The country's 16,000 secondary teachers are to stage a series of six nationwide one-day strikes, following their rejection of a new Labour Court recommendation in their pay dispute with the Government. The 180-member Central Executive Committee of the ASTI threw out the Court's proposals by 151 votes to ten, with two abstentions - renewing the threat to this summer's Leaving Certificate exams. Since the end of January, ASTI strike action has been suspended while the Labour Court had been drawing up the recommendation. But industrial action will now be renewed, with a nationwide strike scheduled for Wednesday next.
The Minister for Education, Dr Michael Woods, says he has given a firm undertaking on behalf of the Government that the Leaving and Junior Certificate exams will go ahead. He said that he had established an inter-departmental taskforce to co-ordinate plans for the Leaving Certificate. The Minister said that he was "aghast" that the committee could "peremptorily dismiss the recommendation without permitting its members to exercise a democratic voice in the decision to accept or reject the court's terms".
The Post Primary Section of the National Parents' Council has described the vote as outrageous. ASTI General Secretary, Charlie Lennon, appealed to the Government to now enter direct and meaningful negotiations with the union. Fine Gael said it is now time for the Taoiseach to intervene in the dispute. The party's Education spokesman, Michael Creed, said that the vote showed that teachers had lost faith in the Minister for Education.
The Labour Court yesterday acknowledged that the 16,000 secondary teachers had a sustainable case for a pay increase, but said that it should be dealt with through the benchmarking process, which the ASTI has already rejected. Dr Woods welcomed the court's recognition of the important role of teachers in society and their entitlement to fair and equitable salaries. Dr Woods said that he and his department were giving detailed consideration to the court's recommendation in the long-running secondary teachers' pay dispute.
The difficulty for the court was that while it had been asked to look at the validity of the teachers' case for a 30% pay increase it also had to take into account the Government's view that any increase should be within the terms of the national agreement, the PPF. The agreement specifies that pay for teachers should be processed through the recently appointed benchmarking body. That limited the scope of the court's investigation and its room for manoeuvre.
