Sheila Conroy
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22 April 1918
Sheila Conroy | |
|---|---|
| Born | Sheila Williams 22 April 1918 Bantry, County Cork, Ireland |
| Died | 11 May 2012 (aged 94) Tara Care Centre, Bray, County Wicklow |
| Occupations | trade union leader, activist |
Sheila Conroy (22 April 1918 – 11 May 2012) was an Irish trade union leader and activist. She was the first women elected to the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union's national executive committee and in 1976 she became chair of the RTÉ Authority, making her the first woman to chair an Irish semi-state body.[1][2]
Sheila Conroy was born Sheila Williams in Bantry, County Cork on 22 April 1918 (or possibly 4 April 1917). She was the only child of Harry and Jane Williams. Her father was a Welsh petty officer in the Royal Navy who was stationed in Bantry from 1914 to 1918. Her mother's family disowned her due to the marriage. After the death of her mother from tuberculosis soon after Conroy was born, she was fostered by a local family until she was 6, with her father sending an allowance from his new posting. She had suffered from pneumonia as an infant, and was cared for by and later attended the national school of the Sisters of Mercy in Bantry. She moved to the convent in Cobh, where she attended St Maries of the Isle secondary school in Cork city. She suffered further ill health, throat infections and scarlet fever, which led to her leaving school after a year at age 14. She never tried to make contact with her maternal family, fearing they would reject her.[1][3]
Early career and union work
She was apprenticed to a small confectionery firm in Cork in 1937, with the allowance from her father paying for her accommodation. She lost that job in 1939, and took up a position as a trainee waitress at the Victoria Hotel, Cork. Owing to the working conditions at the hotel, Conroy organised a secret operation to affiliate the staff with the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union (ITGWU). She moved to Dublin in 1944, working at the Capitol Theatre as a waitress and started studying at the College of Catering on Cathal Brugha Street. She was the shop steward for ITGWU members at the Capitol, and became involved in the union's branch which served hotel, restaurant and catering staff (no. 4 branch) in Dublin, the membership of which was predominately women. At the 1952 AGM, she was elected to the branch committee, and was a delegate at the ITGWU annual conference in the summer of the same year.[1][3]
Conroy was disappointed by the low attendance of women members at the union's annual conference in 1953, noting that if the ITGWU women members organised separately, they would be the second largest union in Ireland after the ITGWU. In 1954, she was the only woman delegate at the Congress of Irish Unions, when she commented that the marriage bar never affected women in low-status, low-paid jobs in catering, retail, cleaning, or domestic service. Conroy was the first woman elected to the ITGWU's national executive committee (NEC) in June 1955. At the Labour Court she negotiated on behalf of her branch that same year, and helped establish regional sectoral industrial councils to set wages and employment conditions, as well as campaigning for the creation of a national pension scheme for all workers. She topped the poll at the NEC elections in 1958, acknowledging that this meant a large amount of men voted for her.[1][3]
She and the union's general president, John Conroy, introduced new rules regarding the payment of marriage gratuities to women members at the ITGWU congress in 1958. They married on 29 July 1959 at the church of Christ the King, Cabra. Conroy resigned from the union before their wedding, and instead volunteered at Our Lady's Hostel for Homeless Boys in Eccles Street, Dublin. Her husband died in February 1969.[1][3]
