An internal ASTI document has threatened to use the supervision issue to defeat the Government, after the union lost its 30 per cent pay claim last year.
The document not only rejects the current €34 offer, but says teachers should be paid for doing supervision in the past and get a back-payment or lump sum for this work.
It says some teachers should get a lump sum for 30 years of supervision. It says it should be considered to "undo the damage and hurt done to teachers by the deduction of their salaries and the suggestion by the Minister that the work was not voluntary".
The document, prepared by four leading members, says the union should not be entering talks on supervision because the Government has "constantly denigrated" the union and treated its members like "pariahs".
The document, circulated on Thursday among ASTI members, reflects the views of those who remain bitter about the outcome of last year's dispute.
It says there are a range of things wrong with the current offer.
"It is wrong for head office and the media to maintain that the offer can be made acceptable by pensionability or improvements in remuneration as if this was the real issue."
It says withdrawing from supervision "is a very important weapon in our fight for justice outside benchmarking". It says supervision and substitution is the first of several school issues the Government wishes to push through.
"Believing that it has beaten us on the pay/benchmarking issue, it is confident that we are too dispirited to put up more than a token resistance to further changes. We must use this issue to shout stop."
The document has been circulated to members of the ASTI's standing committee and central executive council.
While the Minister for Education, Dr Woods, has convened talks next week with the three teachers unions, the tone and language of the document suggests it will be hard to convince the ASTI to accept the current €34 an hour offer. The document is unambiguous on this: "The current offer on supervision and substitution is a slipshod arrangement that should never have been considered by our union and it should be rejected completely."
It contains a strong warning that the ASTI leadership should not take part in any future talks on supervision.
"If our negotiators go back into talks on the details of the present offer, they will undermine the union's main objective of pursuing a pay claim outside benchmarking. In the past, when we were in a position of strength we have failed to take decisive action. We must not allow this to happen again."