Unions join forces on pay negotiations
The four main teacher unions have devised a joint approach ahead of next month’s decision by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions on whether to enter pay talks.
One of the seven points on which they have reached agreement, in a position paper seen by the Irish Examiner, is that the flexibility and change provisions of the existing deal Towards 2016 be sufficient to warrant any future salary increases.
But this was strongly rejected yesterday by Education Minister Mary Hanafin, who said it would be shortsighted of unions to break a partnership system that has served the country well for two decades.
“It’s not as if they were suddenly asked to work 300 days a year.
“The length of the school year stayed the same, it’s still 167 at second level or 183 days for primary schools,” she said.
“Is it too much to ask the profession to put a mechanism in place to get rid of people who underperform at their job. There is not a parent in the country who doesn’t believe there’s at least one teacher somewhere who isn’t performing,” the minister said.
This system is being reviewed under Towards 2016, along with measures to redeploy surplus staff to other schools, with agreement previously reached on moving parent teacher meetings outside school hours to suit families.
But union leaders stood firm on the issue yesterday and said members in schools and colleges have given enough in recent years for very little reward.
“More and more things are being added to the teacher’s duties, but there are the same number of hours in the week and the worry is that quality of teaching will suffer,” said TUI general secretary Peter MacMenamin.
At the Association of Secondary Teachers’ Ireland convention in Killarney, general secretary John White said the union has no intention of giving further bureaucratic productivity concessions.
“Teachers have already been in the vanguard of real reform to provide a quality education and they have had enough bureaucratic burdens on schools, involving endless paper trails which detract them from their real work,” he said.
The message from the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation congress was no different, with general secretary John Carr calling for a modernisation pause instead of a pay pause. “We have enough modernisation in the first phase of Towards 2016, the minister should let us properly implement the myriad of changes impacting on primary education,” he said.
Along with the Irish Federation of University Teachers, these unions represent about one in 10 members of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions affiliates, and are also demanding the next pay deal be no longer than two years, and offer rises significantly above inflation.
They will also insist that any increases agreed with the Government be the subject of a review within that timeframe if cost-of-living increases pass out those rises.
