INTO advises teachers to accept revised pay proposal
The Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (INTO) has made the recommendation in advance of balloting its 32,000 members on the proposals hammered out at the Labour Relations Commission (LRC).
The union’s executive agreed the proposals in principle with the Government on Tuesday.
Its recommendation to accept is the latest step towards a deal designed to save the State €300m from the public purse. INTO general secretary Sheila Nunan said the recommendation to accept was “not an endorsement but an opinion that it is the better of two alternatives”.
It comes as the leaderships of the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland and Teachers’ Union of Ireland meet today to consider if the deal is worth putting to their members, and whether to recommend acceptance or rejection.
All three unions, along with the Irish Federation of University Teachers, rejected the original Croke Park II proposals that emerged in February, but were the last sector to discuss an alternative plan at the LRC in talks that went into the early hours of Tuesday morning.
Among the concessions specific to teachers are that the withdrawal of a pensionable allowance for supervision work will be slightly redressed by a €650 increase in pay in 2016 and again in 2017. Improved salary scales for newly- qualified teachers has been retained from the original proposal.
The Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) which represents the majority of doctors working in Ireland, is likely to witness its own national council take part in a similar discussion on the merits or not of the deal this afternoon.
This will be followed by talks within the hierarchy of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) and Siptu, among other unions, next week.
Nurses will be asked to work a longer 39-hour week and accept that new graduates will only receive 85% and 90% of standard starting salaries in their first two years of work — a level the INMO has argued is an improvement on previous offers.
The planned deal also calls on doctors earning over €65,000 a year to face a 5.5% to 8% pay cut.
However, new consultants — who the IMO said have already been hit with a 30% cut in salary — will be excluded.
