There was a collective sigh of relief in Dublin's Liberty Hall this week when the national lifts strike ended. While the public eye was focused on the plight of Ballymun's 6,000 tenants over the past 12 weeks, SIPTU's 300 fulltime staff were stoically puffing their way up the 15-storey eyesore on the Liffey and, no doubt, offering it all up to workers' solidarity.
The general officers suffered most because of their top floor offices, but it posed no problem for SIPTU president Jimmy Somers. He walks in to work every day and reportedly took the 300-odd steps in his stride.
Being good trade unionists they could hardly complain, and neither could SIPTU be seen to strike-break by bringing in special repair crews. However, once the strike ended on Tuesday, it was no great surprise which was one of the first buildings in the Republic to have its lifts fixed. Well, half attended to. One of Liberty Hall's two lifts was fixed immediately.
It wasn't the only interested party to have lift trouble at HQ. The following day, when the Minister for Labour Tom Kitt invited dozens of delegates from both sides in the dispute to his Adelaide Road headquarters for mediation talks, two of his civil servants got trapped in the lift for over 30 minutes. The emergency rescue service got them out, but there was amused speculation about what might have happened if the lift had given up the ghost the previous day when representatives of nine businesses crammed into it for the journey to the fifth floor.