THE SATURDAY INTERVIEW: JACK O'CONNOR, President of Ictu
IT’S THE MORNING after the night before, the kind where you wake up and think – oh God . . . did I actually say that? Then you kill the phone and triple-lock the door. For Jack O’Connor, there is no such merciful oblivion, no duvet day for the man planning to fill the streets with protestors. So here he is at 9am, in a Liberty Hall meeting room, small and rueful. You wouldn’t pick him out of a line-up as the man who only hours before, provoked Pat Kenny into hissing the word “crap” on his live television show
The Frontline
, after O’Connor glibly defined what he meant by a “trophy house”: “A house like yours, probably.”
No-one could chastise him more than Jack O'Connor himself. "I do feel bad because I didn't intend to offend him at all and I didn't make the connection with the sensitivities he might have around that. But I apologised at the first opportunity . . . it just came out," he tails off miserably. To aggravate matters, his eye catches the large, indubitably sinister-looking picture of himself on the front of The Irish Times, a depiction he suspects is deliberate. A more serious problem is that the television show was far from his finest hour and he knows it. One well-disposed viewer described his performance as "impenetrable". A commentator suggested that it placed him up there with banker Sean FitzPatrick as a national hate figure for the "squeezed" middle classes.
YET THE GLIBinsult is uncharacteristic of the man. Those who know him describe him as a patently decent man, who appreciates the multi-dimensional character even of his foes and has a genuine interest in the individuals who cross his path. The Taoiseach and the Minister for Finance may be "ideologically-driven people" in his book, but that doesn't blind him to their qualities as "hard-working, committed, intelligent men of integrity . . . I don't know the Minister for Finance as well as I know the Taoiseach, but to the degree that I know him, I don't question his motivation. I see the way he works. Anyone who would suggest that the burden of the responsibility they carry is anything other than immensely onerous would be very wrong". He even understands how Bertie Ahern could mistake himself for a socialist.
But sadly for him, only the one-dimensional throw-back, the dour, plodding victimhood, came across on television.
“I don’t think I handled it well,” he volunteers. “I had one or two opportunities to explain our approach, which I didn’t take. Whether I would have been allowed to or not was another matter, but I didn’t take the opportunities so I can’t blame anyone other than myself.”
So, was it general fatigue? The lateness of the hour? “Well, I believe I looked very tired last night. I don’t feel particularly tired. I think people were being kind to me and saying ‘you looked tired’ which was an alternative to saying ‘you made a mess of it’,” he says wryly. “You should be able to deal with that better than I dealt with it. I think that I had some opportunities to explain our position better . . . I didn’t connect with the audience at all – that was quite clear . . . I was going to be on the defensive anyway because I am the president of the Congress of Trade Unions, which is the only institution in society that is strong enough to persuade the Government to deviate to some degree from the course it’s committed to, which of course coincides with the interests of the wealthy in our society, to the exclusion of everyone else.”
Another long pause. “I just didn’t take the opportunities . . .”. Then he proceeds to explain what that means and the air grows thinner with each interminable sentence. Television, and its triumph of slick, pre-packaged soundbites, is assuredly not Jack O’Connor’s medium. For the record, here is what he would have said: “For example, when I was asked about the effect of extending the adjustment period and it was put to me that that would involve more borrowing that we would have to pay back, I didn’t adequately explain when I said ‘perhaps it would’, I didn’t go on to explain that that doesn’t necessarily have to be the case because if we can maintain some momentum in our economy and if we can gradually adjust in the event of a global recovery, we can recover as well, which diminishes the degree of what you would have to borrow in the latter part of the adjustment period so it is, in effect, rescheduling. But I didn’t make that point and I think, reflecting on it, that was a key missed opportunity.” Another rueful pause. “I still don’t know if I would have connected with the audience or not. I think that I was too downbeat and deadpan in my responses, which is not good for TV – okay for radio but not for TV.”
