Teachers must address the real benchmark – it’s the hourly rate
Firstly, the rate itself, 37 per hour. The Department of Education defines teachers’ work for salary purposes on the basis of a 22-hour week in the classroom.
A crude method, since it fails to recognise all the additional work done outside the classroom.
However, this is their method. Importantly, it allows individual teachers to calculate their hourly rate of pay.
The annual gross salary, say ‘A,’ divided by the cumulative weekly total in hours (approx = A/(34 x 22)) is the basic professional rate.
For all teachers this is significantly above 37 per hour. A new pay deal requiring teachers to do additional work which extends their working day and week must match or exceed this rate.
This is the real benchmark.
It cannot be in teachers’ long or short-term interests to undersell their basic professional rate. No other professional group would, so why should teachers?
Secondly, the deal on offer is not to be passed on to retired teachers. For the first time, serving teachers are to be asked to break parity with retired teachers, the very same people who did this work for free all their lives.
The Government pay policy is to reduce their fiscal commitment to pensioners and pensions.
In failing to secure a deal which properly protects retired colleagues, teachers may just be damaging their own futures. On both counts the deal requires renegotiation.
Christy Maginn, 3, Scotia,
De Vesci Court,
The Slopes,
Monkstown,
Co Dublin.
