Talks aimed at resolving the ongoing strike by school secretaries and caretakers could happen “immediately” if assurances on public sector pensions are given, their union Fórsa has said.
About 2,800 school secretaries and caretaker at about 2,300 schools around the State have been on strike for more than a week in pursuit of access to the same public sector pension entitlements teachers and special needs assistants have.
Disruption to school services has been gradually mounting and there have been a small number of closures, although the Department of Education has not responded to requests for detail.
After tentative efforts by officials at the Workplace Relations Commission on Thursday to get the two sides together, Minister for Education Helen McEntee said the Government was prepared to enter negotiations “without preconditions”.
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However, the union has said it will not step down the strike in advance of any engagement without assurances the Department of Public Expenditure accepts that access to public sector pensions is on the table as it, rather than the Department of Education, will have to approve on any deal on the issue.
Fórsa says it is wary because talks quickly hit a roadblock when the two sides previously met to discuss the issue in the wake of a 2020 commitment by then tánaiste Leo Varadkar that the issue would be addressed.
“When we took a very small group down as school secretaries and caretakers through a campaign, and we got into the WRC, we were told by the Department of Public Expenditure they didn’t have to take any account of that. They controlled access to public service pensions, not the minister,” Fórsa’s head of education Andy Pike told RTÉ’s Claire Byrne programme on Friday.
School principals told the same programme of mounting issues with sanitation and rubbish which other principals have told The Irish Times are the most likely factors to prompt school closures in the coming days and weeks.
If Fórsa steps the strike down, the feeling appears to be, that point of pressure on the Government side will be reset as staff return to work and address current issues.
Speaking to The Irish Times on Friday, Mr Pike said the union was keen to enter talks on the dispute, however, and would be happy to engage with the WRC and government departments in an initial effort to establish if progress couldbe made on the core pensions demand.
“We would be willing to attend exploratory talks but we don’t know if the WRC are happy to facilitate that,” he said. “Some sort of contact is going to be necessary, though, because we can’t stand down the strike if we think we’re going to get into a room and it’s just auto-enrolment [the State backed pension scheme due to come into effect next year for all workers but which offers significantly less attractive pension entitlements] that’s on the table and that they’re not even going to countenance public service pension arrangements.
“That’s what we’ve been saying throughout the week, that what we’re looking for is an indication that when talks start it will be about how and when people come into public service pension arrangements.
“And there’s a load of stuff to talk about then. It’s very, very complicated. But we just need that confirmation that when we get into talks, the subject matter is public service pensions. It’s not anything else. So we’ll wait and see what the WRC decide to do.”
The Department of Public Expenditure was approached for comment.