But isn’t he deadpan at the best of times? “Not as deadpan as that,” he says wryly. “I’m much more comfortable with radio. I’ve never found TV easy. But again I go back to the basic point, if you’re the president of the Congress of Trade unions and if that’s the only institution in society that’s challenging the orthodoxy of the status quo, you’re going to have rough days. Lots of them”. The debacle is made all the worse by the knowledge that he is no creature of impulse. “I’ve never made a decision in my life in an instant,” he says later, in a different context, “except the one to refer to Pat Kenny’s house as a trophy house. On the few occasions that I did make a decision in an instant, it all went wrong.” This comes out in such a hang-dog manner, it makes us both laugh. But as a man not renowned for being a barrel of laughs, it’s hard to know when he is being knowingly funny. Probably not too often.
THE TENDENCYto over-long sentences and over-earnestness is exacerbated by the language of victimhood. This irks the more sophisticated membership. It also jars with those who claim he had Bertie Ahern's direct line all through the boom.
He doesn’t deny the link. “What we were endeavouring to do was to represent the interests of the people who were members of the union, but given the role that this union has played in the history of this country – representing the interest of working people generally – as well as that, we were seeking to ensure in that process that working people derive some share in the benefits of the boom.”
But did he get too cosy with the other side? “That’s a view which seems to prevail among a great many people in society and it’s not a view which the establishment share, thankfully.”
But isn’t the evidence there in the membership of State boards, authorities and quangos, with disastrous results for the unions’ image? He carefully but deliberately distances himself from the actions of other union bosses.
“I have always made it clear that I would never sit on Government boards, or on the boards of State companies, because of the way in which that’s always misrepresented . . . I think we should try to secure influence everywhere . . . but I’ve always said if we were privileged to be able to appoint someone to a board of a State company or State authority, we should select someone who has developed particular skills and experience in those areas, and not appoint the president of the union, because in my experience, that is viewed quite cynically.” But he was very close to the highest political levels, close enough to see we were on an unsustainable road to perdition? “What we didn’t see at the time, until it emerged in some of the literature at the beginning of the year, was that for example, between 2003 and 2008, the net foreign borrowings of the Irish banks increased from the equivalent of 10 per cent of GDP to 60 per cent of GDP. So what in effect was happening, if you average it out over the years, is that the Irish banks were importing twice the equivalent of the public capital programme and pumping it into our economy principally for speculative investment in property.”
But he had a ringside view of the buying frenzy. He had a guiding hand in policy-making as the bubble inflated. Here, he firmly plants the ball in the people’s court.
“The problem that you have to see is that the electorate in 1997, despite our best efforts and in 2002, decided the direction of public policy by the Government that they elected. And we ended up dealing with that Government. We will deal with whatever government is elected and we will seek to use the space that is available to us to influence things to the degree that we can.”
The reluctance of the electorate to return left-ish governments, he puts down to “historical reasons” dating back to the 1919 election.
“The political structure here was determined from the unfolding of events extending from 1916 out to the mid-1930s and that’s what is still determining it to a large extent. I really believe that. But I think that is changing radically now . . . That’s reflected in the local election results here in Dublin city and county, where 57 per cent of people vote for Labour or the parties of the left.”
Returning to the matter of who manhandled the boom, he argues that public sector workers are being scapegoated. “While public spending increased by an average of 2.3 per cent between 2003 and 2008” – a “significant increase”, he concedes – “by the end of it, in 2008, public spending in this country as a proportion of GDP was lower than any other euro zone country bar one . . . The real problem is attributable to the banks borrowing abroad and pumping in five times that much.”
Ask him about Siptu’s 3.5 per cent claim for more than 20,000 members in local authorities, an indescribably wrong-headed move in every sense, and he merely says that it is for the branches to negotiate pay and conditions.
But as their esteemed leader, wouldn't a few words from him count for something? "My stock mightn't be as high this morning", he says mournfully, still stuck on the Frontlinedebacle. "But anyway, it's not in my remit to tell a branch what to do or not to do."
His refusal so far to offer a cut in his €124,895 salary is based on a genuine fear that it would legitimise such a strategy for employers across the board. Some companies, after all, are still turning a profit. “But if it’s down to saving jobs, and subject to a detailed scrutiny of company accounts by our professional advisors, then it’s obviously preferable to have the pay cuts.”
The sense of responsibility is “enormous”, he says. Responsibility for him means effecting a deviation from the current Government plan. “No economy ever deflated itself out of a recession. There is no precedent for what they’re doing.”
