The main second-level teachers' union is set to postpone industrial action, including disruption to the Leaving Cert, until the next school year. The decision will be confirmed at a meeting today of the executive of the Association of Secondary Teachers, Ireland (ASTI). The association is meeting in Dublin to discuss the next phase of its campaign for a 30 per cent pay increase.
The ASTI, which has been hit by an internal dispute over pay strategy, is expected to postpone any industrial action until the new school year in September.
The Government is expected to offer the union formally the terms of the Partnership for Prosperity and Fairness (PPF) at a meeting on April 11th. Today's meeting will consider what the union should do when this offer is put to it.
At the meeting, Mr Charlie Lennon, the ASTI general secretary, may push for a ballot on the PPF. However, some executive members, including the president, Ms Bernadine O'Sullivan, believe that next month's ASTI annual conference should decide the union's next move.
If ASTI members reject the PPF in a national ballot they will then be balloted on industrial action, and possibly on the form this should take.
The ASTI finds itself isolated from other main teaching unions. Members of the Irish National Teachers' Organisation voted narrowly for the PPF (51 per cent to 49 per cent). The Teachers' Union of Ireland rejected the deal but has agreed to be bound by the wishes of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, which endorsed the agreement yesterday.
Some of the ASTI's full-time leadership would like to see the union return to the ICTU. This possibility may be discussed with the ICTU general secretary, Mr Peter Cassells.
Some within the ASTI hope the current militancy will blow itself out over the summer. Ms O'Sullivan's one-year term as president ends in August, although she will remain an important figure on the executive.
Some members of the ASTI's full-time leadership are interested in pursuing the union's pay claim through the new "benchmarking" mechanism in the PPF, which links public service pay to that in the private sector.
A paper tabled by Ms O'Sullivan recently raised the possibility of disrupting the Leaving Cert exams in 2001 but there is some way to go before a decision on such a drastic move would have to be taken.
If there is industrial action over pay this autumn, it is likely to involve first withdrawal of co-operation from some Department of Education programmes and/or one or two days of industrial action.
The TUI is also meeting today. Its leadership wants the PPF benchmarking body to come into operation quickly. Its president, Mr Joe Carolan, said yesterday that it wanted to agree a strategy with the other teaching unions to ensure that gains were made under the benchmarking process.