26 July 2001 Edition
Morris dancing
BY ROBBIE MacGABHANN
It is hard not to believe there is a campaign being mounted from Britain to oust ATGWU Irish regional secretary Mick O'Reilly from his post. On 26 June, O'Reilly returned from his holidays and traveled to Belfast on his first day back at work for a meeting of the Irish regional executive of the ATGWU. Though he traveled all the way to the meeting, O'Reilly was not allowed participate. Waiting English officials told him that he was being suspended on full pay pending an investigation into allegations of misconduct against him and the union's Six-County organiser Eugene McGloin.
O'Reilly was and is not allowed talk to the media about his case, and left with little details about the allegations against him. This week, a month after his suspension, O'Reilly was given a 232-page document outlining what the British office claims establishes ``a gross and fundamental dereliction of duty and a fundamental lack of capability to carry out the duties required''.
O'Reilly has been summoned to a meeting next week in London and any response to the documentation has to be sent to the ATGWU's London offices by this Friday, leaving him just four days to respond.
In Ireland, the ATGWU's 50,000 membership have, through a series of meetings in Dublin, Belfast, Derry and Waterford, expressed support for the two union officials, as has the Irish executive of the union.
The timing of O'Reilly's suspension also meant he was not able to be present as a delegate at the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) annual conference or run for a place on the Congress executive.
The outcome then of the suspension is that one of the few radical voices in the Irish trade union movement has been systematically and deliberately isolated from any positions of influence in trade union structures.
Opposition to the 1990 Industrial Relations Act, the sham partnership process, the Nice Treaty and a dynamic approach to trade union activism have not endeared O'Reilly to the trade union movement leadership or the Leinster House Political establishment in the 26 Counties.
It is has also been suggested that O'Reilly had become a thorn in not just the Irish Trade Union establishment but the British one too. His support for the Liverpool Dockers would not have been well received by the ATGWU's British General Secretary Bill Morris, who always insisted that the dockers' action was unofficial. Morris feared that the British government would use anti-trade union legislation to sequester the ATGWU's assets during the dockers' dispute.
Similar fears were raised, it seems, with Morris after O'Reilly admitted the entire membership of the Irish Locomotive Drivers Association (ILDA) into the ATGWU. Their strike action earlier this year was attacked by SIPTU and the ICTU.
The ILDA membership acceptance is one of the issues cited against O'Reilly. Nine separate allegations are made against O'Reilly over this issue, the last of which claims that ``you exposed to harm the interests of the Union, its membership in Ireland and its membership as a whole, opposed and defied the authority of the General Executive Council and the General Secretary''.
Interestingly, two days after Morris suspended O'Reilly and McGloin, the ILDA members all received letters signed by Morris welcoming them to the ATGWU and asking them to encourage other workers to join the union also.
Whatever the outcome of the case against O'Reilly, it is indefensible that one of Ireland's leading trade unionists and a powerful voice of not just Irish workers but the oppressed and marginalised has been silenced.
It makes sense that workers organise and lobby on each other's behalf across international borders. It is very wrong when the bureaucracy of a union in one state attempts to intervene in the organisation of a sister union in another state. The suspension of O'Reilly and McGloin is a dangerous precedent in Irish trade union activism.
It is hard not to believe there is a campaign being mounted from Britain to oust ATGWU Irish regional secretary Mick O'Reilly from his post. On 26 June, O'Reilly returned from his holidays and traveled to Belfast on his first day back at work for a meeting of the Irish regional executive of the ATGWU. Though he traveled all the way to the meeting, O'Reilly was not allowed participate. Waiting English officials told him that he was being suspended on full pay pending an investigation into allegations of misconduct against him and the union's Six-County organiser Eugene McGloin.
O'Reilly was and is not allowed talk to the media about his case, and left with little details about the allegations against him. This week, a month after his suspension, O'Reilly was given a 232-page document outlining what the British office claims establishes ``a gross and fundamental dereliction of duty and a fundamental lack of capability to carry out the duties required''.
O'Reilly has been summoned to a meeting next week in London and any response to the documentation has to be sent to the ATGWU's London offices by this Friday, leaving him just four days to respond.
In Ireland, the ATGWU's 50,000 membership have, through a series of meetings in Dublin, Belfast, Derry and Waterford, expressed support for the two union officials, as has the Irish executive of the union.
The timing of O'Reilly's suspension also meant he was not able to be present as a delegate at the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) annual conference or run for a place on the Congress executive.
The outcome then of the suspension is that one of the few radical voices in the Irish trade union movement has been systematically and deliberately isolated from any positions of influence in trade union structures.
Opposition to the 1990 Industrial Relations Act, the sham partnership process, the Nice Treaty and a dynamic approach to trade union activism have not endeared O'Reilly to the trade union movement leadership or the Leinster House Political establishment in the 26 Counties.
It is has also been suggested that O'Reilly had become a thorn in not just the Irish Trade Union establishment but the British one too. His support for the Liverpool Dockers would not have been well received by the ATGWU's British General Secretary Bill Morris, who always insisted that the dockers' action was unofficial. Morris feared that the British government would use anti-trade union legislation to sequester the ATGWU's assets during the dockers' dispute.
Similar fears were raised, it seems, with Morris after O'Reilly admitted the entire membership of the Irish Locomotive Drivers Association (ILDA) into the ATGWU. Their strike action earlier this year was attacked by SIPTU and the ICTU.
The ILDA membership acceptance is one of the issues cited against O'Reilly. Nine separate allegations are made against O'Reilly over this issue, the last of which claims that ``you exposed to harm the interests of the Union, its membership in Ireland and its membership as a whole, opposed and defied the authority of the General Executive Council and the General Secretary''.
Interestingly, two days after Morris suspended O'Reilly and McGloin, the ILDA members all received letters signed by Morris welcoming them to the ATGWU and asking them to encourage other workers to join the union also.
Whatever the outcome of the case against O'Reilly, it is indefensible that one of Ireland's leading trade unionists and a powerful voice of not just Irish workers but the oppressed and marginalised has been silenced.
It makes sense that workers organise and lobby on each other's behalf across international borders. It is very wrong when the bureaucracy of a union in one state attempts to intervene in the organisation of a sister union in another state. The suspension of O'Reilly and McGloin is a dangerous precedent in Irish trade union activism.