Shannon SIPTU branches to amalgamate

INTERNAL consultations going on over the past two weeks are set to bring an end to the separate identities and powerful status of the two SIPTU branches at Shannon.
In a twin movement towards a regional structure and sector specialisation by union officials which will apply nationwide, union officials have been brought into a consultation process to work out the sectors they are most suited and keen to operate in and also to check out the regional centres that they would favour to working from.
Implementation of the new structure will mean an end to the Shannon Aviation branch and to the branch that was set up and sited from the outset on Shannon Industrial Estate, which is now Shannon Free Zone. Established following the strike of 1951, that unionised the Shannon Sales and Catering Service when it provided jobs for approximately 1,000, the union branch at the airport was one of the first in the country to have union dues deducted directly from wage packets. The power in numbers, which made the airport branch a powerhouse in elections to union office and also in consistently returning a Shannon candidate as a worker director on the board of Aer Rianta and its Dublin Airport Authority successor, has now waned.
SIPTU membership headcount has been dramatically pared back by the rationalisation programme, which all but halved the workforce employed by the Shannon Airport Authority. SIPTU membership there now hovers around the 200 mark. The repeated culling of Shannon jobs and services by Aer Lingus has also reduced membership of the organisation to what union activists now reckon amounts to around 100. “That compares to what came to almost 1,000 members of the Shannon Airport branch not so long ago,” a union source said.
The big changes in Shannon Free Zone employment since the 1980s have also seriously diluted the membership of what was the giant of the national trade union movement which was built on the all-embracing representation of general workers. While the overall level of employment at Shannon Free Zone ranks among the highest concentrations of jobs in the country at approximately 7,000 “due to the huge swing towards financial and other international services, the level of jobs and therefore union membership at the Free Zone, would now amount to about one-third of the total”, union sources pointed out.
In the restructured SIPTU, membership is to be grouped by sector and will be serviced by union officials with specialist knowledge and experience. Although the Shannon Aviation branch has, in recent years, been more and more integrated with the overall SIPTU Aviation branch based at Dublin Airport, it is more likely that the airport membership will be lumped in with transportation, which would include the Bus Éireann and Iarnród membership. The Shannon Free Zone membership seems destined for the new manufacturing section. The white collar SIPTU membership at Shannon Development will be lumped in with the local authorities. The specialist set-up also applies to the Health Service Executive.  
The new structure is to be serviced from regional centres and envisages that the airport and Free Zone will be served by separate union officials based in Limerick. Depending on the location of union membership and the choices being offered to union officials, SIPTU services in Clare and possibly in the wider Mid-West Region could be operated from the Galway regional centre.