DELEGATES at the TUI congress voted overwhelmingly in favour of a motion deploring the provisions of the Employment Equality Bill. The motion claimed the proposed legislation would have the effect of regarding community and comprehensive schools as denominational.
A heated debate among TUI delegates look place in Ennis, Co Clare, at the same time as the Equality Bill was being considered in Dublin by a meeting of the Council of Stale, convened by the President, Mrs Robinson.
The TUI assistant general secretary, Mr Declan Glynn, described the Bill as a "repugnant piece of legislation" and said it should have no place in our society. The union was opposed to the Bill on the grounds that section 37 undermined the rights of teachers as workers and citizens of the State he told delegates.
Teachers' employment and promotional prospects would bee subject to an assessment on a "crude religious scale" and this was anathema to the TUI, he said.
Mr Glynn warned of inherent dangers in the Bill, which he said went against the freedoms enshrined in the Constitution. He told delegates he was confident the Council of State would refer the Bill to the Supreme Court and that, ultimately, it would be deemed to be unconstitutional.
The motion from Dublin Community and Comprehensive branch slated that "congress deplores the provisions of the Employment Equality Bill which would have the effect of regarding community and comprehensive schools as denominational and would adversely affect the conditions of service of members in those schools, as well as infringing: their fundamental civil liberties". It further instructs the executive to initiate a campaign to have the Bill withdrawn, or the offending provisions deleted or amended.
The motion proposer, Mr Paddy Lyons, said community and comprehensive teachers entered into their jobs with a freedom of conscience and a right to their own social views and values. "We feel greatly threatened as this Bill undermines our rights as teachers and takes away our civil liberties," he said.
Many teachers in community and comprehensive schools had made the decision to pursue their teaching careers in non-denominational or multi denominational schools, said Mr Lyons. The new Bill would copperfasten the fact that, in certain circumstances, community and comprehensive schools could be deemed to be denominational.
Teachers who chose to teach in an environment which allowed them freedom of conscience now found themselves being railroaded into work conditions which would result in an erosion of the protections that they would have assumed as public sector employees, he said.
The legislation placed arbitrary powers in the hands of boards of management to interfere in one's life as a private citizen, he said. "In these schools, TUI members would be answerable to crank, unelected members of boards of management who might be peddling their own agenda."
A further industrial relations motion demanded that the Minister for Education address the fact that the VEC area was the only sector in Irish education which was still denied access to the industrial relations machinery of the State.
This motion, which was carried by a majority of delegates, also stated: "In national negotiations with the IVEA, and in particular because of the anti-trade union behaviour of a small number of VECs, it is virtually impossible to resolve even the most minor of disputes without recourse to industrial action."