Social Affairs

Kevin Callinan: The union leader who ‘knows how to close out on a deal’

Ictu chief pursuing approval of State’s 340,000 public sector workers for pay deal agreed this week

‘We spend far less on public services and infrastructure than similar European countries,’ said Fórsa general secretary Kevin Callinan. Photograph: Laura Hutton / The Irish Times

Cormac McQuinn
Pat Leahy
Sat Sep 3 2022 - 04:00

Kevin Callinan, the president of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (Ictu), is a self-described “Manchester United nut”.

Shortly after taking the helm at Fórsa, Ireland’s largest public sector trade union, he told the union’s in-house magazine that former United boss Alex Ferguson is among the people he most admires. “He led us to the promised land,” Callinan said.

Callinan last week led a team of union negotiators that concluded talks with the Department of Public Expenditure on a new public sector pay deal. For the union side, the “promised land” is a deal that would see public sector workers get hefty pay rises to help with the soaring cost of living.

For the Government side, it would be industrial peace, avoiding a series of public sector strikes during what looks to be an extremely difficult winter, marked by rising costs and political pressure. Governments all over Europe are bracing themselves, and in Dublin it’s no different.

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Callinan is a relative newcomer when it comes to leading the union side in negotiations on national pay agreements, though he has decades of experience in the trade union movement

The proposed agreement will see at least a 6.5 per cent pay increase by the end of 2023 for most of Ireland’s 340,000 State employees, including a 3 per cent increase backdated to last February and due to be paid in a lump sum later this year. The unions’ memberships must now decide whether to ratify the deal. Callinan has made clear that he believes this is the best deal available through negotiation.

The implication is clear: union members must decide to accept what’s on offer or take their chances that a series of strikes will deliver bigger pay increases. He will lead an energetic campaign in favour of the agreement.

So who is the 62-year-old who rose from working as a library assistant for Dublin Corporation to the very top of the union movement?

Callinan chairs Ictu’s public services committee which also includes John King of Siptu, Phil Ni Sheaghda of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) and John Boyle of the Irish National Teachers Organisation. Gardaí were separately represented at last week’s negotiations by Antoinette Cunningham of the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors (AGSI).

The deal was finalised early on Tuesday after almost 19 hours of renewed negotiations at the Workplace Relations Commission’s (WRC) Lansdowne House headquarters in Ballsbridge.

Emerging after the marathon session, Callinan said that “neither side has achieved all it sought” but called it a “significant improvement” on the terms of the existing Building Momentum public pay agreement that is “worth more to those who need it most”. Unsurprisingly Fórsa’s, national executive recommended on Thursday that its members vote in favour of the deal.

Callinan is a relative newcomer when it comes to leading the union side in negotiations on national pay agreements, though he has decades of experience in the trade union movement.

He was appointed as general secretary of Fórsa in the summer of 2019 — a union formed two years earlier to represent more than 80,000 public sector workers after the merger of Impact, the Civil, Public and Services Union (CPSU) and the Public Service Executive Union (PSEU).

One person who has worked with Callinan praised him as being ‘very loyal to his own roots representing workers’ and ‘very ambitious’ for trade union movement

He was elected as chairperson of Ictu’s public services committee (PSC) later in 2019 and negotiated the Building Momentum pay agreement, struck that December. He was elected as president of Ictu the following year.

Callinan’s approach to industrial relations talks is said to differ from his hero Alex Ferguson’s famous “hairdryer treatment” in the football dressingroom.

One source said: “There wouldn’t be any walkouts or banging tables but he would be frank and forthright”.

Another person described him as a “stubborn pragmatist” who “knows how to close out on a deal”.

They added: “just because he doesn’t lose his head doesn’t mean there aren’t terse and tense conversations — of course there are”.

A source who has encountered Callinan over the years said he is a “big thinker” and “no-nonsense” but also claimed he has a “bit of a ruthless streak as well” when it comes to internal union matters.

One person who has worked with him praised him as being “very loyal to his own roots representing workers” and “very ambitious” for trade union movement.

Callinan is the son of two civil servants, John and Emer, whose mother had to give up her job due to the marriage bar.

He is not the only high-profile member of the family. His brother John is the secretary general of the Department of the Taoiseach, though the pair did not come across one another in the public pay talks which were handled on the Government side by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform.

Callinan grew up on Dublin’s Northside and recalled last year that he had attended a gig at the ill-fated Stardust nightclub just weeks before the deadly fire in 1981 that killed 48 young people.

He said it was a “dark time” amid the hunger strikes in Northern Ireland, the inauguration of Ronald Regan as US President and riots in Britain where Margaret Thatcher was “in her second term as prime minister and leading her assault on workers and ordinary people”. (Actually it was her first term)

Callinan added: “But the darkness and despair was eclipsed by the fire ... on Valentine’s night which cost 48 lives and left many more maimed, injured and bereaved.”

He added: “40 years later their families still await justice. We should never forget”.

Callinan’s career began as a library assistant working for Dublin Corporation and he joined the then Local Government and Public Service Union (LGPSU) “on my first day working”. He later joined the union’s staff before going on to work for Impact in 1991 after it was formed that year. He rose steadily through its ranks.

Callinan lives with his wife Trish in Newbridge, Co Kildare, and has five adult children. He is said to be a jazz lover and avid reader and he has previously spoken of his passion for sport and how he will “watch pretty much anything”.

The decision-making process on the deal will take a few weeks, as individual unions go through their own processes. The Ictu process is counted somewhat like the US electoral college. Each union is allocated a weighting in accordance with the number of public servants it represents. However, all of each union’s votes go the way of the winning side — in other words, if the agreement is rejected by Siptu members by one vote, all the Siptu votes nevertheless count against the agreement.

In reality, the fate of the agreement will be decided by a handful of the big unions — Forsa, Siptu, and the teaching unions. But for political purposes, Callinan and its promoters will want it to have broadly based support.

Senior union and political sources are optimistic that the deal will get the backing it needs from union members — but hasten to add they take nothing for granted. Within Government, the view is that they are paying a high price for something valuable.

At a deeper level, if the deal sticks it would be an affirmation of the centrist, consensus-style approach to Government in the broadest sense that has sometimes wobbled but never quite collapsed. At a time when the political landscape is shifting and Sinn Féin’s confrontational, “left-populist” style of opposition has seen it surge in the opinion polls, it would be a sign that the trade union movement can still do business with the Government.

For Callinan and his 340,000 members, the deal might not be quite the promised land. But right now, it might well be as good as it gets.

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