ASTI is marching its members towards their own destruction
Teachers need to take control of their union from Trotskyites bent on confrontation, writes Colm O’Rourke
MANY people are wondering what is going on in the teaching profession, where two unions, the INTO and TUI, have accepted the Lansdowne Road agreement, while the ASTI remains outside. Even more so now, when two of the main roadblocks have been successfully negotiated by the other unions, namely restoration of pay and the differential in income for newly qualified teachers, which was wrong and is about to be phased out, even if the ASTI was very late to even bother taking up their case.
Now the ASTI is on a further war path, with the threat of strike action looming. It wants to be treated differently from other teachers, doctors, nurses and other members of the public sector who may have had to swallow hard in the past but now see that pay restoration is at least starting.
Not so for the ASTI members and others who are not members of any trade union at all, but who are classified as such by virtue of working in schools which are dominated by ASTI members — an anomaly which will soon be tested as penalising people who do not wish to be associated with this action is a clear breach of their constitutional rights.
Most of the ASTI membership are in voluntary schools. These are generally run by the religious orders or the diocese but most recent increases in school numbers are taking place in the community school system, which is run by the educational training boards in the various counties.
So what the ASTI is currently doing is ensuring that its members are substantially worse off financially than their counterparts in other schools for doing the same work. It has also banned its r members from co-operating with the examination of the new Junior Cert.
There were and are flaws in this proposed process but holding back Junior Cert reform is like trying to hold back the tide. The same applies with the Croke Park hours.
These 33 hours were giving little real value to schools but a reformed system will work much more efficiently for everyone and recognises the valuable work outside the classroom which is carried on by committed teachers, in sport, music, drama etc.
So what is happening now is that good teachers will opt for ETB schools if there is a choice of employment. Why should they accept lower pay to work in a voluntary school?
So the calibre of teachers in the voluntary sector will suffer as a consequence. Maybe the ASTI did not think of that. A young teacher has better career opportunities, higher pay and more security of tenure in the ETB sector.
As for parents, they generally have choices when it comes to schools in many places. Why would they send their children to schools which are actively ensuring that much-needed reforms are not implemented?
Schools which are not going to have students properly prepared for the new English, Business and Science courses, which are part of the new Junior Cert because of the ban in place by the ASTI?
For an extended period, I have been a longstanding critic of the work of the ASTI. In my 37 years in teaching, I have never heard it espouse any great vision of education apart from saying no to almost all sensible ideas. I have never heard it even mention the welfare of the students under our daily control.
Some might argue that it is there to purely represent teachers. Anyone with that narrow a view should not be involved in education.
The real reason why there is no progress with the ASTI is that the control of the union is now in the hands of individuals aligned with the Anti Austerity Alliance and other left-wing groups. They are opposed to everything and every Government is the same.
It is a throwback to the worst excesses of the past and they are only interested in complete capitulation. And at any price. Teachers might ask why a reasonable man like Pat King, the former general secretary of the ASTI, limped off the stage. His quiet diplomacy did work because he knew that all agreements required compromise.
Teachers caught in this bind cannot just change their unions. Those working in the voluntary sector can’t jump to the TUI and reap the benefits of their deal, which is giving their members more money and a chance to move forward.
Naturally, some teachers are just dropping out of the ASTI and may join a new union when the dispute is over or not join at all. The ASTI, of course, has tried to create this image that all new teachers should join them because they will be protected.
A worker in modern Ireland is well enough protected by all the employee legislation that they don’t need anything else, especially not a group who are actively disrupting education reform. Yet it is hard for young people to be strong enough in a workplace dominated by a union to say that they are not interested in joining.
In reality, joining or remaining in the ASTI now means less money, a good chance of being on strike for a cause for which parents or anyone else will have absolutely no sympathy and working in a school with less resources than the equivalent in the ETB sector.
There are serious issues to be addressed in education, issues which the TUI and INTO are busy negotiating on. Outside the tent are the latter-day Trotskyites, who are fighting a different battle but the pawns are teachers, parents and,
‘I have never heard ASTI espouse any great vision of education’
worst of all, students who are being damaged by all of this.
All the while, the Department of Education — which has not been too bright in the way it has handled reform — the other unions and management bodies have to skirt around the issues in diplomatic tones without being able to say what is really going on with the leftie comrades.
Soon ASTI teachers will have a chance of voting on whether to strike or not among other things. In the past, ballots have been very low, in some cases less than 40pc, so 25pc can rule the rest.
In this case, hopefully there will be proper democracy but teachers should be beginning to realise that in the present ASTI hierarchy’s time warp, they are playing a different game, one where there will be no compromise, no reasonable accommodation.
Not now, not ever unless the ordinary members either withdraw or seize back both influence and power.