Strike rejected

PRIMARY teachers voted against possible strike action over the loss of more than 600 jobs on support programmes for Traveller pupils and disadvantaged children in rural areas after warnings that the move would breach the Croke Park agreement.

Delegates at the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (INTO) congress were told by union leaders they risked the withdrawal of Government commitments not to cut their pay or make compulsory redundancies if the proposal was adopted.

A two-thirds majority of more than 700 teachers rejected part of a motion calling on the union executive to seek a reversal of the cuts with a campaign up to and including industrial action.

However, delegates unanimously condemned the cuts which take effect in September, following Education Minister Ruairi Quinn’s message yesterday that no school staffing cuts in the four-year national recovery plan will be overturned.

INTO executive member from Limerick Seamus Long said the leadership would be placed in an impossible position having to ballot for action because it would be a breach of the agreement accepted by the union’s 30,000 members a year ago.

Colm Ó Hairt said taking industrial action when there are 450,000 people unemployed would make teachers a laughing stock and the union probably only had funds to pay members for one day of strike.

“We would want to be prepared for a sustained campaign that would last week, if not months, and we can’t afford that.

“We would be doing a great disservice to many members who are in negative equity and who face imminent increases in mortgage repayments,” he said.

Ann McQuaile from Louth, who works with the Visiting Teacher Service for Travellers, (VTST) which is to be axed, said Mr Quinn’s draft national plan to improve literacy and numeracy would be doomed to failure if the cuts go ahead.

“This will do irreversible damage to what we have achieved over more than 10 years. The Department of Education talks about social inclusion, but we call this social injustice,” she said. As well as 600 posts being lost in the VTST and resource teachers for Travellers, 48 home school co-ordinator jobs in rural disadvantaged communities are being discontinued from September.