'Inequitable' response to crisis criticised

ASSOCIATION OF SECONDARY TEACHERS IRELAND: THE GOVERNMENT’S response to the economic crisis has been “inequitable and grossly…

ASSOCIATION OF SECONDARY TEACHERS IRELAND:THE GOVERNMENT'S response to the economic crisis has been "inequitable and grossly unfair", the president of the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI) Joe Moran said yesterday.

But he warned that the strategic considerations of any rejection or acceptance of the public service agreement must be understood fully by every union member.

In his address to the ASTI annual convention in the Radisson Hotel in Galway last night, Mr Moran said that efforts by unions at conciliation and arbitration had been ignored as two pay cuts, one under the guise of the pensions levy, were imposed through legislation.

Mr Moran had harsh words for media commentators who, he said, had used the McCarthy report in a “disgraceful campaign of vilification against public servants to foster a spurious division between private and public sector workers”.

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ASTI delegates will today debate an emergency motion recommending rejection of the proposed pay agreement.

The motion states the “total and vehement opposition” to the deal, and it calls on the ASTI central executive committee to recommend the rejection of the agreement in a ballot of members.

Delegates at the ASTI convention cannot vote to ballot members of the union. That decision falls to the 180-strong executive, which will meet on Friday.

The committee will decide either to ballot members on the agreement with or without a recommendation, or with a two-thirds majority, to reject the deal altogether.

Speaking about the public sector pay deal, Mr Moran said that some of the agreement proposals seem “regressive and inadequate”. He said the scope of the contract review was too vague. However, he urged delegates to consider the industrial action implications “implicit in a rejection scenario”.

Entry into the career of post-primary teaching has long been a concern of the union and it was tackled again by Mr Moran in his speech. A recent OECD report showed that Ireland had the highest proportion of part-time and temporary teaching contracts of the countries surveyed.

Mr Moran expressed concern at the fact that new teachers would often be on a contract offering less than full-time hours and therefore working on partial pay. “The new teacher should not be a mere convenience to do residual hours in the system.”

Referring to a Teaching Council survey on public attitudes to the profession, Mr Moran said: “Teachers are trusted, the complexity of teaching and the skill levels required are understood . . . At a time when teachers and other public servants are getting the ‘hairdryer treatment’ in some media commentary, the survey results were reassuring.”

Acknowledging the importance of education to the future of Ireland’s economy, Mr Moran warned that subjects such as physics and chemistry were being lost to schools because of the reduction in pupil-teacher ratio. He cautioned against educational debate being driven by the needs of industry alone, although he emphasised that “the involvement of industry and business in education is welcome”.

Although Minister for Education and Skills Mary Coughlan was not invited to the ASTI convention this year – her predecessor Batt O’Keeffe had his invitation withdrawn because of pay and pension cuts – Mr Moran said that the ASTI had met the Minister last Thursday and wished her “every success in this vital department at this time”.