Be honest – how many times have you felt like standing up, walking out of the office and never looking back?
Ever fantasised about what you’d really like to say to your boss?
Yeah, us too. We Irish gals can be feisty at the best of times, but who could blame us with the absolute badasses that came before us?
Take Rosie Hackett.
Looks fairly harmless, doesn’t she? That’s where you’re wrong – the lady whom Dublin’s newest bridge was named after was anything but shy and retiring. The union leader broke away from the norm and fought to get rights for workers throughout her life.
Born in the tenements of Dublin’s north inner city in 1892, Rosie went to work as a teenager, first as a packer at a paper store and then a messenger at Jacob’s biscuit factory, which at the time was the biggest employer of women in the city.
As most of us who did Leaving Cert history will know, the early 1900s were a dark time for many people in Dublin. Labourers competed for low-paying work and disease and poor housing made for grim lives for the city’s poorest. When James Larkin set up the Irish Transport and General Workers Union (ITGWU) in 1909, Rosie was one of the first women to join.
In 1911, the then 18 year old helped to organise the mass walk-out of around 3,000 women at Jacob’s in sympathy with the men from the factory’s bakehouse who had gone on strike for better pay and working conditions. With the support of the female workers, the strike was a success and the workers secured improved working conditions and a pay increase.
A few weeks later, she co-founded the Irish Women Workers Union (IWWU). In 1913 the city was once again plunged into industrial unrest as employers began to lock out workers who were unionizing. Rosie lost her job at Jacob’s as a result of her union involvement during the Lockout but pressed on with the cause, helping at the soup kitchens in Liberty Hall to feed families affected by the strike.
It was here that she became active in James Connolly’s Irish Citizen Army (ICA) and in 1916 she fought for independence in the Easter Rising. She is said to have been among the small group present when the Proclamation of Independence was printed at Liberty Hall. She was imprisoned after the rising, spending 10 days at Kilmainham Gaol.
On the first anniversary of the Rising, a banner reading “James Connolly, Murdered May 12th, 1916” was hung from Liberty Hall. After this poster was removed by police, Rosie and several other women rehung it and barricaded themselves on the roof, nailing the doors shut and putting coal up against the windows. Unbelievably, 400 police were sent to take it down, a process that took them several hours. Speaking about the incident, she said, “We enjoyed it at the time – all the trouble they were put to.”
Rosie continued to involve herself in workers’ rights campaigns and helped to re-found the IWWU in the years after the rising. One of the union’s biggest successes was getting two weeks of paid holidays for workers following the Laundry Strike of 1945. Rosie also worked in the ITGWU tobacco and sweet shop at Eden Quay until it closed in 1952.
She was awarded a medal by the ITGWU in 1970 for her years of work for trade unionism. She died in 1976 and the Rosie Hackett Bridge was officially opened in May 2014.
Jeni Gartland, who was involved in the campaign to have the bridge named after Rosie, said modern Irish women can take a lot from Rosie’s life and work.
“I think Rosie is worth remembering because she was just an ordinary woman who did really extraordinary things. She risked her job and fought for what was right, even though she was just a normal, working class woman.
“I think now, in a time of zero hour contracts and increasingly precarious working conditions, maybe more of us should stand up and be like Rosie.”
