ASTI Conference: 'ASTI has become the North Korea of the trade union movement'

Education Correspondent Niall Murray reports from the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland annual congress and also meets a teacher hit by the mortgage deposit trap.

The Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland is poised to reject any deal from public sector pay talks that does not fully restore pay cuts for members, despite strong criticism on its strategies to date.

A motion was overwhelmingly carried at its annual convention that mandates union leaders to strongly oppose any pay deal that does not guarantee equal pay for equal work, set a deadline for reversal of all pay cuts and end the emergency laws that have left all its members worse off than other teachers.

But attacks were levelled at the position taken to date, particularly in relation to lower-paid teachers who started their careers from 2011 onwards on lower pay than their longer-serving colleagues.

The position for teachers who have lost out on the opportunity to receive a contract of indefinite duration (CID) was described as a major issue in schools.

Some of the almost 500 people believed to have left ASTI in recent months were said to have done so to join the Teachers’ Union of Ireland and get the benefits of a deal it did last September for earlier access to the contracts.

Fintan O’Mahony, of ASTI’s Waterford branch and the union’s 180-members central executive council (CEC), said the position being adopted “shows all too clearly the embarrassing situation” the union put itself in by standing alone outside the Lansdowne Road Agreement.

“We’re fighting a war everyone else gave up fighting long ago, the ASTI has become the North Korea of the trade union movement,” he said.

He said remaining outside the current deals has seen members complete a year of doing supervision and substitution work without extra pay, losing out on increments paid to other teacher union members, and on the first phase of pay restoration worth €1,000 to other public servants at the start of this month.

However, Kathlyn Hennelly, CEC member for the Fingal branch which proposed the motion, said she was shocked to hear delegates suggest the union was denying CIDs to its members.

Supporters of the motion said it was the Government which was doing so, using the Financial Emergency Measures in the Public Interest (FEMPI) law which the union wants terminated.

“We need an urgent return to a common pay scale for all teachers, because this has all the hallmarks of ‘how long is a piece of string’ before the Government decide to end it,” Ms Hennelly said.

Fermoy branch delegate Richard Terry said the ASTI’s standalone position has not worked and pursuing the proposed strategy would leave members further out in the cold.

While gains made by other teacher unions were probably greater due to the ASTI campaigning separately on the issue, he said, the strategy for equal pay for all its members was not working.

“It failed because, rather than halt, advance and consolidate gains, we insisted on holding out for all and ended up getting nothing at all,” he said.

But Cork delegate and ASTI standing committee member Ann Piggott said negotiating rather than continuing industrial action would get the union nowhere with a Government who would lead them to believe it has no money at all.

She said that since members’ pay was cut, a new carpet at Leinster House cost €265,000 and we are paying €2m to appeal a decision that Apple owes the country €13bn.

Secondary teachers ‘fought on alone’

Secondary teachers have fought alone on pay and conditions on principle despite abuse of power by successive government efforts to coerce them into compliance, a union leader has said.

Ed Byrne has led the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI) through industrial action on a number of pay fronts and on junior cycle reform over the past school year, leading to hundreds of schools closing for three days in October and November.

However, he defended the union’s position on its own outside the Lansdowne Road Agreement as a principled one in support of members, paritcularly those lower-paid teachers who started their careers since the start of 2011.

Mr Byrne described the Department of Education’s withholding of contracts of indefinite duration (CIDs) from ASTI members after, which are available to those in other teacher unions, as nothing short of malice and vengeance.

That action is being carried out under powers available to the Government under the Financial Emergency Measures in the Public Interest (FEMPI) law which the union wants repealed when it next comes up for renewal next summer.

“The FEMPI legislaiton has denied the trade union movement, and the ASTI more than most, the right to normal industrial relations mechanisms. Let’s not be in any doubt that it is an abuse of power, particularly so long after the emergency has passed,” Mr Byrne told the union’s annual convention in Killarney.

ASTI members narrowly rejected a deal in January that might have resolved their pay dispute in pursuit of equal pay for recently-qualified teachers and a separate long-running row over junior cycle reform.

Mr Byrne said it was always agreed with the department up to last summer to keep those issues separate but the union has been told since late last year that nothing would be agreed until everything was agreed.

“This, I’m afraid, made agreement much more difficult and it can only be hoped the department sees sense in their previous enlightened position of keeping the issues separate,” he said.

The union is collecting information from schools on those affected but there are likely to be dozens of teachers who will have to wait at least another year for CIDs, while counterparts in the Teachers’ Union of Ireland are already receiving the benefits.

Mr Byrne said other members are being threatened with reudncancy, but not because there is no work for them or because there is no viable alternative, and not as a money-saving exercise.

“No, just like those currently denied the provisions of the Ward Report, they are under threat of redundancy because they are members of the ASTI,” he said.

“The denial of ASTI members access to an efficient cost-effective redeployment scheme can only be seen as an instrument of coercion or an act of vengeful malice.”

The union will ballot members next month to back industrial action in support of teachers singled out for redundancy.

The numbers who might be selected are unclear, but they might be as few as a handful as schools which run over-quota due to falling student numbers might not need to let teachers go if others retire or take career breaks.

CASE STUDY: Teachers with full-time work hit by mortgage deposit trap

Even teachers on old salary scales and with full-time work are struggling with their partners to meet strict deposit requirements to buy their own homes, a secondary teacher has said.

Seán Fox began his career just before the cuts to salaries and allowances affecting those who started teaching in 2011. But even with combined salaries of around €80,000, the 33-year-old Dubliner and his nurse partner, Mairéad, are unable to save for the €30,000 minimum deposit they would have to put up for a mortgage.

Sean Fox from Finglas and his partner Mairéad, a nurse, have combined salaries of about €80,000 but cannot save enough for a deposit under Central Bank rules. Picture: Don MacMonagle

With three children, the eldest soon to begin school, the family pays about €1,400 a month in rent in Finglas.

It is where Seán grew up, and where he also works as a history and English teacher in Beneavin College, but suitable houses in the €300,000 price range he said they could afford would require them to move to north Co Dublin.

“It’s ironic that the mortgage we’d need would be the same, or even a bit lower, than what we’re paying in rent. But the mortgage rules mean we need to have at least €30,000 and it’s impossible to save anything like that with our costs,” he said.

With childcare costs close to €1,000 a month, Seán says banks reduce the amount they are willing to lend a family with three kids.

But he is also grateful that finally securing a contract of indefinite duration (CID) with full-time hours last year meant the couple could at least apply for mortgages.

“Before that, without permanent work, they wouldn’t even look at you,” he said.

Seán is conscious of the difficulties facing more recently qualified teachers, whose salary scales were cut by 10% if they began working from the start of 2011, and who also lost some allowances for qualifications which are paid to their longer-serving counterparts.

“Even with my partner working for at least 12 years, me on the old pay scale, and with a full-time CID, we’re still struggling,” he said.

He believes grants for new builds are only encouraging developers to push up the cost of homes being relied on to increase the supply in a tightened housing market.

Although he said some people will think it will generate a “housing bubble”, Seán suggested easing the deposit requirements or some kind of Government deposit subsidy for first- time buyers might be a better solution.