www.ilda.net
IRISH LOCOMOTIVE DRIVERS' ASSOCIATION
Off
the Rails goes on-line
A new book by Brendan Ogle
by Keith
Harris, editor, Newsmedianews.com
In 1994 a chain of events started that centred on train drivers' working practices and industrial relations within Irish Rail. Those events were to spark hugely reverberating repercussions throughout the trade union movement in Ireland, not least within Iarnród Éireann, Ireland's commercial semi-state rail transport company.
Having scrutinised the operations of the existing unions of which they were then members in an increasingly disillusioned light, a substantial number of main line train drivers decided to form their own union and the Irish Locomotive Drivers Association (ILDA) was formed. Those men then found themselves facing an alliance of opposition that included not only their employer Iarnród Éireann, but also Ireland's largest union, government departments, the mechanics of state industrial relations, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions and the Irish High Court.
Off The Rails tell that story. It tell it in a compellingly interesting, humorous, entertaining and cuttingly honest account and read of the birth pains of a modern train drivers' collective that coalesced into the Irish Locomotive Drivers Association - ILDA - only to find itself suddenly embroiled within a social, industrial and political structure that seemed at times to take on even darker shadows than the years of McCarthyism ever produced.
'This is no academic record - no tome of wisdom to be studied by historians or sociologists' writes author Brendan Ogle in his introduction to the book. And yet as the author also notes further into the book '- things don't happen quite as you'd expect regarding unions in Ireland.'
Off The Rails tells the inside story of how growing dissatisfaction among train drivers toward existing union representations in an industrial relations setting eventually led in 1998 to a process that was to result in the creation of ILDA as a new, registered union - a story seen through the eyes and experience of train driver Brendan Ogle, who was also a key union player throughout - working as a union rep in the ranks of the very union structures that had given rise to the dissatisfaction to begin, to becoming a founding secretary of ILDA.
Not a particularly tantalising storyboard perhaps, and this really was a book that did not really need to be written. Yet it was the astonishing events that not only led up to but dramatically followed the creation of ILDA that eventually required this book to be written, and a blockbuster it is too.
The author's writings reveal his passion and dedication as both train driver and a union man working to protect the interests of train drivers as well as forging a process aimed at improving broader industrial relations harmony both within union and employer echelons and beyond. And it reveals the author's eye for detail and turn of phrase in many surprising ways: "Some people think that they are not working unless they are bogged down in papers, minutes, files, e-mails and faxes. Mick (O'Reilly) isn't one of those people. He works by dealing with people, members-not pieces of paper."
Off the Rails takes the reader as a footplate passenger on a journey that passes stations named Social Partnerships, Them and Us, Liberty Hall, Bureaucrat Junction, Ministerial Halt and Media View before joining the High Court subway with its mystery tunnels leading off into murky recesses, where station names such as Recognition and Solidarity can barely be made out in the gloom.
It tells how the author and his ILDA colleagues for a time ranked on par with America's Most Wanted, only in Ireland - elevated there by the machinations of State. It tells how the ILDA membership, already financially stung by wage loss caused by the 10-week lock-out of summer 2000, raised thousands of pounds from their own pockets to pay for a necessary legal defence in the High Court against a lawsuit taken against them by their employer Iarnród Éireann, and a counterclaim to those charges.
It tells of the disbelief and frustration felt by professional men who found themselves - and often their families - under attack for standing up for what they saw as their worker's rights - including the right as train drivers to make observations on issues of day to day operational safety.
It lays starkly bare many of the processes and procedures of the State's industrial relations machinery from the Labour Court to the Department of Trade and Industry.
It documents the Joseph Heller scale ludicrousness of action being taken for a problem caused by the breach of a non-existent regulation, and when the breach was proven, despite the absence of the regulation, that breach was held as the reason for the problem in the first place.
It is also an honest indictment of much within Irish society that, in any healthy society, would be openly and honestly evaluated with a view to its approval or rejection. It talks of closed shops, and not only within unions. It reveals a process of shilly shallying within government offices, the cross-over of influence between elected representatives and the processes of legislation and law, and it reveals an appalling apathy toward and acceptance of situations that should not exist.
Off the Rails is particularly critical in many ways of government, of union and legal bureaucracy, of the ethos of 'social partnership', and of the reporting media; but an honest appraisal of the book will reveal that the criticisms are themselves honest and directed towards finding acceptable and fair solutions, or improvements.
This is a book that should be read by everyone who has an interest in on-going events within Ireland today. Just as the railways are a vital infrastructure of society, likewise the events recounted within this book are an important insight into a very real substructure within the infrastructure of Irish society. And it should certainly be read by those who came to look at and might still regard ILDA with feelings of resentment.
Off the Rails is a book jam packed with lessons we may all benefit from. And for workers' unions in Ireland, and possibly elsewhere, it is a breath of fresh air along musty union corridors. Off the Rails is an important book documenting realities within industrial relations in Ireland today.
Author Brendan Ogle writes: "The book's website contains original material relating to the book including the full text of book previews, the book preface itself and a discussion forum where readers can give their views on “Off The Rails” and the trials and tribulations that befell a highly principled but much maligned group of trade unionists in ILDA.
“Off The Rails”, published by Currach Press, deals with Irish industrial relations, the trade union movement, politics and social partnership in Ireland and how the judiciary, the media and “consensus Ireland” dealt with a three month lockout of half of Irelands mainline locomotive drivers in the summer of 2000.
ABOUT “OFF THE RAILS”
BY JOHN WATERS of THE IRISH TIMES
In the course of the now legendary ILDA dispute of 2000, it struck me that something strange might be happening to the politics of the workplace when an allegedly socialist-minded commentator took to sneering at the alleged grandiosity of ILDA members in describing themselves as "locomotive drivers".Having worked on the railways for a stint myself, I knew that the reason they call themselves locomotive drivers is that they drive locomotives, one of the most honoured callings of the industrial age.
It is well I recall, when first I went to work as a clerk in the goods office in Claremorris railway station, the deep feelings of inadequacy that came to visit me in the company of locomotive drivers. I remember their names: Finbar Masterson, Hughie Dawson, Christy Hunt, the godlike men who drove the iron horses along the permanent way, whose aristocratic stature and consummate skill rendered pathetic the scratching with biros on invoices and consignment notes that was my daily lot as a clerk. And yet, the emerging culture of the company was that clerks were the superior grades, the officer class from which sections of management were drawn.
This suggests itself as a parable of the media's relationship with ILDA. The modern media operative, twirling a computer mouse or mincing around an air-conditioned room, feels deeply threatened on being confronted with men who are prepared to stand by their principles to protect their passengers and feed their families, and who earn their daily bread by the sweat of their backs. In the dawning months of the new millennium, a struggle erupted in the public domain between a handful of these iron men and the entire Irish establishment, including unions, courts and media.
At both its heart and its head was Brendan Ogle. This book is the story of how he and his colleagues took on the system in defence of an honoured calling, and for a fistful of principles, in an age when such things are regarded with suspicion and disdain.
John Waters—November 2003Off the Rails is published by The Currach Press, Dublin www.currach.ie
ISBN1-85607-906-6
Price: €18.99 UK£12.99
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