The vote by members of the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI) in favour of industrial action could scarcely have been more comprehensive. Almost 90 per cent endorsed a campaign which begins with a national one-day strike next month and could culminate in disruption of next year's Leaving and Junior Certificate exams.
The impact of this dispute will be keenly felt in tens of thousands of homes in the State in the coming weeks. The national one-day strike on November 14th will be followed by ASTI members withdrawing from supervisory and other non-teaching tasks on at least three further days. School managers have already signalled that they will be requesting parents to keep students at home.
The practical impact of this on parents, on family life and, not least, on the education of our young people will be severe. Many members of the public may feel some sympathy towards the ASTI case. Most fair-minded people want to ensure that our highly-skilled teaching corps is well rewarded for the enormous contribution it is making to society and the economy.
The powerful support for strike action among ASTI members reflects real, pent-up anger among teachers about their pay levels, which must not be underestimated. For all that, many parents are entitled to question if the ASTI strategy is the right one.
The ASTI action, in pursuit of a 30 per cent pay claim, represents the first teachers' strike over pay in some 15 years. On the last occasion all three teaching unions formed a formidable alliance to face down the government. Today, in contrast, the ASTI is on a solo run.
Some 30,000 teachers in the Irish National Teachers' Organisation (INTO) and the Teachers' Union of Ireland (TUI) are not taking industrial action and not closing schools. The members of both unions will receive 19 per cent increases from the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness (PPF). They hope to gain additional monies from the benchmarking process of the PPF, which links public sector pay to trends in the private sector. But, to the dismay of the INTO and the TUI, the benchmarking review body is not due to report until the end of 2002.
The ASTI leadership claims it is ready to negotiate at any time with the Government. But the Government has kept its distance from the ASTI since the union left the PPF talks and since its claim was dismissed by the Public Service Arbitration Board. That is the right approach, if its public pay policy is to retain any credibility.
For all that, the Government has an obligation to provide some comfort - and quickly - to the INTO and the TUI which are now under intense pressure from their grassroots to adopt ASTI's hard line. There is an obvious solution. Instead of promising teachers more money in 2003, bring forward the benchmarking process to the middle of next year. This would dampen the discontent in the INTO and the TUI. But it might have one other result. It could weaken the resolve of ASTI members to pursue a strike campaign which would disrupt the education of students, discommode parents and damage the high standing of teachers in this community.