‘ASTI members bullied into acceptance of Haddington Road’

The Government has been accused by a union leader of replacing democracy with dictatorship by using the law to force public servants into reduced pay and conditions.

But Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland general secretary Pat King warned unions will stand together to fight pay claims.

He told 500 members at ASTI’s annual convention the last two governments tore up the rule book on using industrial relations law to reach agreement on public service pay. Instead, he said, they used financial emergency legislation to introduce the public service pension levy, and cuts to pay and pensions.

“And most notoriously for ASTI in 2013, they used it to cut pay and threatened to impose extra working hours and worsen conditions of our members during the Haddington Road dispute,” he said.

“[Financial emergency] legislation changed the balance that normally applies in a free democracy. It replaced normal negotiation with dictatorship by government,” Mr King said.

He said that by removing any element of fairness and trust from the negotiating forum, there was industrial relations by dictat and by blackmail in the negotiation of last year’s Haddington Road Agreement.

“Different threats were used to intimidate different groups. Local authority workers were told that their jobs would be outsourced if they didn’t sign up, prison officers were told that the army would do their jobs for them, and teachers were threatened with redundancies for the first time in 30 years,” he said.

“Our members were coerced and bullied into acceptance of Haddington Road. They were threatened with scores of redundancies and more, the common basic pay salary scale for teachers was to be broken and they were to suffer losses all the way to retirement and beyond. We will not forget this,” he said.

He told members the public service committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions has said pay claims will be lodged if there is sustained and substantial improvement in the public finances.

“We will have learned from our experiences, particularly that a united trade union movement, a united group of public service unions, a united group of teacher unions are far, far more likely to negotiate successfully than one union acting alone,” he said.