More than 2,000 schools impacted by strike action over the past week and a half will start the process of clearing administrative and maintenance backlogs on Monday as school secretaries and caretakers return to work.
The Department of Education said over the weekend that supports can be sought by schools where particular issues exist, with a spokesperson saying it had been a challenging time for schools and encouraging school leaders to “reach out through their usual channels should they need guidance or resources”.
An organisation representing principals at secondary schools, which would include most of the largest schools affected, said it is likely to take a couple of weeks before things return to normal, however.
“Principals are delighted by the agreement reached on Friday night,” said Paul Crone, director of the National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals (NAPD). “It’s great news because things were getting to the point in many schools where boards of management were going to have to take decisions based on the health and safety of the children, staff and parents.
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“But the rubbish is only collected once a week and so in a lot of schools it may take a couple of weeks to clear. It is great that that process can get under way, though.
“On the administrative side, I think the September and October returns (reports on pupil numbers and other detail that inform the department’s allocation of future resources) may be a bit behind because of the action but I’m sure some allowance will be made.
“The important thing is that we see the process agreed on Friday result in a completed deal,” he said.
Talks between the department and Fórsa, the trade union representing the roughly 2,800 staff who were on strike, are due to take place on Wednesday at the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC).
Announcing the breakthrough in talks that led to the suspension of the strike, Minister for Education Helen McEntee said “both sides must come together with an open mind and good faith without preconditions or preconceived ideas of a final outcome.”
The union, however, presented the agreement signed by it, the department and the WRC on Friday evening as a complete victory to its members over the weekend, suggesting commitments in the agreement to negotiate a pay framework for caretakers, resolve issues around bereavement and sick leave, and make progress on “comparable pension entitlements” as only leaving room for negotiations on the detail.
There is an acknowledgment in the WRC document that this process may be complex, but a confident assertion too that the talks scheduled for Wednesday can be concluded quickly with any outstanding issues to be resolved at the Labour Court at a future date.
Assuming there are no hiccups, the completed deal will represent a substantial success for Fórsa and the 2,800 members who took action.
The strike appeared to be extremely well observed by the staff involved, in part perhaps because the stakes were so significant, and it appeared to enjoy broad support from parents, teachers, SNAs, the public and even a majority of Government TDs.
A Fórsa-commissioned poll published by the union over the weekend put that public support at 82 per cent with just 12 per cent saying they did not back the strikers.
Adding to the Government’s discomfort at being so at odds with public opinion, meanwhile, was that there were clear attempts by some members of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael parliamentary parties to place responsibility for the situation at the door of Ministers belonging to the other party, Ms McEntee in Education and Jack Chambers at the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, respectively.
The latter department remained silent on the dispute through last week but its previously firm position ahead of Friday’s talks may have eased in the wake of comments by Fórsa’s head of education, Andy Pike, that morning.
The department is understood to have been concerned giving in on the pensions issue would create a precedent for other workers, potentially including the much larger group of Section 39 workers providing healthcare and social services at voluntary organisations to make similar claims.
The sector has proven a difficult one for both the Government and unions over the past few years and talks over how a recent pay deal will be implemented have been ongoing at the WRC for months.
Mr Pike did not specify any particular group in his remarks on Friday but he acknowledged the Government side feared that if it made concessions “everyone else will want this too” and said the union had been “looking at this problem for years” and that while the employment arrangements in schools are “complicated” they are also “unique”.
Others may yet find similarities in their own circumstances but for the moment it seems the Government believes settling a strike that threatened to pose mounting problems for it over the coming weeks is worth the risk.
