Teachers protest over pay
“WE’RE protesting because some of our colleagues who are more recently appointed are on a different pay scale to the existing colleagues,” said local Teachers Union of Ireland (TUI) representative David Roberts.
He was speaking outside Ballinode College during a protest last Thursday.
“They’re doing the same work. We’re looking for equal pay for equal work and ending pay discrimination on recruitment,” he said.
Roberts described some claims that the unions signed up to this in 2011 as “fake news.”
“No, no, I think that’s a complete untruth. I was in a meeting at the TUI Head Office yesterday and that theory was put forward and was completely rubbished by the President of the TUI as misinformation, fake news,” he told The Sligo Champion.
“Nobody ever agreed to that, no,” he said.
“The trouble is that younger members can’t afford to pay their mortgages. As they can’t afford to pay their mortgages, they have to do overtime in order to make a living wage.
“They’re doing overtime, they’re doing jobs for other people,” he said.
“It’s tough if you can’t get a job. This is just part of it. We have other issues we want changed as well - five year contracts for instance, rather than giving people permanent full time jobs,” said Roberts.
“They’re employing lots of people on 5 year contracts. A short-term contract is usually where somebody’s ill, taking time off, a course is being discontinued, everybody else is employed on a permanent contract with one year probation.
“If you’re on a 5 year contract, you can’t be a Researcher to get funding and you can’t get a mortgage because you don’t have a full-time job,” he said.