Sir, - Your editorial (July 16th) recognises that "the striking Ryanair workers (and their union) did everything by the rules for nine weeks and were largely ignored. . . . And only when several thousand other airport workers took sympathetic - and totally unofficial - action was a breakthrough of sorts achieved".
This poses the obvious question as to what SIPTU and the workers are being blamed for - by the Flynn/McAuley inquiry and by The Irish Times in this and previous editorials. Official sympathetic action is virtually impossible under the present law so the only alternative option for SIPTU would have been to abandon their members to their fate or let them rot on the picket line when faced with an employer who refuses to see reason and is protected by the law in doing so.
Do you suggest that they should have done so? If not, what might they have done? Rally public support? They appear to have done this rather successfully but after nine weeks of being ignored, it clearly was not going to be enough. So, the inescapable conclusion appears to be that the several thousand airport workers who took sympathetic industrial action were the only ones able and prepared to fight an injustice.
Judging by your analysis, the Flynn/McAuley Report seems, after four months, to have little to offer concerning the issues at the heart of the dispute.
Do workers have a right, or not, to be represented by a union of their choice? If they have such a right, but if the state will not vindicate it, why does the law prevent other workers from voting to take sympathetic action where the balance of forces is unequal and where there is no other way of inducing a thuggish employer to see reason?
In the absence of solutions from Flynn/McAuley, Government and the social partners must tackle the underlying fundamental issues quickly if the situation of last March is not to recur. - Yours, etc., Jim O'Donnell,
B-1000 Brussels