Secondary school strikes loom over pay dispute

Hundreds of second-level schools face possible strikes later this year, because Education Minister Richard Bruton has said teachers will lose out on pay increases if they stop doing extra work.

He asked the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI) to talk to him about the issues of concern, around which flexibility has been agreed with two other teaching unions.

Having decided in a ballot, finalised last week, to stop doing the 33 hours a year that have been additional since the 2011 Croke Park Agreement, ASTI members face the loss of pay restoration and pay increments that are due to public servants whose unions have signed up to the Lansdowne Road Agreement (LRA), to take effect in July.

The union reiterated last week that it would ballot members for industrial action, up to strike, if the Government moved to worsen their terms and conditions, which would include the delayed pay restoration, as a result of withdrawing from the “Croke Park hours”. But yesterday, the minister said that, having opted out of the LRA, there had to be consequences. He said the agreement provides extra pay, access to increments and, for teachers, increases equivalent to the payment ended for supervision and substitution.

“If ASTI decide to opt out of that, it has consequences. If they proceed, that’s the way it will go,” he told Today with Sean O’Rourke, on RTÉ Radio 1.

The union says the extra hours have been restricted to non-productive meetings and other duties which do not benefit teaching or learning for students. They also argue that they should not have their pay restricted, because the requirement for the extra hours ends with the termination, this summer, of the Haddington Road Agreement.

The Teachers’ Union of Ireland (TUI) executive is recommending that its members accept an agreement, provisionally reached with the Department of Education, that would allow more flexibility in the use of the Croke Park hours in schools.

The deal would also allow the implementation of reforms aimed at improved job security for newer teachers, as well as access to mechanisms that could see part-restoration of allowances that were withdrawn for post-2011 entrants to the profession.

The TUI would effectively be brought inside the terms of the LRA, including the pay restorations, if members decide to agree to the new deal

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