'It's just not professional. I have a job. I'm lucky to have a job'

Teachers’ unions made headlines this week responding to cuts. What are the views of workaday teachers?

PICTURES OF a shaken Mary Coughlan fleeing the Inismór Suite of the West County Hotel in Ennis gave the impression of a teacher union movement on the rampage this week. Pay cuts, staff cuts and haircuts had bloodied the water, and the delegates went in for the kill.

Truth be told, some union members were angry in the good times, too. For some in the union movement, anger is a policy. Unions attract the most passionate advocates for workers’ rights and within those ranks there are always extreme elements.

There is the zealot who deliberately misspells placards in order to get photographed (the papers love an illiterate teacher). Then there’s the malcontent who criticises the media mercilessly, while deliberately spiking their own contributions with irresistibly quotable quotes that they know will set press pens wagging.

The jostling of the Minister at the TUI conference in Ennis was the work of three teachers, at most. Yet it prompted a TUI member to ring Joe Duffys Livelineprogramme yesterday and announce his exit from the union.

The extreme factions are the bane of union executives’ lives because their performances push the nobler aspects of union business off the news agenda. They also drive moderates and the young away. At these conferences, under-30s are like hen’s teeth.

Every year, including this one, moderate delegates address education issues from protecting bullied students to curriculum reform. But it is the most strident members – who claim to live on porridge in penury, who dress up as Seanie Fitzpatrick, or who jostle ministers – who filter through to the public consciousness.

What do workaday teachers, getting on with it in Irish classrooms, make of the placard-wavers and podium-thumpers? Canvassing a cross section of views, not one union member wanted to reveal their identity due to fears of a staffroom backlash.

“It’s just not professional,” says one west Dublin primary school principal and INTO member, who is spending her Easter holidays compiling reports for the Department of Education. “There is no appetite for striking in my school and we’re not impressed with pictures of teachers chasing a terrified Minister down a corridor. I have a job. I’m lucky to have a job, even if my salary has been halved.” She would like to see the unions sticking to the task of lobbying for smaller classes and better resources for students. The pay issue is a waste of energy, she reckons.

“We tried to stay out of the last strike but the union lobbied hard at the school and galvanised enough members to get them out.

“I spent the strike day working at home. I didn’t get paid for that day, I’ll have to work it up again at the end of the term, and it’s all in the name of a cause I don’t agree with. Many of my friends in the sector feel the same, but the public sees the behaviour of the unions and they assume we’re all baying for blood. Personally, I think the way the Minister was treated is unacceptable.”

Another south county Dublin ASTI member, teaching in the post-primary sector, says he feels intimidated by the more extreme factions of the teachers’ unions and wouldn’t go to a conference, even though he was a union representative himself for a time.

“You’re expected to be up in arms about every last thing, even if it’s not actually that big a deal. Every little tweak in the contract is met with such anger by union types – sometimes you just want to tell them to cool off and look at the situation rationally. I think there are a lot of rabble-rousers at those conferences.” This particular teacher was surprised to hear that much of the conference business is in fact taken up with education issues, rather than pay and conditions. “I had no idea, and I’ve been a union rep. I suppose the media focus on the fights.”

“I’m not angry, I’m just worn out,” says another teacher and ASTI member working in north Dublin who has been in the job for about 10 years. “The pay cuts are difficult, but you just have to go about your business. The atmosphere on the ground isn’t great at the moment but all that public anger-mongering is only making it worse. I’ve had my fill of it.”

A lecturer in further education and TUI member working in Dublin centre says he has to hide his moderate views from the diehards in the staffroom. “I spoke up one day. I reminded my colleagues of how good our conditions are, in the main. I’ve been self-employed and compared to that, teachers are pretty well looked after, I told them. I regretted it afterwards. The reaction I got from the union types was so aggressive. ”

Unions have blamed the Government and the media for generating ill-will between the public and private sectors, but radicals in the union are doing their bit too. “I got involved in the union because I think teachers can be advocates for progress in education,” says one young primary teacher.

“We have lobbied for equality in education, better school buildings and other things that matter to parents and children. It just drives me crazy when I see dingbats in the unions grabbing all the headlines.”