The trend towards sits-ins, lock-ins, secondary picketing, mass picketing, rallies and 'direct action' would suggest things are just so 1987 again in the world of industrial relations.

Trade unions are very different outfits now to what they were back then, however.

They might be criticised for responding to job-cut threats with bombast and rhetoric, but anyone who thinks they are still entirely entrenched in some kind of 1980s' ideological timewarp should think again.

The Irish Congress of Trade Unions has spent the past 15 years getting officials educated, not about working-class ideals but about management realities.

"They have the learned corporate-speak," says one employment-law specialist solicitor. "They have learned to match their game with the best employment lawyers in the business. They are more likely to have a masters in business administration (MBA) and international industrial relations than a beard.

"Working-class ideals are all well and good but the reality of the current young trade union official is an educated, corporate-savvy executive animal," the solicitor said.

Whatever public posturing goes on at the frontline of an industrial clash, Ibec and Ictu have a common educational cause at least, as both bodies support a degree programme and promote it to their members.

This bachelor in business studies part-time degree is run by University College Dublin and has a student body that is a heady mix of company executives in general management who hope to move into senior management, union officials and human resources executives.

The course started in 1996 following approaches to UCD by Ictu and was at first focused on trade-union members. Then in 2000, UCD asked Ibec to come on board, "which worked out brilliantly," said programme manager Linda Dowling.

"We've pretty much saturated the market for trade-union and industrial relations people, so many of them have already been through the course at this stage," she added.

For Mandate official Jonathan Hogan, that professional diversity, and the four years of debate during classes that it informed, was one of the best things about the degree course.

"In this job you have to be able to think on your feet," said Hogan. "If you understand where management is coming from, that's half the battle. The academic debates were part and parcel of things – that's what made it for me."

The degree has meant that most young union officials like Hogan are now as versed in corporate culture and 'business realities' as their opposite numbers in companies.

Students learn key business functions from management to law, employee relations, marketing, technology, entrepreneurship, business strategy and project management.

"Things have changed so much in employment law in Ireland over the past 20 years," said Hogan. "Private firms are represented by solicitors – you have to know your stuff."

Hogan, a 34-year-old former Superquinn shop steward who had worked at the supermarket since the age of 18, took a series of courses in HR, retail management and then completed the business degree. Eighteen months into it he was taken on by Mandate as an official for the Dublin north-west area.

Prior to that he spent most lunchtimes in the carpark at Superquinn studying in his car, and spent every evening after work studying – no mean feat when you're married with children.

"The degree taught me communication skills, the ability to write a submission – it's probably bread-and-butter stuff but the course brought it out in me.

"Since about last August things are really shaken up," said Hogan, who represents mostly retail workers.

Hardly a week goes by without a potential lightening-rod industrial relations conflict arising.

The most recent is the threat by 300 health workers to strike if the HSE centralises medical card processing to try to save €10m.

Tomorrow, Ictu wants its members to join a rally in support of cargo handlers at Marine Terminals, a company based in Dublin's south port, where a dispute has been going on for the past six weeks over redundancy and pay issues.

In a statement, Dublin Council of Trade Unions president Phil McFadden said: "The modern Irish trade union movement was born on the Dublin docks and we certainly do not intend to see it buried there by a company whose tactics are a throwback to the early years of the last century."

Some might say McFadden himself sounds somewhat last century. Will the newer generation of union officials with a more corporate orbit be any different?

Industrial Relations - It could be much worse

As factory and office shutdowns continue, some direct action by unions around the world has taken an alarming turn.

* Bossnappings

In France last month, two Servisair executives were seized and held for 24 hours at Paris's Charles de Gaulle airport by workers demanding new jobs or more severance money.

Other French protest bossnappings included the executive chairman of TDF, the French television broadcast operator in June, and the director of Caterpillar in March.

Managers from Sony, 3M and Hewlett-Packard in France have all reported "bossnapping" incidents.

* Violent protest

At an auto parts factory near Toulouse, a visiting US manager was reportedly assaulted and pelted with eggs.

Some 600 workers in a South Korea motor plant have just ended a 77-day sit-in that featured violent clashes with police. Incredibly, some of these extreme measures have ended in new negotiations on better redundancy packages.

* Sit-ins

Visteon employees in Belfast last month won an enhanced severance package following a month-long sit-in. Employees of Vestas in the Isle of Wight in the UK occupied the plant there for four days while the company felt obliged to supply them with pizza and water due to health and safety legal obligation concerns and concessions were made.

Managers in some of the French 'bossnapping' incidents also made concessions.

Staff at Thomas Cook recently staged a sit-in at the company's office on Grafton St, Dublin to protest against redundancies. At one point 30 people were arrested, a High Court order was served and one member of staff went into labour duing the protest.