School secretaries and caretakers are some of the most praised workers in the public sector, judging by the range of plaudits thrown their way since they began indefinite strike action late last month. It was always thus; previous disputes over their status resulted in a chorus from school principals that schools cannot function effectively or efficiently without them.
The issues at stake date back almost half a century. In the late 1970s, the Department of Education initiated a process of directly employing school secretaries as public service clerical workers on Civil Service pay scales, but this practice withered over time. Instead, the responsibility for regulating their work hours and pay was shifted to individual schools, with just a small minority of the secretaries remaining employees of the department on permanent contracts.
In 2020, employment studies experts from the University of Limerick, writing in the Journal of Industrial Relations, noted: “the government has essentially outsourced the employment of secretaries to schools, and this has placed the largely female workforce in a vulnerable position for two reasons. The first is that secretaries employed by schools are not classified as public servants and therefore are not entitled to standardised public servant terms and conditions. The second reason is that the funding for school secretaries’ hours and pay is not ring-fenced. Schools are reliant on ancillary services grants from the government to pay secretaries, but this grant can vary yearly, and the grants must also pay for a range of costs including building maintenance and heating”.
Rates of pay and hours of work varied significantly as a result, and those on temporary contracts could find themselves reliant on unemployment benefits during school holidays. Emergency financial legislation introduced by the government in 2009 in response to the economic crash allowed it to reduce all public servants’ pay. Schools were instructed that their secretaries would be defined as public servants “solely for the purposes of the Act”, but that this move “would not alter their employment status in any other respect”. This locked them out of the pay scales and better conditions available to other public servants. The scaling back of school grants also impacted on the secretaries’ employment conditions, meaning insecurity abounded.
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The trade unions Fórsa and Siptu sought to end the two-tier system in terms and conditions between secretaries employed by schools and those employed directly by the Department of Education and Skills. Things improved somewhat, with a government directive to increase pay rates and school grants, but the insecurities continued.
As the Limerick academics put it in 2020, “a key weakness for school secretaries is that they lack the structural sources of power that teachers have, and their relatively low numbers mean their voice has been lost in the public sector-wide negotiations with government ... school secretaries have transitioned to an ‘outsider’ occupation”.
Further agreement in 2023 saw the grant-funded school secretaries move to the public payroll and entitled to improved leave and sick leave, with pay increases linked to public sector wage agreements, but they still do not have public sector status for pension purposes. They are also seeking further improved sick pay and bereavement leave. Currently, their sick-leave entitlement is a maximum of 10 days a year, and no additional sick leave is available for critical illness. Special needs assistants (SNAs) working in a school are entitled to three months’ full pay and three months’ half pay in such a situation.
The main teachers’ trade unions have saluted the secretaries and caretakers, 2,600 of whom are striking. The INTO has declared it “stands in full solidarity with school secretaries and caretakers ... They work side by side with teachers and SNAs yet are denied access to public service pensions and basic entitlements such as decent sick leave and bereavement leave. This is unfair.”
ASTI president Padraig Curley stated: “it is shameful that the principle of equal treatment is being denied to school secretaries and caretakers who are highly valued members of our school communities”.
The TUI maintains that “their demands are fair, just, and widely supported. The TUI has a long-standing position that the provision of education in the State is a core element of the social contract and a vital public service ... the staff supporting the provision of this public service should receive all the benefits and entitlements of equivalent public servants.”
But the teachers’ unions could make a bolder gesture of solidarity, bring matters to a head and to a speedy resolution of this decades-long saga by refusing to pass the pickets. The three main teachers’ unions have more than 86,000 members between them. A move by them, beyond supportive statements and refusing to provide cover for the work the strikers do, could make the significant impact needed. As a poster carried by the striking workers requests, “Don’t tell us we’re invaluable - show us!”
