Secretary and caretaker strike will disrupt schools but we deserve equality

School secretaries and caretakers are rallying in a bid to end decades of inequality and secure access to a pension scheme

Noreen O'Callaghan: Along with my 2,600 school secretary and caretaker colleagues, I’ll be taking indefinite strike action as we continue to push for inclusion in the single public service pension scheme. Picture: Eddie O'Hare

I’ve worked as a school secretary at Watergrasshill National School since 2001. I love my job. I love our school, composed of a wonderful staff of teachers and SNAs. Every day of term, we open the doors to 400 pupils from junior infants to 6th class, plus two ASD classes, all bursting with enthusiasm, keeping us all on our toes, while their parents play a crucial role in our wonderful school community.

Everybody knows one another and we all take pride in the work we do, each of us helping to create a safe and stimulating environment for learning and play. Today, I will be doing something I’ve never done before. I’ll be going on indefinite strike.

How did it come to this?

Along with my 2,600 school secretary and caretaker colleagues, who are all members of Fórsa trade union, I’ll be taking indefinite strike action as we continue to push for inclusion in the single public service pension scheme for school secretaries and caretakers.

New students enjoying their first day at St Mary's Central School, Enniskeane, Co Cork, with teaching assistant Noreen O'Sullivan and teacher Sarah Jane Cronin. Picture: Andy Gibson

Before the summer break, I spoke with my very supportive school principal about the strike action we’ve planned. We both acknowledged the challenges likely to emerge. The first week of term is always a period of frenetic activity. 

While we’ve spent the last days of the summer break getting the school ready, it is only when the children arrive on the first day of term that a mountain of work presents itself.

This includes everything from the paperwork for the new intake of pupils, calming words of reassurance to anxious kids (and parents), lesson plans, new books, new faces and a deep breath as we pace ourselves for the term ahead. 

While it’s all a bit frantic, everyone understands their role and we are, at this stage, a well-oiled machine. My colleagues rightly take pride in that, and we love our work.

This year will be different. I will not be undertaking any of the work I usually do in the first week of term.

Instead, I’ll be grabbing a placard, getting an early bus to Dublin and standing with my Fórsa colleagues outside Government Buildings sending a message to the highest-ranking civil servants that I’m only asking for something they already have. 

Noreen O'Callaghan: 'Those of us outside the ETBs could be found, in some rare instances, earning less than the minimum wage, or indeed nothing at all if the school’s boiler broke down during the wintertime and the funds had to be diverted.'

Specifically, access to a pension scheme, and full public service employment status. Just like the teachers and SNAs I work alongside.

For decades, women like me, and it was almost always women, were working at the heart of the school community, on terms and conditions set by individual boards of management, funded by the ‘ancillary’ grant awarded to the school. 

Our school secretary colleagues employed by the Education & Training Boards (or ETBs, formerly VEC schools) enjoy full pension and public service employment status.

Those of us outside the ETBs could be found, in some rare instances, earning less than the minimum wage, or indeed nothing at all if the school’s boiler broke down during the wintertime and the funds had to be diverted.

We organised ourselves. We joined a union, and started having conversations with school secretaries and caretakers, who recognised the potential for a breakthrough by working together. Each of us had felt a bit isolated, but joining a union, and becoming part of a campaign for pay fairness and pension justice, transformed how we looked at our own circumstances.

In 2023, we finally secured a breakthrough. It had a transformative effect for the vast majority of school secretaries, who finally had access to standardised and centralised payroll for the first time in their careers.

But many of those who had fought for this breakthrough still faced retirement with no pension. A good number of them have since retired, and those of us leading this phase of the campaign have those colleagues very much at the front of our thoughts as we get ready to go on strike.

Throughout our campaign, we have not found a single political representative who can explain why teachers and SNAs in my school are given access to the pension scheme, yet myself as a secretary, and our caretaker, are denied access. 

Despite being lauded as the "vascular system" of the school community, we’re the only members of the school community not deemed to be deserving of a pension in our retirement.

Today, we rally in Dublin, and tomorrow around the country. From Monday, we’ll be on the picket lines at schools. It’ll be disruptive to my school community, but staff and parents have been very supportive, and for the most part understand what it is that we are trying to achieve. 

If we prevail— nobody can underestimate the determination of my school secretary and caretaker colleagues — we’ll be drawing a line under decades of employment inequality. That’s worth fighting for.