Sir, - The Minister for Education has come in for a lot of criticism for deducting pay from ASTI members for the days that they forced secondary schools to close. We are told that it was "insensitive" to make deductions from Christmas pay packets and that money should not be deducted for a period when teachers were on a "work to rule".
Perhaps the critics have forgotten that leading up to this "work to rule", parents and school managements were threatened that if they attempted to substitute for the "voluntary" supervision work which was being withdrawn, they would face more severe industrial action. This threat was made in the knowledge that without any supervision of students outside class time, schools would not be allowed to open for legal reasons. Therefore the "work to rule" was intended to prevent any classes from taking place while pretending that ASTI members were available for work.
ASTI strategists must have spent many long nights thinking up this brilliant scheme: a way of going on strike and getting the taxpayer to pay for it, a sort of risk-free, painless strike. It shouldn't have come as a complete surprise to members that if they went on strike in early December, they would run the risk of losing money from pay packets in late December. But of course the ASTI had intimidated parents and managements into abandoning any hope of keeping secondary schools open on the selected days, so they thought they'd be able to intimidate the Government into paying them as if they had worked.
I can think of no good reasons why secondary teachers should be rewarded for going on strike - paid just as if they had worked like their equally hardworking and underpaid colleagues in the primary and community/vocational sectors.
While the ASTI has been criticised for its lack of PR skills, in one respect it has been successful in setting the agenda of debate to suit its own ends: discussion on the strike has centred on the loss of status of the profession, the low pay compared with other graduates, the hard work and stress involved in the job, the valuable contribution to the economy, etc, as if these problems justify the specific ASTI action. Could all concerned please note: ASTI members form a minority of teachers. The majority of teachers, members of the INTO and the TUI, are working as normal and choosing a different route to overcome the very same problems - a route that does not involve the now-annual threat to disrupt state exams.
If I were a member of the TUI who worked in my community college every school day in December, I would regard it as a bit "insensitive" for the Government to pay my ASTI colleagues for closing their schools on some of those days. I wonder why the ASTI chose the go-on-strike-and-get-paid-for-it method of industrial action? We are told that it was to highlight the view of members that they are paid only for the 20 or so hours per week they are in the classroom and not for the other supervision activities essential to keeping a school open (which they perceive as "voluntary").
But could it be that ASTI strategists would not have been able to get a mandate from members for the more traditional form of withdrawal of labour undertaken by other trade unionists, which involves not getting paid when they don't work? - Yours, etc.,
Francis Thackaberry, Connolly Avenue, Dublin 8.