School leaders plead for solution as row threatens school closures

School leaders have urged a resolution of the dispute that threatens to close schools within weeks as Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI) industrial action looms. The union’s standing committee will decide today what to do with the mandate received from 75% of members who voted four-to-one in favour of action on two issues.

As well as the threat of school closures if ASTI’s 18,000 members stop doing supervision and substitution before plans to hire replacement staff are finalised, which could take seven weeks, strike days are also likely in an effort to get all teachers hired after 2011 on equal pay with longer- serving colleagues.

Clive Byrne, president of the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland, said a positive atmosphere must be maintained in staff rooms and schools at all times.

“We are confident that this issue will be resolved and we are asking that all efforts are made to bring the matter to a satisfactory conclusion without delay,” he said.

Fianna Fáil education spokesperson Thomas Byrne said the Education Minister Richard Bruton needs to move fast to ensure the prospect of prolonged industrial action in schools is avoided and does not close schools.

ASTI president Ed Byrne said the union has been in talks with the department, but officials are not negotiating and continue to repeat the mantra the Lansdowne Road Agreement was the only way to address concerns on pay and conditions.

The ASTI rejected the agreement but the TUI and INTO have accepted it, leading to recent agreements with the department on part-restoration of pay gaps for newer entrants, and staggered pay increases to match the amounts withdrawn from teachers for the supervision and substitution work that ASTI members are set to stop doing. Mr Byrne told the Irish Examiner there was no pathway in the deal with other unions for newly-qualified teachers to be given equal pay for equal work, which was the basis on which his members were balloted for industrial action.

He said the calling of strikes after the mandate from members on this issue was also likely to happen very soon. He said the intervention of a third party to mediate the dispute might help find a resolution.

“In recent weeks, we’ve seen the solving of two industrial relations problems, at Dublin Bus and the Luas drivers, because both sides met without pre-conditions and were able to come up with a solution,” he said.

Mr Byrne said the union would not be acceding to the minister’s call for a derogation, for some ASTI members, from industrial action on junior cycle reform. Unless that separate dispute is resolved, students of English teachers who are in the union will lose out on up to 10% of marks because they will not be able to write up classroom-based assessments that ASTI members are banned from undertaking as part of their campaign.