The trade union movement could face a significant crisis when secondary teachers meet tomorrow to vote on a possible pullout from the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. There is also a proposal to ballot for industrial action over pay.
With the Government watching the result closely, and with the social partners locked in complex talks for a new national wage agreement, the general secretary of the ICTU, Mr Peter Cassells, will tonight address the Association of Secondary Teachers of Ireland (ASTI) to try to persuade them to stay in Congress.
The teachers may pull out of the ICTU because, they claim, the organisation is negotiating a form of individualised performance-related pay with the Government. This has been strongly denied by the ICTU and its public services committee.
Some of the teachers are also angry that pay rates for secondary teachers have fallen behind other public sector groups. The 160-person central executive committee will be the body which decides the issue tomorrow.
Mr Cassells will speak to the union's standing committee and will point out that there is no proposal for individual performance-related pay on the table. The standing committee is closely aligned to the central executive council.
Mr Peter McLoone, the chairman of the ICTU's public services committee, said yesterday: "Individual performance-related pay for public servants will not feature in any new national pay deal." He added: "We have been in exploratory talks with the Government on the issue for over a year and they have yet to put forward any model of performance management. We are not about to sign up for individual performance pay on that basis."
The Teachers' Union of Ireland (TUI) meets today and is also likely to discuss performance-related pay. Its president, Mr Joe Carolan, has already stated it would pull out of the ICTU if performance-related pay was imposed on it.
One of the motions going before the ASTI central executive committee will concern "industrial action". According to some sources this may not stretch as far as a strike, but may involve other forms of disruption.