The Government's room for manoeuvre with the ASTI has been significantly reduced by a threat from another public service union to withdraw from national agreements if secondary teachers win pay increases outside the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness and the Benchmarking process. The threat comes from the Public Service Executive Union, which has traditionally supported national agreements. Thousands of other State employees have pay relativities with PSEU members and, if it were to withdraw from the Benchmarking Process, there would be a domino effect across the public service. The PSEU stance underlines the isolation of the Association of Secondary Teachers, Ireland within the wider trade union movement.
Coming on the day when unions representing more than 200,000 public service workers, including the PSEU, made submissions to the benchmarking body, it underlines how high the stakes are in the teachers' dispute. There were more than 30 individual union submissions as well as a 23-page document from the Irish Congress of Trade Unions.
The general secretary of the PSEU, Mr Dan Murphy, who is also secretary of the powerful public services committee of ICTU, said yesterday that when his union agreed to accept the PPF it was on the basis of "two absolutes". One was that payment of 3 per cent extra to "early settlers" - such as his own members and teachers - would "draw a line under what went before", in terms of local pay deals within the public service. The second was that all public service unions would use the benchmarking process for pay review purposes.
"There is no way we would have signed up for a new agreement unless we thought everyone would be on the same starting line," he said. "Frankly, if that is not the way the game is played all bets are off and we will do whatever is required to secure equal treatment for our members." The executive of the 8,000strong PSEU, which represents executive officer grades in the public sector, has tabled a motion for its conference next month seeking a mandate to withdraw from the PPF and benchmarking process, if necessary. The motion is expected to be passed unanimously. It states that, "the union should do all in its power to protect and advance the benchmarking process in the interests of members". But "if any alternative course of action by some group of public servants produces pay increases outside the PPF and the benchmarking process, the process will then not be viable and the union should, accordingly, take whatever action is required to secure fair treatment for members of this union".