The pent-up frustration and anger of many teachers was laid bare at yesterday's conference of the main secondary-teachers' union, the Association of Secondary Teachers, Ireland. It was not a pretty sight.
Scores of mostly middle-aged, mostly male delegates took to the rostrum and told how their profession has been systemically run down. For the most part, they were the kind of teachers you could imagine using their own cars to drive a class to a football match or organising a debate in the evening. One spoke of how their profession was in free-fall. Another of how teachers were, to use a running analogy, being lapped up by other professions.
Teachers spoke of people they knew, people they went to college with, for God's sake, who were earning 70 or 80K in IT and engineering. There was the strong sense that teachers were the tribe that has been left behind.
ASTI president Ms Bernadine O'Sullivan is fond of saying her union's demand for a 30 per cent increase is not about this perceived decline in status. It is, she says, all about the pressing need of teachers to earn a decent wage. For all that, the decline in status permeated much of the debate on pay.
A decade ago, teaching was a much-prized, well-paid profession with a cherished level of job security. Today, teachers - as demonstrated by yesterday's Irish Times/MRBI poll - may be highly valued by society, but the demand for places in secondary teaching is in decline. In all, there has been a drop of over 560 applicants for the Higher Diploma in Education. In a recent teenager survey of 10 career options, teaching did not rate for boys and was ranked only seventh by girls.
The ASTI has been in the vanguard of the demand for a hefty pay increase for teachers. Whereas the other teaching unions - the INTO and the TUI - have accepted the 18 per cent raise flowing from the new national pay deal, the ASTI has been more bullish in its approach. The other teaching unions are also content to push for more money under the productivity or "bench-marking" terms of the new pay deal. But the ASTI will have no truck with the bench-marking review body, which will deliver no more money until 2003.
To quell the anger in its ranks, the ASTI wants the 30 per cent - and it wants it now. One speaker was cheered heartily yesterday when he declared: "We need the money, we demand the money and by-gob we will get the money."
All of this places the Government in a catch-22. Should it make any concession to the ASTI, the other teaching unions will protest that they are being punished for supporting the Government's pay policy. If no concession is made there is a real danger next year's Leaving Certificate exams will be disrupted.
In truth, we are still some way from any such disruption. The most likely scenario is that ASTI members will vote in the autumn to withdraw from Department of Education initiatives, possibly in-service training and new curriculum changes. But given the Government's determined opposition to the ASTI demand, this kind of action seems unlikely to wring concessions.
At the conference yesterday there was a clear yearning for tough action and a clear desire among delegates to use the ASTI's ultimate weapon - exam disruption. Ms Catherine Fitzpatrick, a vice-president, said: "We will take any action which is required. We will not rule out any type of industrial action. We mean business. It's payback time."
Predictably, the Minister for Education, Dr Woods, was giving no hint of any concession last night. Privately, some in government believe the departure of Ms O'Sullivan as president in the summer will provide an opportunity to build bridges and to work a compromise. Ms O'Sullivan has pushed the current ASTI pay strategy, often against the wishes of others in the union leadership who favour what they would regard as a more considered approach. Some within the union still believe the ASTI would be better advised to find common cause with the other teaching unions rather than go it alone.
The irony is that the demand for 30 per cent is no longer dissimilar to what the other teaching unions are seeking. Both the INTO and the TUI want increases of over 10 per cent from the bench-marking review on top of the 18 per cent which will begin to flow from the new pay deal from October. The ASTI is, in practical terms, seeking an additional 12 per cent over and above the terms of the national pay deal. The differences between it and the other teaching unions are about strategy and timing.
Before the end of the next school year, and hopefully before next summer's exams, we should know whether the more strident approach of ASTI will pay dividends. The wider question is whether even an increase of 30 per cent will be enough to raise morale and lift the spirits of what would appear to be a demoralised profession.