PIERCE H. PURCELL
Sir, - In a letter which you published on December 27th, I posed a number of questions to Ms Bernadine O'Sullivan (and indeed to anybody else who might feel like replying) about benchmarking and the ASTI salary campaign for a perfectly justifiable 30 per cent increase. So far I've got no answers.
May I now address similar questions to Mr Pat Cahill (January 14th)?
1. Is the ASTI interested any longer in achieving a 30 per cent salary increase?
2. What forum, other than benchmarking, is available to the union to process its claim, particularly now that the members seem to have no further interest in any form of strike action or a boycott of the State examinations?
3. Why not authorise the ASTI negotiators to attend the benchmarking sessions and argue the ASTI case? Personally, I can see very little difference between benchmarking, arbitration and a salary review. As one who has done a lot of negotiating on behalf of the ASTI, I believe the union has a watertight case for at least 30 per cent, and that the case could be argued with relative ease.
4. If, in the end, the results of benchmarking prove unsatisfactory to the ASTI, what's to stop the union from rejecting the findings?
Within the next few months the findings of the benchmarking process will appear, with or without the contribution of the ASTI. Would the union not have a far stronger case for rejecting the results of benchmarking if it had made an honest, all-out attempt to convince the benchmarkers of the intrinsic merits of the 30 per cent claim?
5. Why has the ASTI not collaborated with the TUI and INTO in lodging a joint claim via benchmarking - and in organising a plan of joint industrial action in the event that the benchmarking results are unsatisfactory?
Finally, let me once again urge the ASTI authorities (of whom I am not one) to convene a special convention of the union as soon as possible to consider full participation in the benchmarking process, and proper industrial action on the part of all three teachers' trade unions, if the final benchmarking report is unacceptable. - Yours, etc.,
PIERCE H. PURCELL
(Retired secondary teacher,
current trustee and former
president of the ASTI),
David Terrace,
Clonmel,
Co Tipperary.