Time for union leaders to provide responsible leadership during our week in the public eye

For a week every year public attention, through the national media, focuses on what teachers have to say. Throughout the rest of the year we labour away in our classrooms, educating children to the best of our ability. We give selflessly, because we derive huge personal satisfaction from this giving of our own skills, both within the classroom and through extracurricular activities. We love what we do, and it shows in our relationships with each other, our students and their parents. Most parents who have experienced the reality of day-to-day Irish education would attest to this.

Unfortunately, in the speeches and images transmitted through the print and broadcast media this week, teachers, through the words and actions of our “representatives” will present a very different self-portrait. Watching our deliberations during the week are many who may have lost jobs or have yet to secure a job. There will also be large numbers of workers and retired people whose defined pensions have collapsed in value, leaving them to face the future in financial uncertainty.

Many teachers who do not engage in trade-union activities cringe with embarrassment at how our profession presents itself during Easter week. They realise that what they see in the media does not reflect their views, but given the representative structures of our trade unions, which require attendance at evening branch meetings, they feel powerless to influence how we are perceived through our teacher conferences.

This year, the Government indicated that, to comply with the terms of our bailout, it would have to reduce the public pay bill by another €1 billion over the next three years.

The full-time officials of the INTO, Asti and the TUI engaged in long and detailed discussions regarding the implementation of this Government's decision to ensure the best possible outcome for all teachers.

Our representatives secured many positive outcomes for members, particularly those earning under €65,000 and teachers recruited in the past two years, although the resulting pay structure provides little financial incentive for teachers to seek promotion to management grades.

Everyone knows that the cuts indicated by the Government will happen with or without the agreement of the trade union membership. Our elected representatives know that the deal will go through, provided union members in Siptu, Impact, the INTO and a number of smaller unions follow the public and private advice of their union leadership. They know the deal on offer represents a far better one than an across-the-board cut of more than 7 per cent. Yet they have chosen to play to the galleries by recommending a rejection of the agreement and, in the case of the TUI, have brought home a No vote.

We will read about and listen to rousing speeches about how teachers have given enough already through cuts imposed since 2008, which will be cheered to the rafters by delegates.

What we need, but won’t get, is honesty about the necessity to support this agreement, given our collective wish to exit the bailout programme and restore our economy to sustainable growth.

Jack O'Connor of Siptu and Shay Cody of Impact, among others, have had the courage to outline this perspective to their members in recent weeks.

Is it too much to ask that our representatives at this week’s conferences would provide the same quality of reflective leadership that they will instinctively give their own students when they return to their classrooms next Monday?

Providing real national leadership from within our teacher unions this week is in the long-term national interest of both teachers and our education system. We have really important things to say about current Government proposals which will determine the quality of our education system for generations to come.

Let's not drown out our own voices through how we behave during the coming week, when the nation's eyes and ears are focused on our deliberations.

Brian Mooney is a teacher at Oatlands College, Dublin