ASTI says Richard Bruton’s stance is a serious escalation

The minister for education has said it will be “very difficult” to keep schools open next month when 18,000 ASTI members stop taking part in supervision and substitution duties.

His comments will ramp up fears about the impact on pupils of the planned industrial action by the teachers union as ASTI schools were due to close for seven days of strike action starting on Thursday, October 27.

Meanwhile, the ASTI has strongly rejected any need to close schools or to dock pay when its members stop taking part in substitution and supervision in November describing a controversial statement by the minister over the weekend as “a very serious escalation”.

The union had accepted they would be docked pay during the seven days of all-out strike —but not once they stopped performing substitution and supervision duties.

In the statement, the minister, Richard Bruton, stated he will dock teachers pay if schools are unable to open because of the union’s refusal to exempt principals from the substitution and supervision action.

Mr Bruton said without principals on hand to co-ordinate, it will be impossible for schools to put the department’s contingency plans for substitution and supervision in place and therefore they will have to close schools for health and safety reasons.

“It will be very difficult, the principal is the CEO, if the CEO isn’t instructing how they are to be deployed or what they are to do or to ensure that the children are safe in those times, it will be very difficult,” the minister said on RTÉ radio.

The department had requested parents to act as supervisors for a fee of €38 per day. The m admitted that it will difficult to have such parents vetted before the start of November when the ASTI stop taking part in substitution and supervision duties.

ASTI secretary general Ed Byrne said the “threat to dock ASTI members pay on these supervision and substitution days” is “a most serious development in this dispute”.

“ASTI members will be available to carry out their core teaching and teaching-related duties on days where they withdraw from supervision and substitution work.

"The union formally announced its decision to ballot members on withdrawal from this work on September . Any such development [docking pay] would have to be considered by the ASTI standing committee,” he said.

An ASTI spokeswoman said “it is not up to ASTI principals to implement or co-ordinate contingency plans during an industrial action”.

More than 500 ASTI schools are facing closure since teachers balloted to strike in a long-running row over pay writes. There were two strong votes by members for industrial action about pay equality and teachers’ terms and conditions. ASTI members are due to stop their substitution and supervision work from November 7.

The Department of Education had requested a seven or eight-week delay on any action to allow replacement staff be recruited and Garda-vetted to cover the duties.

The ASTI has rejected the Lansdowne Road Agreement as it wants full restoration of pay to those who began teaching from 2011 or after as this cohort are on lower pay to other teachers doing the same job.

Up to 550 of the country’s 720 second-level schools could be affected, almost 400 of them entirely staffed by ASTI members, and the rest staffed by mixes of ASTI and Teachers’ Union of Ireland (TUI) members.

Around three quarters of ASTI members voted, with 78% support for the ballot to withdraw from supervision work, while 80% favoured action up to strike to seek restoration of equal pay for younger teachers.