The Teachers’ Union of Ireland (TUI) today expressed its deep frustration over the recent regrettable delay by Government Ministers in committing to a clear timeframe for the restoration of allowances for new and recent entrants to teaching.
The union is warning that it may be forced to activate an existing mandate for industrial action should urgent and meaningful progress on this critical issue not be made.
At a series of meetings with officials from the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and Department of Education and Skills, TUI and INTO representatives scoped out issues around pay inequality. However, TUI has described the pace of progress in recent weeks as ‘unacceptably slow.’
Speaking today, TUI President Joanne Irwin said:
‘From February 2012, as a result of a unilateral government decision, qualification allowances were removed from new entrants to teaching. This amounted to a pay cut of approximately 20%, compared to their colleagues. The TUI has since then been campaigning to have this gross inequality eliminated.
Firefighters, who also lost their allowance, have had the value of that allowance restored, in the context of agreement to enhance delivery of the service they provide. The Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (DPER), the Minister for Education and Skills (DES) and the union have highlighted the agreement reached by Firefighters as a precedent available within the LRA. The Ministers have stated publicly that similar progress can be made for teachers within the context of the LRA.
TUI reached an agreement with the DES in relation to a range of issues in May 2016. A key understanding underpinning this agreement was that the scandal of pay inequality could and would be addressed as a matter of urgency.
Representatives of the TUI and the INTO have, since then, had a series of meetings with officials from both DPER and the DES. There has been a particular focus on the principle of restoring the value of a qualifications allowance to the common basic scale for teachers. Significant progress has been made in the discussions which have included consideration of the options in relation to the assimilation of allowances into the scale.
What is now needed is a clear timescale for implementation. Further delay in this respect is both unfair and unnecessary.
Another cohort of teachers will commence their careers in the coming days, on significantly lower pay than their colleagues. It is time to demonstrate that these teachers are properly valued. It is time to end the discrimination that is undermining the morale of the profession.
It is self-evident that impoverishing teachers inevitably leads to the impoverishment of the service to students. Graduates and, increasingly, qualified teachers across a range of subjects, are now routinely finding better paid and more secure employment in industry.’
Notes to the editor
TUI members in the second level and further/adult education sectors voted, in January, by a margin of 89% to 11%, to engage in a campaign of industrial action, up to and including strike action, to secure a resolution to key issues - the most critical being the income poverty of new and recent entrants to the profession.
Since then, our members (in May 2016), in good faith, accepted an agreement negotiated by the union with the Department of Education and Skills (Department of Education and Skills/TUI Agreement). They placed their trust in negotiation and industrial relations processes. However, if that trust is shown to be misplaced, TUI has a mandate to engage in industrial action to secure the required outcome and eliminate the injustice visited upon recent entrants to the profession. Should definitive progress towards restoration of the value of allowances be further delayed, the union will activate its existing mandate.