Schools at risk of industrial action over row
While the move to stop providing the extra 33 hours a year may require a ballot of the full 18,000 members of the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland, delegates at the union’s convention said the time is used unproductively.
“Teachers are sitting through hours and hours of meetings about meetings that are a pure waste of time. And all to bail out banks and bondholders who brought this country to its knees,” said Sinead Corkery, a Dublin South Central member of ASTI central executive council.
Noel Buckley, a Tipperary representative on the council, said the extra hours that teachers committed to doing under the 2010 Croke Park agreement put a dampener on all the activities they do outside school time which are “the gold-card value of the Irish education system.”
“Croke Park hours suit management but teachers didn’t even have their point of view taken. When teachers said they were going on a two-day professional development and could it be counted towards their 33 Croke Park hours, they were told no,” he said.
There were warnings that some principals are already planning meetings to fulfil some of the extra hours when teachers return to school in August, despite the the Haddington Road Agreement (HRA) — which replaced Croke Park — lapsing at the end of June.
The motion passed unanimously by almost 400 delegates said members should be directed to cease fulfilling the 33 hours when the HRA is completed. But a ballot would be required for this to happen as ASTI general secretary Kieran Christie said their legal advice was that such action would come under the legal definition of industrial action.
The same advice applied to a separate proposal that members also be directed to cease supervision and substitution work currently done by the vast majority of secondary teachers, again once the HRA expires. But the motion was rejected despite the suggestion that withdrawing the work could be a bargaining tool in future negotiations.
Breda Lynch, a standing committee member from Dublin South Central, said the proposal reflected teachers’ anger and dismay about how their contracts had been changed in relation to the work.
The resolution of a past ASTI dispute secured extra payment for teachers who agreed to do 37 hours of such duties each year. But as part of the HRA, the annual €1,500 payment was withdrawn and the work became compulsory for those who signed up to do it, while a minority who did not do the work had that amount deducted from their salaries.
Under the Lansdowne Road Agreement, which was rejected last year by the ASTI, an additional €1,592 a year would have been due to teachers in two instalments, the first of which was to have taken effect next September.
