Teacher protest - Society will pay over unfair cuts

The protest rally by about 2,000 teachers outside Leinster House yesterday raises many issues. The three main teacher unions — the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation, the Association of Secondary Teachers of Ireland, and the Teachers’ Union of Ireland — were remonstrating against educational cuts.

They were not protesting about cuts in the salaries of teachers, Pat King, the general secretary of the ASTI, stressed to RTÉ. The rally was a figurative shot across the bows of the Government ahead of the budget.

The INTO president, Anne Fay, told the gathering there was no room for more cuts in primary education. It is already enduring increases in class sizes and the elimination of supports for students.

In the past decade teachers enjoyed a 20% increase in salary, which was one of the highest in the countries of the European Commission. While teachers in this country are now being hit by severe cuts, those are not as bad as in Greece, Spain, Portugal, or Slovenia. In Greece, teachers have suffered a 30% pay cut while their Christmas and Easter bonuses have been eliminated.

Those who began teaching in this country since the beginning of February are reportedly earning 27% less than those hired before 2011. There is even a significant pay differential between those hired in January and their colleagues hired in February of this year.

“It’s not conscionable or fair that people doing the same job are on different pay rates and it simply has to be and will be put right,” INTO deputy general secretary Noel Ward recently told newly qualified teachers in Cork. “The only question is when and how.”

The unions are, of course, protesting against the inequities of the cuts, but their cries sound hollow, because at the same time they are going along with the cuts in order to protect Croke Park Agreement, which enshrines the conditions of those hired before 2011.

Education Minister Ruairi Quinn has warned that the rising number of pupils in the next three years will necessitate 3,000 more primary and secondary teachers, if the present pupil-teacher ratios are to be maintained. But he emphasised that he will have to impose a €77m in savings this year.

Cuts are necessary, but surely they should be equitable and fair. Some cuts have been in the area of allowances. These might be more readily acceptable if politicians were rectifying the anomalies in their own allowances by introducing a proper system of vouched expenses.

Yet even that will not justify the new pay differential among teachers, because this constitutes institutionalised discrimination. It is not the proper way forward. Hard decisions are being postponed by picking on the more vulnerable. Permitting a gross disparity between the wages of workers doing the same job is just a form of divide and rule, and society will ultimately have to pay a high price for sanctioning such unfairness.