Public outrage a passport to trouble for union

BATTLES are often won by identifying the weak point within the enemy’s ranks and then piling in with all force available.

It’s a lesson that was hard learned by the CPSU leadership yesterday when the union suffered a serious set back at the skirmish of Molesworth street passport office.

The low-paid civil servants representatives were overwhelmed by the combined force of public anger and media scrutiny, which some in the CPSU leadership believe was choreographed by the dark hand of management.

The union leaders may be paranoid, but that doesn’t mean somebody wasn’t out to get them. Last Thursday the Department of Foreign Affairs issued a press statement stating both Dublin and Cork passport offices would close on Friday afternoon. They did not make clear that both would be reopening the following week, in the event the Cork office did not even close. The statement had the effect of heightening both public concern and media interest.

There was also no mention that such closures had been occurring with little fanfare for the previous six weeks. The public fears of their holiday plans being ruined led to a sit-in by angry passport seekers that evening.

Then yesterday came the Foreign Affairs statement that there was a 40,000 application backlog and a plethora of Fianna Fáil politicians willing to take to the airwaves to condemn the delays “caused by the union action”. Add to this the act of God of last Tuesday’s flooding of the Dublin office and the more mysterious breakdown of at least one passport issuing machine and the pressure was mounting. The coup de grace came when one of the country’s highest paid “public servants” RTÉ’s Joe Duffy devoted most of his show to the rising public anger. The everyman from Clontarf adopting a tone of exasperated frustration in calling for the CPSU’s assistant general secretary Eoin Ronayne to call the industrial action off. By early evening things had got even worse, with RTÉ journalist Paddy O’Gorman having located a mother whose special needs son would miss a trip to Lourdes if not issued with a passport.

The passport office strike committee had no option but to announce they would be working with management to clear the backlog. The embarrassment of this climb down compounded by the fact in came in the face of a management letter saying workers faced disciplinary procedures if they continued their action.

With the passport office dealing exclusively with the public rather than politicians and the Dáil’s political correspondents office located in the same building, the union action was always a high risk strategy. As a source at another union put it the protest ensured “the maximum bad publicity with the minimum impact to the system”.

The containment of the CPSU’s work to rule has put down a Government marker. Clearly indicating that it is not only the unions who are willing to act with resolve to bring to a head 10 weeks of industrial guerrilla warfare.

It will concentrate minds on both sides at the ongoing public sector talks.