ASTI calls for new pay deal to make up for inflation

ONE of the country’s largest public service unions has called for the renegotiation of the national pay agreement to make up for losses to rising inflation.

The Towards 2016 social partnership deal agreed last year guarantees public servants a 10% pay increase over 27 months, equivalent to 4.4% a year.

But Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI) president Michael Freeley said it is time for the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) to negotiate a new deal as the proposed increases are well below the rate of inflation.

The most recent official figures put the rate of inflation at almost 5%, having averaged 4% for all of 2006.

ICTU as a whole voted in favour of the partnership wage deal, though some of its individual member unions rejected it.

“The situation is much worse when one factors in taxation — 82% of our members and 75% of Teachers Union of Ireland members rejected the agreement, yet we are faced with a situation where others can decide to worsen our conditions of employment,” Mr Freeley said.

“This is completely unacceptable and should never happen again,” he told delegates at the ASTI annual convention yesterday.

His comments come just a year after the ASTI renewed its affiliation to ICTU, after withdrawing from membership during its pay dispute in 2000.

The convention’s 500 delegates unanimously backed a motion yesterday, calling for ICTU to renegotiate the pay terms of Towards 2016 because of the significant increase in the cost of living felt by all workers since its adoption last September.

ICTU general secretary David Begg said he will be raising the issue of inflation at a meeting with Taoiseach Bertie Ahern next week. However, he is wary about renegotiating the deal as talks on the next round of pay increases are to begin next autumn and inflation is predicted to begin falling in the middle of this year.

However, Education Minister Mary Hanafin warned that there was no prospect of the deal being renegotiated by the Government.

“The whole agreement process has stood the country very well over the last number of years, ensuring stability in industrial relations,” she said.

“Pay can be dealt with in the context of benchmarking, which will be dealt with in the second part of this year,” Ms Hanafin said.

ASTI standing committee member Brendan Broderick said it was absurd that workers should be providing modernisation and flexibility in return for an effective wage cut, when the economy is continuing to grow.

Philip Irwin, also a standing committee member from Dublin, said research last year shows young teachers are already finding it impossible to afford to buy homes near their schools.