Benchmarking is merely a process - what should concern teachers is the outcome, writes Fergal McCarthy, honorary secretary of the TUI

Benchmarking is advanced as a major reason for the conflict within the education sector. It is alleged that benchmarking will destroy the education system by introducing crude measures of a teacher's work, forcing unacceptable changes in teachers' conditions and destroying forever the caring attitude in schools. This view is mistaken and untrue.

Benchmarking is simply a process through which the pay of public-sector workers is determined. No other group of public-sector workers in the caring professions have opted out of the benchmarking process on the basis that it will destroy their profession. Nurses, doctors, social workers and psychologists have participated in benchmarking. Could they all be wrong?

Benchmarking is not dissimilar to the arbitration process, which public-sector trade unions have engaged in for many years. What benchmarking seeks to do is independently determine teachers' pay by reference to those in other comparable employment and by pitching the salary at a level that will attract and retain suitably qualified people.

Benchmarking differs from arbitration in that it is backed up by empirical, independent research; all public-service workers are being benchmarked at the same time, as opposed to separately; the comparisons are directed more towards the private sector as opposed to other public servants (cross-sectoral links).

Those who criticise benchmarking are the very people who complained most bitterly and vociferously that teachers' pay had fallen behind other comparable workers in the private sector. They appear not to want their view put to the test, as this is precisely what benchmarking was designed to do.

If the research is conducted and processed properly, I believe that teachers will get a fair increase in salary, because there is no doubt that salaries of teachers have fallen behind others to whom they can be reasonably compared.

The question arises as to whom teachers can be compared with. This is a difficult question. Teaching is a unique profession with no precise analogue in the private sector. What the TUI has done is to take a "basket" of comparably qualified people and compare their salaries to those of teachers after a period of time in employment, say five or 10 years. This comparison clearly shows that teachers' salaries have fallen behind. This is the position put to the benchmarking body.

It is alleged that unacceptable changes in teachers' conditions will be forced on them in return for a salary increase. The TUI view is that benchmarking will not impose changes in conditions. The salary award, whatever it may be, will be the price put on the job that is being done at the time of the review. It is equally the view that the massive changes in work and increased productivity of teachers will be taken into account. This is not simply my view, but that of the Labour Court in its finding in relation to the ASTI's industrial action.

It is not the process that should worry people, it is the outcome. We in TUI have taken the view that if the outcome is unacceptable to our membership, we will dispute the outcome by industrial action. What we will not do is to refuse to participate in the process.

The annual congress of the TUI decided that we should participate in benchmarking. That is what the executive of our union has done. Those who oppose this position describe themselves, ironically, as democrats and criticise the leadership as being undemocratic and dictatorial. Clearly this is a nonsense.

I believe that unreasonable fears have been raised about benchmarking. Untruths have been propagated in some sectors, with grave consequences for the profession and the students we teach.

At the present time both the INTO and the TUI are engaged in the benchmarking process. Submissions have been made, questionnaires filled in for research purposes and oral presentations made. The benchmarking body will report in June 2002.

At the height of the Great Depression, when the American people faced unemployment and deprivation, when morale was at an all-time low, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt said: "We have nothing to fear but fear itself." I believe that his words are valid today in relation to teachers' pay. If I am wrong, we have the solution in our own hands.

• Fergal McCarthy is honorary secretary of the TUI and a candidate in the forthcoming election for vice president.