It's make-or-break time for Séamus Brennan's strategy, writes Chris Dooley, Industry and Employment Correspondent
Going anywhere soon? Better not count on it, perhaps, unless you've got your own transport. The current cessation in hostilities between unions and the Minister for Transport, Séamus Brennan, is likely to be just a temporary respite.
Only if the Minister drops his plan to privatise 25 per cent of Dublin's bus routes, and drops it now, is the public likely to be spared disruption to rail and bus services. Air travellers can breathe easy for a little while longer; talks on the future of Aer Rianta are about to begin and are unlikely to come to a head for some weeks at least.
The sparring between Brennan and the unions has been going on for more than a year now. First came his plan to dismantle CIÉ and force Dublin Bus to open up 25 per cent of its routes to competition from private operators by January 2004 (he's missed the target date but hasn't dropped the plan). That was followed by his announcement that Aer Rianta was to be broken up and separate management entities established for Dublin, Shannon and Cork airports.
Unions have separate objections to both plans, but essentially see each as a threat to their members' job security, pay and terms of employment.
Over the past 12 months a pattern has emerged: unions enter talks with Brennan's department, then the Minister gives an interview in which he reaffirms his initial proposals. Unions cry foul, say they are wasting their time in talks when Brennan has already made his mind up. A half-day stoppage follows, bigger strikes are threatened, Brennan makes soothing noises about his commitment to consultations, and the talks begin again.
On Monday, CIÉ union leaders will meet Brennan for the fourth set of negotiations in a year. One way or another, they are likely to be the last as it's make or break time. They may also be the shortest. It will take an extraordinary performance by Brennan and his officials to persuade the unions to continue negotiations beyond Monday.
Unions say they have a number of positive proposals which could put up to 280 new buses on the streets of Dublin within two years. They include a plan for Dublin Bus to contract out services to private operators, freeing up a number of its own buses for transfer to other routes.
If Brennan is really interested in improving services, and not just pursuing an ideological objective, he will put aside his own plan and examine such proposals, the unions argue.
A union source insists that the Minister could do this without admitting defeat or abandoning his objectives. "We don't expect him to stand on the roof of the department and wave a white flag."
Brennan, however, has already ruled out ideas such as allowing Dublin Bus to control franchises. He firmly believes that competition overseen by an independent regulator is the best way to provide the public with an improved, cost-effective service. He has stated this so often that it may, indeed, take the production of a white flag on Monday to avert a quick return to industrial action.
SIPTU's Bus Éireann, Dublin Bus and Iarnród Éireann strike committees have already arranged to meet on Tuesday to plan their next move.
Even more significant than the fundamental differences between them is the extent to which Brennan has lost the unions' trust. He insists that in giving media interviews while negotiations have been taking place, he has done nothing other than respond to requests to articulate his policy.
In effect, he believes both sides are big enough and ugly enough to be able to state their positions in public without the other side taking umbrage.
Union leaders, however, claim he has undermined negotiations with his public statements far too often for it to have been an accident. Such is their lack of faith in him, that even a highly conciliatory letter from Brennan to the unions almost failed to persuade SIPTU to call off its planned two-hour stoppage at Dublin Airport on Thursday.
One experienced union negotiator, who is not a member of SIPTU, exclaimed, having read the letter, that Brennan could not have offered more, "short of going down on his knees and begging them" to call off the strike.
The same source believed that when SIPTU's Aer Rianta shop stewards met senior officials of the union on Monday, including president Jack O'Connor, it would not take them long to defer the stoppage. Yet it took the intervention of the Taoiseach the following night to swing the SIPTU meeting, by then in its second marathon session, in favour of deferring the action.
Bertie Ahern essentially repeated, in a public statement, the key elements of Brennan's earlier assurances. The job security and quality of employment of Aer Rianta workers would be protected by legislation and key financial information would be made available to the unions, he promised.
He also referred to the continuance of collective agreements and promised engagement on the Shannon stopover issue.
All of these had been offered by Brennan, but according to one source at the meeting, they would not have been enough without Ahern's rubber stamp. Even then, some of the more hard-line activists tried a bit of arm-twisting. There were references to the Taoiseach's failure to deliver on promises in other areas, such as the health service.
The response that a solution would ultimately have to be found, and that the workers could hardly count on Romani Prodi or Kofi Annan to deliver it, persuaded the recalcitrant ones that the Taoiseach remained the best bet.
Unions will now enter new talks with Brennan's officials in an attempt to establish how guarantees about jobs can be sustained after Aer Rianta is broken up.
In truth, union leaders believe it cannot be done. Far from promoting competition, they believe the break-up will leave Shannon and Cork "competing with each other for the favours of major airlines", as one source put it.
In other words, to take an example which is never far from a trade unionist's mind, Ryanair would be in a position to dictate its terms to either airport, to the exclusion of real competition.
Winning over public opinion to that view will be a major task for the unions in the months ahead. Not closing Dublin Airport on Thursday was a good start.