Leo’s comments may help put pay talks back on track

IT JUST takes a few actions or pieces of rhetoric on the part of either a union representative or an employer to not only throw a workplace into industrial turmoil but also influence the court of public opinion on who is right and who is wrong.

Those actions or words often come in the aftermath of an often convoluted and unrewarding negotiating process where one or both of the parties have failed to move from their default positions and the process has ultimately stalled.

Take the recent pensions furore at ESB which threatened to plunge the whole country into darkness over the Christmas period. As the public face of the union campaign, Brendan Ogle’s frequent print, television, and radio utterances helped galvanise the determination of workers to defend themselves even if it might alienate them in the eyes of the country.