Teachers and government on collision course over pay

In May 2000, one of Ireland's three main teaching trade unions is on a collision course with the government over a 30% pay claim, despite the fact that the ink is hardly dry on the new three-year national agreement, the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness.

The Irish government faces a new pay challenge from one of the country's three main teaching trade unions, the 16,000-strong Association of Secondary Teachers, Ireland (ASTI), which has broken ranks with members of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) by lodging a new 30% pay demand (IE0004149F). Meanwhile, the two other teachers' unions, the 10,000-strong Teachers' Unions of Ireland (TUI) and the 25,000-strong Irish National Teachers' Organisation (INTO), have been influenced by ASTI's militant stance on pay.

In what was a highly unusual move, in late 1999 the central council of ASTI voted to end its membership of ICTU, which is the national umbrella body for almost all trade unions in Ireland. This meant that the union had no involvement in the talks which led to Ireland's new national agreement, the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness (PPF), the terms of which were formally accepted by ICTU on 23 March 2000 (IE0003149F).

The decision to leave ICTU, led by the ASTI's president but opposed by its general secretary, was in protest at the handling by the ICTU public services committee of outstanding pay issues from an earlier national agreement, the 1994-6 Programme for Competitiveness and Work (PCW). The union claims that teachers have fallen behind other public service groups, such as nurses and the police, in terms of pay relativities.

Having voted to leave ICTU, ASTI's council - at its annual convention held in easter 2000 - decided not even to put the PPF to a vote of its members. Instead, the union decided to lodge a pay claim worth 30%. Essentially this leaves a gap of 12% between the ASTI and the government, which is already committed to paying a total of 18% over 33 months to teachers under the terms of the PPF. This 18% is made up of the 15% which all workers, both public and private, will receive under PPF and a further 3% under the so-called "early settlers" arrangement to cover any shortfall in pay arising since the implementation of the PCW.

The two other teaching unions, as members of ICTU, have accepted the terms of the PPF but they also want to negotiate additional increases. The difference between their position and that of ASTI, however, is that they are prepared to negotiate under the terms of the new public service "benchmarking" process established under PPF, which covers areas such as performance and productivity.

The government is aware that further pay rises without such concessions from teachers could open the way for a new series of "knock-on" pay claims from other key public sector groups, resulting in another of the pay spirals which have bedevilled the otherwise successful social partnership agreements of recent years (IE9909292N).