Strikes: Over 500 schools set to shut on Monday

More than 500 schools will almost certainly close from Monday after the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI) leadership decided its latest industrial action would go ahead.

Around 250,000 students will have no classes and nearly 400 schools could be closed indefinitely as they have no contingency in place because of restrictions put in place by the union that do not allow principals to manage temporary supervisors who might be hired in.

Although talks are to take place again today with the Department of Education, the ASTI’s 23-member standing committee last night affirmed the plans for their 17,500 members to stop doing supervision and substitution work on return from the mid-term break. Members have been told to turn up for their classes as usual on Monday, claiming they are available for teaching duties, but not for supervision and substitution.

However, school boards’ concerns over student safety during lunch breaks or before and after school, when teachers normally supervise them, has forced them to advise parents this week to keep children at home unless the dispute has been resolved.

ASTI president Ed Byrne said last night that the union will continue to engage with the department and work to avert the industrial action next week. However, he said expecting members to undertake supervision and substitution work for no pay while their colleagues in other teacher unions receive a payment is unacceptable.

The payment he referred to is the addition of €796 from this school year and the same amount in a year’s time under a 2013 arrangement as part of the Haddington Road Agreement to restore an allowance previously paid to teachers for this work.

Education Minister Richard Bruton ordered that the payment be withheld from ASTI members because they have stopped working the 33 extra ‘Croke Park’ hours, work which the union argues they are no longer obliged to do.

Mr Byrne said it was always inevitable that deducting pay from ASTI members for supervision and substitution work would lead to a withdrawal from this work.

“We made this clear to the department as early as July of this year. Teachers received a commitment under the Haddington Road agreement that his money would be paid,” said Mr Byrne. “We delivered on all aspects of the Haddington Road Agreement, The department’s decision to pursue this course of action is extremely problematic in terms of resolving this dispute.”

A Department of Education spokesperson said that supervision and substitution have been a core part of teachers’ duties for several years.

Under 2013 and 2015 financial emergency provisions law, any teacher not covered by the Lansdowne Road Agreement does not receive the two €796 increases. The ASTI rejected the Lansdowne Road deal last year but the department has said its pay and other benefits were available to the union’s members if it had not “repudiated” that agreement by refusing to work the Croke Park hours.

Even if the ASTI should cancel or defer its supervision and substitution withdrawal, those 500-plus second-level schools that are staffed entirely or fully by the union’s members face a second one-day strike over equal pay for lower-paid teachers on Tuesday.

The first of seven strikes on this issue took place nine days ago, and five more after Tuesday are planned up to Wednesday, December 7.

Mr Bruton has refused publicly to say that anything is available to the ASTI’s recently hired members to address the issue of pay parity, beyond the deal with the INTO and TUI in September that will see those employed as teachers on post-2011 salary scales gain up to 22%.

Mr Bruton is expected to hear concerns from parents about the likely impact on students at today’s annual conference of the National Parents’ Council Post Primary.