‘Time for Government to pay debt’ to teachers

Teacher unions have welcomed the highlighting of unequal pay by Mary Mitchell O’Connor, even if her view is not supported by others at Cabinet.

The union, to which the higher education minister was affiliated, said teachers have suffered most because of the €500m saved by taxpayers since pay for new entrants to the public service was cut from 2011.

Of the largest teachers’ union, more than 7,000 of the 36,000 Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (INTO) members in the Republic are paid less than longer-serving colleagues at the same stage in their careers.

As schools were the only part of the public sector permitted to hire in large numbers during the worst years of the recession, teachers make up a major proportion of those hit with the 10% cut to salary scales for post-2011 public service entrants. The loss of allowances for qualifications also meant teachers’ pay was more disproportionately affected.

“These newer teachers have probably contributed hundreds of millions of euro to the economic recovery which is now in place, and it’s time for the Government to pay the debt owed to them,” said INTO assistant general secretary Peter Mullan.

INTO members voted by 89% to 11% last month to reject the public service pay deal provisionally agreed by public sector unions with the Government earlier in the summer. The result was largely down to the lack of any timeline for the full removal of pay disparity, despite some recent narrowing of the gap in a deal with the Department of Education.

Both other teachers’ unions have yet to ballot, although the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI) 180-member central executive council could reject the deal without a full vote of its 18,000 members if a two-thirds majority wish to do so at a meeting on September 9. Otherwise, it would have to ballot the entire membership, but the smaller ASTI standing committee is calling for any such vote to come with a recommendation for rejection.

Any ASTI ballot would not be completed ahead of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions’ public services committee meeting on September 18, but the Teachers’ Union of Ireland (TUI) will know the views of members by then. Its members in second-level, further education and institutes of technology will get ballot papers on the deal next Monday with a strong recommendation from its executive to reject and voting closed on September 14.

TUI president Joanne Irwin welcomed Ms Mitchell O’Connor’s comments on equal work for equal pay.

“With many schools struggling to attract teachers for an increasing number of subjects due to more lucrative options in other employments, the process of full pay equalisation requires urgent acceleration,” she said.