Teachers to enter talks as industrial action looms

Talks will take place tomorrow aimed at averting hundreds of second-level schools closing for most of November due to industrial action by teachers.

Department of Education officials are due to meet today with representatives of school boards to consider what options they have to cover substitution and supervision work which 18,000 members of the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI) will stop doing from Monday, November 7.

The union yesterday agreed to accept the invitation to talks with Education Minister Richard Bruton’s officials.

Those discussions will take place tomorrow, when the ASTI and Department of Education were already scheduled to seek resolution to the industrial action by the union’s members over junior cycle reforms.

While the minister last night welcomed the decision by ASTI leadership to meet, tensions may be heightened by department plans to dock pay if schools are forced to close over the supervision and substitution directive.

“In circumstances where schools are forced to close as a result of the withdrawal of teachers from their duties relating to supervision and substitution, teachers who have not made themselves available for these duties will come off payroll,” a spokesperson for Mr Bruton said.

But an ASTI spokesperson said members would remain available for work when these duties are withdrawn.

“We would regard the docking of pay on these days as a very serious development which would be considered by ASTI standing committee,” she said.

In a signal of how serious the tense industrial relations situation is being taken, Mr Bruton is to shorten his participation in a trade mission leaving for China tonight.

He is now due back early on Friday morning, instead of next Tuesday as originally scheduled, from the trip at which 19 Irish third-level colleges are being represented.

The ASTI gave just over three weeks’ notice when it announced the withdrawal of supervision and substitution last Friday, saying the department had sufficient warning of the potential disruption to make contingency arrangements.

John Curtis, general secretary of the Joint Managerial Body (JMB) which represents 375 schools entirely staffed by ASTI members, urged the sides to find a resolution urgently as closures are inevitable because of the time needed to have replacement supervision personnel Garda-vetted.

It could take eight weeks to have those staff in place, which could see JMB and more than 100 other schools which are partly staffed by ASTI members forced to close until early December, due to health and safety issues arising from an absence of supervision.

The first of seven strike days planned by the union in its campaign for full pay parity for younger teachers is scheduled for next Thursday week, October 27, and six more are pencilled in up to and including December 7.