John White Acting general secretary
What is it like to work in the ASTI?
There is a tremendous variety of activities involved in trade union work - drafting submissions, negotiating with the Department of Education and Science and school management, administering a busy office (which logs 1,000 incoming calls a week) and, most satisfying of all, sorting out problems for individual teachers.
Trade union work by definition involves dealing with conflict situations and this can engender tension, but you have to try and make this tension creative rather than corrosive and always have a problem- solving mind-set.
What was your last job and how does it compare?
I was a secondary teacher for 20 years in De La Salle Secondary School, Dundalk, Co Louth. Though people always say to me that trade union work must be very stressful, the kind of performance required of teachers by 30 vibrant adolescents is also very relentless and demanding.
What's the best part of your job?
The process of solving problems - whether it is an individual's difficulties with the Department, finding the appropriate language for a document or reaching a solution in negotiations that both sides can support.
What's the hardest part of the job?
The most difficult part of the job is when we can't make progress in negotiations on advancing our policy and have to tell this to the executive and to our members.
What's the best place in the ASTI to retreat to when it all gets too much?
I try not to let this happen. I'm lucky to work in a very beautiful and historical part of Dublin city centre. My window overlooks Christchurch Cathedral. You can also see Gandon's Four Courts and the Spire in O'Connell Street from the ASTI's offices. These wonderful views somehow help you to keep things in perspective.
Who is your education idol?
Paul McLoughlin, a classroom teacher who taught me in Co Kilkenny - a schoolmaster in the best Goldsmith tradition. I like to believe that it is thousands of people like him who I am now serving.
If you could change one thing about the ASTI, what would it be?
I would like more of our 17,000 members actively involved in policy formation.
What's unique about the ASTI?
Teacher trade unions, including the ASTI, are unique in that they have a strong trade union mission, which I believe they carry out very effectively. At the same time, they have a central role in contributing to education policy through, for example, the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment which advises the Minister on what is taught in the classroom. These two roles are complementary in that improved salary and working conditions are obtainable by convincing the wider community of our professionalism; our professionalism demands the salary and working conditions of other professions.
