Tale of three teachers on same duties despite huge pay gap

The plight of recently qualified teachers on a different range of reduced pay scales to those of longer-serving colleagues was highlighted by delegates at the ASTI convention.

Sinead Corkery, a Dublin South Central representative on the union’s central executive, said: “We cannot put our students first when we put our teachers last”.

She put forward the case of three French teachers in a school, who all started within three years of each other, between the time before 2011 changes and after February 2012.

“When these three teachers are sitting down in a subject department meeting at 5pm on a cold December evening, having taught from 9am to 4pm that day, they are all doing the same duties, working the same hours, all have the same responsibilities and all are professionals, yet all three have very different rates of pay. Where is the equality here? Surely under the employment equality acts this represents discrimination in its purest form?” she said.

Ms Corkery added that the OECD has said Ireland is getting back on its feet and now is the perfect time to make certain there is equal pay for equal work and restore the pre-2011 common basic scale for all teachers.

ASTI standing committee member Jerry McCarthy, representing the union’s Cork South and Carbery branches region, said somebody who began teaching in September 2010 would have had a starting salary, when qualifications allowances were included, almost €9,000 more than what is paid to someone who entered the profession three years later, he said.

“It’s incredible the Government took the opportunity of austerity to make this appalling cut to our newly qualified members.”

Although some restoration of the differences were made for some groups of recent entrants to teaching under the Haddington Road Agreement, making up around €2,000 to €3,000 in some cases, ASTI officials are continuing to campaign for equalisation.

Kilkenny delegate Michael Stokes said: “A [teacher who started in] January 2013 is likely to end up with a pension of not much more than half of a January 2012 teacher. It beggars belief that a teacher on a yellow-pack pension would be paying a pension levy on that yellow-pack pension,” he said.