Youngest teachers to lose most in pay vote

Younger teachers will be the biggest losers if their union votes for a second time to reject the Haddington Road Agreement, according to Department of Education figures.

A range of examples of how their salaries would be affected if they either accept or vote against the public service pay deal shows that an Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI) member who started working last year would be earning €700 a month less than another teacher if the union turns down the HRA.

Its ballot of 16,000 members continues until Dec 18 but the union executive is recommending a no vote, in what would be a repeat of the result in September when it was rejected by almost two-to-one after a 55% turnout.

A table drawn up by the Department of Education shows that total earnings between 2014 and 2020 would be €47,065 less for an ASTI -member new entrant to the profession in 2012 than for someone in the Teachers’ Union of Ireland with the same experience.

The TUI narrowly accepted the deal and so its members are entitled to a slightly higher salary scale if they started teaching since 2011, and have had increments paid for this year in advance of a series of increment delays still to kick in under the deal accepted by all public service unions except the ASTI.

The accumulation of various measures, including the promised restoration of pay cuts to teachers earning over €65,000 in a few years’ time if signed up to the deal, would see the following differences between ASTI and TUI members if the larger union turns down Haddington Road:

- Teacher who started working in 2012: €206 a month next February, €700 a month at end of 2020;

- Teacher who started working in 2011: €161 a month in Feb 2014, €640 a month in 2020;

- Teacher with seven years’ experience: €134 a month in Feb 2014, €339 a month in 2020;

- Assistant principal at top of salary scale (more than 20 years’ experience): €147 a month in Feb 2014, €472 a month in 2020.

TUI members must now do supervision and substitution (S&S) work without pay, in return for salary increases matching the previous €1,700-a-year payment for those duties in two instalments in 2016 and 2017 as a consequence of accepting the HRA. But while ASTI members are in line to be paid for S&S this term if they were already signed up for it on a paid basis, the Government decided this week that they too will have to do it on an unpaid compulsory basis from mid-January, a move under the ‘FEMPI’ financial emergency legislation that looks set to intensify the dispute if the ASTI ballot returns a no vote.

“We have already said we would have to respond to that type of action on the part of the Government and it will be up to our standing committee to consider that issue after the ballot result is known,” said an ASTI spokesperson.

She said information comparing pay implications under the HRA and Government-imposed changes to conditions has already been made available to members, as have the risks of compulsory redundancies and loss of supervision payments, all highlighted by Education Minister Ruairi Quinn or his officials over the past week.

The union’s members are already engaged in action that means non-participation in after-school meetings and no attendance at training for the revised junior cycle programme. The dispute is affecting around 500 of the country’s 730 second-level schools.