It’s hardly surprising if his energy wanes at times. He has been immersed in these ideological battles since the age of 16, when he joined the Trotskyist Militant Tendency party (which ultimately became the Socialist Party, with its “more rigid version of socialism” . . . I became a member of the Labour party when I was 18 and I’ve renewed my membership every year.”
ONE OF TWOchildren of "doting parents", Ellen McHale from Claremorris and Michael O'Connor from south Kerry, whose politics leaned towards Fianna Fáil/Labour, his current status would have been unimaginable back when his father milked cows in Lusk, north Co Dublin, for a local dairy, 365 days a year, starting at 4 am. Young Jack grew up in a house where the newspapers (apart from the Irish Independent) were bought and he was lucky to find a teacher in the tiny, rural primary school who encouraged the boy's unusual interest in global affairs. "Mr Dunne was prepared to discuss politics and I suppose he was mildly intrigued that somebody of that age would be so interested in it. He did probably assist me to explore the issues and to read about them and to talk about them in the class. I wouldn't say he saw me as exceptionally bright; I'd say he saw me as of average intelligence, but he was interested in a number of us. I think he had aspirations that I would obtain a qualification and become something useful."
But in the meantime, his father developed a heart condition and had to give up his dairy job. Young Jack moved on to CBS secondary school and watched his father’s heart almost break in the wait for a job that never came.
He rejects any connection between this and his decision to leave school at 15. “My parents were very anxious for me to go to secondary school and were very disappointed when I left.” So was Mr Dunne.
O’Connor says he gave up because he couldn’t envisage himself being able to carry on to third level at that stage. “ I had this idea that I would go to work and I would study at night and I would get the Leaving Cert. Meanwhile, I would have earned money and I would have been able to go on to third level. I had ideas of doing something like political science or history and economics or something like that. But the other reason, to be honest about it, was that I found the second-level environment very restrictive and I didn’t like it at all. Perhaps it was more my fault than theirs but I wasn’t amenable to regimentalisation in any way, and I didn’t identify with the ethos or the outlook.” And like all his decisions, the decision was made only after careful reflection.
He had a job to go to, a pleasant, family-run horticultural business. “They were very nice people . . . I couldn’t ever claim I was exploited or anything.”
So nothing there to make him an angry young man? “No. But I don’t think I was anyway. I was perhaps an idealistic young man”. His future was being set through his political activism even as he worked in pipeline construction and as a bin man. The evening classes soon folded. “I never sat the exam because there were always more pressing issues to be attended to.” Has he regrets about that? “I do believe that I could have done a better job if I had obtained a better education and I do think it would have opened doors for me that are otherwise inaccessible. I wouldn’t for a moment suggest that someone who isn’t well educated is not as well equipped as someone who is, everything else being considered, but I have endeavoured through trade union studies and through my own self-directed studying and through engagement with other people to educate myself.”
Has he read the online comments suggesting he is “economically illiterate”? He looks mildly shocked. “No-one has ever said that to me. I’ve had a lot of conflict with people on the right that I disagree with fundamentally, very sharp exchanges, but that has never been said to me by any of them. Maybe they think it. My mother used to aspire to my getting a better job than my father had, a job which didn’t involve as much physical labour and as much exposure to the elements. That was her aspiration. I suppose I might have succeeded in getting such a job but I don’t know . . . I wouldn’t even have thought about that question if you hadn’t said that now – never in my life.”
The next generation will have no such questions about themselves. His and Paula’s three children are all in full-time education, the elder two at third level and their youngest in secondary school. “I try to support them in whatever way I can . . . The real problem is being supportive on the one and interfering on the other.” A pause and another of those rueful looks. “Sometimes I’m told I cross that line but I don’t intend to.”
EARLY YEARS
Born in 1957, raised in Lusk, north Co Dublin. Left second-level education at 15. Joined Militant Tendency. At 18, joined the Labour Party and became a lifelong member.
CAREER
Trade union activism led to full-time job as branch secretary of the former Federated Workers’ Union of Ireland. Appointed Siptu regional secretary in the midlands and later the south-east region. Became vice president of Siptu, Ireland ’s largest trade union, in 2000 and has been general president since 2003. Was on the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (Ictu) negotiating team for the Sustaining Progress and Towards 2016 agreements. Elected vice president of Ictu in 2007 and president in July this year.
PIVOTAL MOMENT
Leaving school at 15.
