Sir, - I have no idea whether or not we are seeing the beginning of another teachers' dispute, but I am fairly certain that the media will continue to ignore the issue of gross inequalities across the teaching profession.
The Department of Education continues to pay part-time teachers thousands less for doing the same job as their permanent colleagues. The average salary of a part-timer is below £9,000. These teachers can have a full timetable ranging across the whole school. Perhaps if this group were of one gender or ethnic group there would be an outcry. The Department hasn't even bothered to carry out European directives on pro-rata pay for part-timers. Instead it's forcing the ASTI to take a test case.
The ASTI itself is not entirely blameless in the continuation of this inequality. Certainly it and other teaching unions have brought about improvements in the lot of non-permanent teachers, but negotiating with the Department on this issue is pointless. Strike action is the only thing the Department will listen to and this issue should have been top of the agenda for last year's action. The Department would have been hard-pressed to win on this one.
The whole category of part-timers should not exist. If you employ people in a school from September to June on a full timetable expecting them to do a professional job then you should pay them a professional and equal salary.
The media allowed a gross untruth to be published over and over again in last year's dispute: teachers start on £18,000 a year! Some chance of that for the majority of us! It's nearer to £9,000. - Yours, etc.,
Barry Hazel, Elm Mount Grove, Beaumont, Dublin 9.