Pat Rabbitte must choose between union muscle and the public good

TONY BLAIR is having trouble again this week with the British trade union movement. Addressing the TUC annual conference he essentially told them that the left-wing government they are looking for to replace his moderate New Labour one just wasn’t going to happen.

He argued that the trade unions should get over themselves and stop being a "roadblock" to the social and economic progress which he argued his government is achieving.

The Irish Labour party is also about to have its defining moment with some elements of the trade union movement in this country.

When he became leader of the party Pat Rabbitte announced that one of his priorities would be the renewal of links with the trade unions. He has been busy touring some of the trade unions branches and conferences. In the main he has got a polite and at times even warm response.

The more centrist policies he is advancing for the Labour party sit comfortably with the realistic and well-resourced leadership of the Irish trade union movement and in particular serves the interests of white-collar union membership.

Rabbitte may be a recent convert to the Labour party, but he has longer credentials in what they like to call the wider labour movement. Trained in student activism he then became a trade union official before following the somewhat skewed path through the Workers Party and then Democratic Left to Labour party politics.

In seeking to renew the party's relationship with the trade unions, the new Labour leader is trying to tap back into one of the traditional sources of the party's membership and energy and at the same time trying to persuade more trade union members to vote for the Labour party.

However in this relationship renewal he is going to face two substantial obstacles.

Firstly, much of the realist wing of the trade unions' leadership doesn't want to be bound too closely to the Labour party. They want to have the freedom to work with the other political parties particularly Fianna Fáil in government.

Many see that they have achieved more from social partnership engagement with the mainstream parties than they were ever likely to achieve through some mass mobilisation of workers behind the Labour party.

It has been frustrating for the Labour party to watch the trade unions, of whom they are so fond, play social partnership footsie with Fianna Fáil, who so many in the Labour party claim to despise so much. The trade unions' political infidelity to Labour reflects the fact that trade union members in this country have for decades voted in larger numbers for Fianna Fáil (and at one time Fine Gael) than they did for the Labour party. It will not be easy for Rabbitte to change this.

The other hurdle Rabbitte faces in his effort to renew the relationship with the trade unions is the increasing militancy of some of the unions particularly those in the public transport sector. Any cosying up to these elements will do damage to the Labour leader's endeavours to make Labour more appealing to middle class workers and voters.

In his address to its national conference, Pat Rabbitte repositioned the Labour party. He did this by among other things arguing that henceforth Labour policies on public sector reform must be driven by the interest of consumers and not just that of public sector workers.

He made this point again to a safe enough audience at the Cobh Chamber of Commerce earlier this summer and even repeated it, if somewhat more softly, to the SIPTU conference a few weeks ago. This appears to be a central plank in the Rabbitte strategy to slowly tilt the Labour party towards the centre.

They know it is more appealing than the usual public sector ownership rant and workers' rights rant which some in the Labour party have reverted to in recent decades.

However, Rabbitte's words are about to be tested. Last week the country's largest trade union SIPTU, to which the Labour party is closest, proudly announced that 80% of the workers it represents in the airports have voted for strike action in opposition to the restructuring of Aer Rianta. The public face the prospect of a winter of air travel discontent because SIPTU has its own views on the future of the ownership of the airport management companies.

On the ground, SIPTU and other unions are also going to be responsible for travel chaos because they disagree with the government policies on the ownership of bus routes and the restructuring of CIE. Having already subjected the ailing Dublin Bus to the additional financial burden of a no fares day, the trade unions are now threatening further industrial action on road and rail.

WHERE will the Labour party stand on these issues? To date, Pat Rabbitte's response has been to follow the lead of the trade union leaders and seek to depict Seamus Brennan as some kind of ideologue obsessed about privatisation.

Rabbitte's other approach has been to deflect the issue somewhat with calls for more consultation with the workers.

Many voters in the middle ground are concerned that extreme elements of the trade union movement, having been unable to achieve the implementation of their left-of-centre and public-ownership ideology by means of the ballot box, now want to take their placards in their other hand and use their strike muscle to force their views on government.

Labour's dilemma is that many member of the public feel it is in fact the trade unions and not the minister that are preoccupied with issue of ownership.

To justify their more extreme stance the transport unions need to portray Seamus Brennan as some type of ideologue bogeyman. However, the problem for Labour is that their market research will tell them that most voters see Brennan as an energetic minister seeking to come to terms with the policy gridlock and worker inflexibility that has left public transport in a mess.

Many can see through the unions' attempt to dress their protection of their own vested interest in the flimsy clothing of acting in the public's interest. Of course the unions are entitled to be consulted but that doesn't mean that they have to be agreed with. Some unions arrogantly seek to position themselves as the decisive arbitrator of what it is in the public and consumer interest. Most voters would prefer to leave it to the elected government and Oireachtas to determine what the public interest is and will resent the efforts of the unions to use strike muscle to seek to overrule the policy outcome of the political and parliamentary process.

That's why Rabbitte will have to be careful about his public stance if and when these strikes come. He won't get away with talking out of both sides of his mouth. There won't be room for supporting the comrades in their strike action while at the same time pretending to the wider electorate that it is the consumer interest and not the transport workers' interest which must prevail.