Thomas Kennedy

Thomas Kennedy (1887 – 18 September 1947) was an Irish Labour Party politician and trade union official.

Career Union leadership From 1905 to 1909, Thomas Kennedy worked as a leather trunk maker in Scotland, where he met James Larkin when Larkin was organising for the NUDL. Then Kennedy returned to Ireland and joined the Socialist Party of Ireland, which was formed in 1904 by the merger of the Irish Socialist Republican Party and the Irish Socialist Labour Party. Kennedy joined the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union (ITGWU) in 1913, which was a union related to the party. After that, Kennedy worked closely with William O'Brien, a member of the leadership in ITGWU and the head of the workers' support committee, and began forty years as William O'Brien's closest political partner. A photo of the ITGWU executive committee in 1933. Kennedy is second from the right in the first row, and O'Brien is second from the left.

Over the next few decades, he became active in trade union affairs and politics. While O'Brien was elected general treasurer of ITGWU in 1918, In the same year Kennedy was elected as the vice chairman of the Labour Party. Kennedy was also a member of President's Economic Commission in 1928, Such low wages and poor living conditions caused the plan to be collectively opposed by workers after it was promulgated. However, Garda quickly dispersed the protesters according to the Offences Against the State Act. Although the ITGWU protested the scheme at the beginning of the movement, they still maintained a compromising and ambiguous attitude. Soon, they no longer supported the protesting workers, but chose to support the government at the behest of O'Brien. Kennedy claimed that the problem of unemployment would have to be dealt with "on the basis of camp life", and urged support for the scheme with O'Brien at the Irish Trades Union Congress (ITUC) executive.

In 1940, de Valera was considering new Trade Unions Act. However, the old law restricting the rights of trade unions was not successfully enacted due to the obstruction of various trade unions, so a government official suggested that de Valera meet with O'Brien and Kennedy, and called them "the better elements of the Irish trade union movement". This showed that even in government's opinion, O'Brien and Kennedy were also relatively conservative and willing to cooperate with the government. After the negotiations with them in 1941, de Valera introduced two bills, the Trade Unions Act 1941 and Emergency Order Power No. 83. The Emergency Order Power No. 83 required employees, employers and unions to stop negotiating over wages, which simply means "freezing wages" so that wages remain unchanged during the state of emergency. The new Trade Unions Act introduced a licensing system, requiring unions to obtain the support of a sufficient number of workers and to pay a large deposit in order to operate in a particular industry. This made it difficult for smaller unions to survive. The licensing system was negotiated between O'Brien and Kennedy and the government to protect the interests of the ITGWU and limit foreign unions, but the deposit system was not negotiated, so Kennedy condemned the new Trade Union Act. However, O'Brien showed a serious attitude of compromise. So when the bill was introduced, O'Brien and the ITGWU leadership limited any discussion against new trade union law. Instead, since O'Brien had made an unsuccessful proposal a few years earlier to rationalise the structure of the Irish Trades Union Congress, he simply condemned Order No. 83 and then called for rationalization again. Influenced by O'Brien, the ITGWU leadership and executive committee members, including Kennedy, eventually compromised on the trade union law. However, Larkin and the WUI played a leading role in the unsuccessful campaign against the bill, led to Larkin's popularity among unions for a period of time afterwards, and the relative decline of the ITGWU and its leadership.

1935 Dublin tram and bus strike In the spring of 1935, nearly 3,000 tram and bus drivers in Dublin went on strike to support a driver who had been dismissed, expressing their long-standing dissatisfaction with low wages. The duration of this strike was unprecedented in Irish history. The strike targeted against the privatization and private monopolies of public transport services, while also demanding the cancellation of wage cuts from 1927 and 1929, extended holidays, higher wages, and improved working conditions for new employees. Kennedy, as the vice-president of the ITGWU took part in organising the strike and criticised the private monopoly of public transport services and said that the tram and bus services should be a state or municipal undertaking.

Influence on Seán Lemass According to biographer John Horgan, Kennedy was friendly with Seán Lemass and along with O'Brien and other union leaders, had a profound influence on Lemass' policies, and on Lemass' attention to labour issues.

Criticism Trade union conflict In 1924, when the conflict between James Larkin and O'Brien broke out, the former took a group of ITGWU members and broke away from it to establish a new labour organisation, the Irish Worker League and a new trade union, the Workers' Union of Ireland (WUI). A violent conflict ensued between O'Brien and Larkin, which resulted in 45 workers being imprisoned. In the WUI newspaper The Irish Worker, Larkin called them "O'Brien's victims". Then in a large meeting of the Automobile members of the ITGWU held in the Trades Hall, Capel Street, on Sunday, 15 June, a member of ITGWU James Mitchell gave a brief outline of the inner workings of the union and the many cases he could personally vouch for, where the members' interests were treacherously betrayed. He accused, O'Brien and Kennedy of having supported the Executive Council in defiance of the interests of the members of their own organization.

Sexism In 1935, as women's employment increased, the male unemployment rate rose relatively. In order to solve the problem of male unemployment, the government proposed a bill that gave Seán Lemass almost unlimited power, allowing him to ban women from working in industry, while enforcing the ratio of men to women in other categories of industries, requiring employers not to hire more women than men without permission. This bill caused dissatisfaction among women workers and other sympathetic workers. People believed that this law gave the Minister for Industry and Commerce too much power, people had almost no way to appeal, and could even lead to a total ban on women workers. However, at the ITUC's 1935 Congress, held in the Guildhall in Derry, Kennedy argued that "it was the first measure to give male labour their rightful place in the new industries". Helena Molony of the Irish Women Workers' Union (IWWU) responded, telling delegates that "it was terrible to find such reactionary opinions expressed ... by responsible leaders of labour in support of a capitalist minister in setting up a barrier against one set of citizens".

Seanad and death Kennedy was elected to the Irish Free State Seanad in 1934 for nine years and served until the Free State Seanad was abolished in 1936.