Irish Times article by TUI President: Why Institute of Technology lecturers are taking strike action

By piofficer, Tuesday, 2nd February 2016 | 0 comments

Irish Times, Tuesday, 2nd February, 2016

By TUI President, Gerry Quinn

Tomorrow, 4,000 Institute of Technology lecturers and researchers will take a day’s strike action over a range of critical issues within their sector. This action is not being taken lightly, but the mandate is overwhelming, with TUI members voting by a margin of 92% to 8% in favour of industrial action in a national ballot.

Tellingly, tomorrow’s action is fully supported by the Union of Students in Ireland (USI). This should come as little surprise, as, students, along with lecturers, have borne the brunt of the anti-educational cutbacks of recent years that have created the current crisis in higher education. 

During the withering ‘austerity’ years (2008 to 2015), funding for the Institute of Technology sector was cut by 35% (€190m). Over the same period, student numbers rose by a staggering 21,411 (32%), while, as a result of operation of the Employment Control Framework (ECF), lecturer numbers fell by 9.5% (535). This has had a direct, detrimental effect both on the quality of service to students and on the working conditions of academics.

While the sharp increase in numbers participating in third level education is most welcome, the abject failure of Government to provide the necessary funding and to maintain appropriate staffing levels is having a profoundly negative impact on the student experience of higher education. For example, students now experience larger class sizes, less access to laboratories and libraries and sharp cuts to tutorials and other student supports. Where the pupil-teacher ratio metric links the number of teachers at second level to the number of students, no such linkage exists at third level with the result that staffing has been in freefall. The damage to institutional reputation (nationally and internationally) has been significant.

Inevitably, given the numbers, lecturer workload has increased significantly and is now at intolerable, unsustainable levels. As a result of cutbacks and rationalisation measures, the morale of lecturing and research staff has been severely damaged.

The precarious employment status of many is an additional blight on the sector, with a sizeable proportion of academic staff suffering income poverty as a result of low hours and insecure employment. It is completely unacceptable that the expert group tasked with reporting on this dire situation as part of the Haddington Road Agreement has not yet produced its recommendations.

Since their establishment less than 50 years ago, the Institutes of Technology (previously Regional Technical Colleges) have made an enormous contribution to social, economic and cultural development. Yet this success is being dangerously and consistently undermined by short-sighted, steep and, frankly, stupid austerity cuts. Throughout this crisis, the statutory funding agency, the Higher Education Authority (HEA), has shown itself to be quite unfit for purpose. It has been complicit as this wilful destruction of an essential national resource proceeded. This, let us not forget, is the agency that believes that moving to a Technological Universities model can be – has to be – achieved on a shoestring, that more can endlessly be done with less, that water can be drawn from a well that is dry.

In this context of a sector starved of the necessary funding and staffing, the decision of Government, egged on by a myopic and uncompromising HEA, to press ahead with publication of the Technological Universities Bill is foolhardy. The intention to effect such significant change without full commitment to proper resourcing is grossly ill-advised, and the requirement that Institutes of Technology must merge before they can apply for Technological University status appears to be more related to cost-saving than to any academic considerations based on the particular missions, values and ethos of institutes. There is also a real risk of a dramatic reduction in the regional provision of academic programmes as a result of the Bill. In such circumstances, regional cities and towns up and down the country will lose out. The capacity to access third level at or near one’s home will be curtailed. The gravitational pull of larger institutions in larger urban areas will increase. Without proper resourcing – that is funding and staffing – colleges in Letterkenny, Sligo, Athlone, Dundalk, Tralee, Carlow and, indeed, Tallaght and Blanchardstown will suffer. And if they suffer, so too will the communities they are based in, the economies they support, the social and cultural needs they serve. TUI members will be balloted in the coming weeks on engagement in a complementary campaign of industrial action on these important matters.  

We have urged the Department of Education and Skills to engage with us. We are seeking a sustainable, practical, manageable resolution. Unlike those who peddle the fiction that more can endlessly be done with less (or nothing) we in TUI do not believe in and are not disposed to trusting in the miraculous. We prefer reality.

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