A breakthrough in the campaign to end casualisation - a message to members from TUI President Joanne Irwin

By piofficer, Tuesday, 6th September 2016 | 0 comments

TUI’s Campaign against Casualisation – Significant Breakthrough

 

 

For the past several years the great majority of new entrants to teaching have been employed on fixed-term (i.e. temporary) contracts and part-time hours. As many as 30% of the members of the TUI and some 50% of those under 35 years of age were “casualised” in this manner.

An injustice

The resulting insecurity and impoverishment has done an injustice to the teachers affected and has corroded the morale of the profession. There is now clear and worrying evidence that graduates no longer see teaching as an attractive, viable career option. The country cannot afford to allow this trend to continue.  

This casualisation of the profession, it must be remembered, was not demanded or mandated by the Department of Education and Skills. In fact, in the sectoral agreement on the pay and conditions of teachers under the Programme for Competitiveness and Work (PCW) 1996, it was agreed that a school or VEC (now ETB) scheme could make permanent appointments up to 95% of its teacher allocation.

Moreover, the Protection of Employees Acts of 2001 and 2003, were designed and intended to provide further and stronger protections against the casualisation of work.

The unacceptable cost of “flexibility”

However, somewhere along the way and, ironically, well before the economic crisis of 2008/9, employers began to fracture full jobs into fragments of jobs and to appoint new teachers on non-permanent, fixed-term contracts. It is important to bear in mind that this trend was not a response to cuts in teacher allocation or reduced budgets. Allocation was stable – even improving marginally. Rather it seems, in a number of cases, to have been a show of relative power, an exercise in whimsy.   

Flexibility was the proffered excuse; exploitation of new appointees was the reality. It is difficult to avoid concluding that part of what motivated some employers was an unworthy desire to keep new appointees vulnerable - and biddable - for as long as possible. Fragments of jobs mean fragments of pay, in many instances pay so meagre that the teacher suffered income poverty in absolute terms, could not achieve an appropriate level of independence, had no credit worthiness, had to moonlight, was forced to defer fundamental life choices. It also led to a destabilising rate of turnover in staff and a resulting lack of continuity for students. All the while, nationally and internationally, a literature was developing apace that identified the teacher as the critical determinant of educational quality and emphasised the concept of professionalism. Professionalism and poverty are an unhappy match.

Since 2011 – adding insult to injury

The situation was already going to the bad when the economic crisis struck and made matters worse. This time government had a central involvement and imposed a series of very damaging cuts, including a cut in teacher allocation (moving the Pupil Teacher ratio from 18:1 to 19:1). Government also imposed pay cuts, using draconian emergency legislation.

The most unfair of the cuts were inflicted on those who entered the public service on or after 1st January 2011. These cuts created a reduced, second-tier pay scale. To add serious insult to this injury, those who entered the public service on or after 1st February 2012 were denied access to a range of pensionable allowances that had previously been paid. For teachers, gardaí, prison officers and firefighters, the value of the allowance  - and, therefore, the heft of the hit – was significant. For teachers this cut alone ran to some 20%.

From 2011 on, and particularly from 2012, teachers – members of the TUI, our colleagues – have had to endure an unholy trinity of negatives. They are employed on non-permanent contracts in part-time work and paid pro-rata a severely reduced scale.

Turning the tide: TUI’s campaign makes significant progress

At local and national level, the TUI has been involved in a determined, ongoing campaign to right this wrong. And we have been making real, tangible progress;

  • Under the HRA, adjustments to the pay of 2011 and 2102 entrants to teaching were secured.

  • Under the HRA but also, more importantly, in the recommendations of the Expert Groups on Fixed Term and Part-time Work – the Ward and Cush reports – we achieved accelerated access to permanency though Contracts of Indefinite Duration. The qualifying period for teachers and lecturers is 2 years whereas, under the Protection of Employees (Fixed-term) Act 2003, it is four. The route to permanency by way of a CID that is available to teachers and lecturers is better than what the law provides. Also achieved was accelerated access to increased hours under an augmented CID. Under the Ward and Cush reports, the qualifying period to have new hours added to a CID is one year whereas, under the Act, it is four.

  • Now, resulting from the May 2016 Agreement between the Department of Education and Skills and the TUI – balloted on and accepted by our members – the union has negotiated a very important amendment to Circular Letter 34/09. This amendment which is detailed in Circular Letter 59/2016, means that, with effect from 31st August 2016, new posts/hours that become available must be allocated to suitably qualified, serving teachers in the first instance and that this must be done in accordance with a clear, logical and fair sequence. The sequence is more comprehensive than that suggested in Cl 34/09. As well as dealing with permanent posts/hours, it encompasses hours allocated on a fixed-term basis. Cl 34/09 did not.

  • Of real significance also is that CL 59/2016 states clearly that initial appointments may be made on a permanent basis up to 95% of a school’s/scheme’s allocation and that 95% may be exceeded where entitlements to a CID or to augmentation of an existing CID arise. This dispels the myth that has flourished in recent years that initial appointments could not be made on a permanent basis.

  • The TUI and INTO are also working assiduously to achieve pay parity. Right now, we are involved in negotiations with the Department of Education and Skills and the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform to secure restoration of the value of a qualifications allowance for teachers who entered the profession since 1st February 2012. We are using the precedent that is available to those covered by the Lansdowne Road Agreement and that was established by the arrangement agreed for fire fighters - one of the other public sector grades that lost an allowance in 2012. Progress is being made in these negotiations. The expectation is that, in the first instance, the value of the honours degree - €4,918 - allowance will be built into a restructured scale that will apply to everybody who has entered the profession since 2011.

So, on all three fronts in the fight against casualisation - reduced pay rates, part-time/low hours and non-permanent contracts – we are making significant, measurable strides that benefit members. We will continue with our campaign until the culture of casualisation is consigned to the past. Our strategy is robust, credible and consistent and has been mandated by the voice and the votes of members. As is our custom, our strategy involves an ability and willingness to take action where necessary but a constant and confident preparedness to talk, to negotiate, to solve problems.    

 

Joanne Irwin

President

 

6th September 2016

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