Ahead of its Annual Congress, the Teachers’ Union of Ireland (TUI) has highlighted what it calls the continuing ‘crisis’ of casualisation in teaching and lecturing. Many teachers and lecturers have only fragments of jobs with no guarantee of being retained from year to year. The union is calling for any arising new hours to be given to existing part-time staff in the first instance rather than recruiting, and in some cases exploiting, additional part-time staff. TUI is also calling for a return to the practice of making initial appointments on a permanent basis. The union estimates that at least 30% of teachers are employed on a part-time basis, and that this proportion grows to 50% for those under 30. Many of these teachers struggle to get by and meet even the most modest of financial commitments.
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