Hardline union will urge its 18,000 teachers to reject new pay agreement

THE Association of Secondary Teachers in Ireland is set to recommend that its 18,000 members reject the new public service pay agreement.

Its 180-member central executive council held a ballot yesterday afternoon to decide its position on the successor to the Lansdowne Road public sector pay agreement of 2015.

The union’s standing committee previously recommended rejecting the agreement because it fails to address the problem of lower pay scales for those recruited since 2012, according to RTÉ.

The executive council’s decision to favour a No vote passed by a tight margin of 63 to 59 votes, with one abstention.

Asti members are to be balloted on the Public Service Stability Agreement 2018-2020 in the coming weeks.

‘Asti mbers have campaigned vigorously against the discriminatory treatment of recently qualified teachers in their pay,’ said Asti president Ger Curtin, according to RTÉ.

‘All Asti members have taken strike action and lost pay in order to highlight this injustice,’ said Mr Curtin.

‘The proposed Public Service Agreement does not achieve equal pay during its lifetime and this is the main reason why Asti members are being urged to reject it,’ he added.

Asti’s two-year campaign opposing the Lansdowne Road Agreement resulted in schools closing for several days last autumn.

It then became the last public service union to accept the deal. During that time, its 18,000 members underwent financial losses, while members of other unions who accepted the deal did not.

However, secondary school teachers will not be ‘out in the streets’ in the short and medium term, Mr Curtin told RTÉ’s Six One News.

‘Just because we vote No doesn’t mean that we’re going to be out in the streets.

‘As you know, we have suspended our industrial action from last year’s dispute. And that’s where we are at the moment,’ said Mr Curtin.

‘So the notion that Asti are going to be out of their classrooms in the short and medium term, that doesn’t arise at this stage,’ Mr Curtin added.

When asked about the future he said: ‘Anything can happen in the future.’

‘It doesn’t mean we’ll be out on the streets’