New teachers angry at Quinn wages ‘insult’
Problems with the Department of Education payroll system mean teachers who qualified last year have been on incorrect rates since September. They are already subject to salaries and substitution rates lower than those who started in previous years, but are angry they are not even being paid those rates.
Teachers working casual hours or as substitutes are being paid a rate given to unqualified people, meaning they get €115 instead of €159 a day, and others are being paid the lowest point of the old salary scale instead of a revised scale approved in the autumn that took account of new teachers no longer being paid qualifications allowances like their longer-serving counterparts.
The department was unable to respond last week to questions from the Irish Examiner about the numbers affected or amounts owed in arrears. Mr Quinn said last Wednesday that he has asked a firm to audit compliance with agreed pay rates and other employment rights on building works funded by his department.
Teacher Katie Fitzgerald is still paying back a loan for the €9,000 she paid to do a postgraduate teaching degree, from which she graduated last summer. She is glad to have a year’s teaching contract, but is already owed more than €1,600 in arrears.
“It’s insulting enough to have our pay cut below everyone else, but it’s appalling being left on the wrong rate,” said Katie, 25, from Ballinora, Co Cork. “I should be on the first point of the latest scale of €30,700, but instead I’m being paid less than €28,000. It works out around €110 a fortnight of a difference,”
She says loves her learning support teacher job at St Ultan’s National School in Ballyfermot in Dublin, but said the lack of information is as troubling as the financial hardship. On Friday evening, an email from the department said she will receive the arrears in her next pay on May 9, but she isn’t holding her breath.
“It’s one thing for the minister to be checking out other workplaces, but it’s another when he can’t even manage his own payroll system,” she said. “If it’s this bad, it should just be outsourced.”
Irish National Teachers’ Organisation general secretary Sheila Nunan said it was inexcusable and shameful that Mr Quinn last week complained about some builders not paying the correct wages to staff.
“The minister gave us an undertaking in January to have this resolved within two months. It is indefensible that nothing has been done,” said Ms Nunan.
Sinéad Walsh from Knocklyon in Dublin is owed over €2,000 for more than 40 days of substitute work since September.
“If I was working in a small company in 2013 and my employer told me they couldn’t pay me the proper amount because of a software problem, I’d have difficulty accepting that,” she said. “Teachers who qualified last year are getting 10 different rates of pay — it’s disgraceful. One teacher I know had to get a loan from her principal to pay the rent.”
Ms Nunan said teachers owed thousands are clearly not a priority for Mr Quinn, as they cannot get a straight answer as to when they will be put on the right rate or have arrears paid.
“They have been fobbed off, given implausible excuses and ignored,” she said.
