend walks with his wife and an interest in gardening, he has few hobbies outside work, although he occasionally goes to a football match and reads, mostly politics, when he can find the time. He has a 17-year-old son and two daughters, aged 15 and six.
His increasingly high profile does not sit easily on his shoulders. Neither is he comfortable with the presentation of the row over Aer Rianta and CIÉ as some kind of macho personality clash between himself and Séamus Brennan.
He may have to grow used to the media spotlight, however. Although the procedure is not automatic, he is expected to become president of SIPTU when Des Geraghty retires from the post in October.
By then, he may well either have negotiated an agreement with the Minister or led his charges to the picket lines.
He is unlikely to shirk, it would appear, from either prospect.