ASTI hold further talks to discuss pay increase

THE Association of Secondary Teachers of Ireland will hold further talks before making any response to the benchmarking offer of a 13% pay increase.

The standing committee of the largest second-level teaching union, in a dispute with the Government for more than two years over its 30% pay claim, met for five hours yesterday.

However, talks will continue today on the matter before officials make any formal statement. Their withdrawal from the benchmarking process and social partnership have left them alienated, and has also led to major disruption for more than 250,000 students.

The union’s ban on their 17,000 members performing supervision and substitution duties will remain in place until the pay claim is resolved, officials said this week, as students prepare for another school year of uncertainty.

This means school managers and principals will have to continue arrangements to bring in outside supervisors to schools with ASTI membership.

The union has signalled that the 37-an-hour deal accepted by the other two teachers unions might be accepted if the pay is made pensionable.

However, it will not confirm this until talks on the subject are completed between the Department of Education, the Teachers Union of Ireland and the Irish National Teachers Organisation.

Those talks began yesterday afternoon and officials from both sides will meet again next Thursday in the hope of finalising technical details.

It had been thought that some INTO members and TUI members at second level might delay their decision on participating in supervision until they had studied those arrangements.

But TUI general secretary Jim Dorney said he hoped members would go ahead with those duties from Monday.

“The lines of contact will be kept open during the weekend but we are quite happy with progress,” he said.

An INTO spokesperson said there was a full and frank exchange between officials on both sides but members should be able to see the results by late next week.

“Our advice to primary teachers is to go back and keep to normal supervision arrangements until this is finalised because we have a duty to provide certain levels of supervision,” the spokesperson said.

A Department of Education spokesperson stressed that next week’s meeting is not a definite date for completion of the discussions because of the complex nature of the matters to be worked out.

“We will meet again next Thursday to discuss the issues raised by the unions,” she said.