In the eyes of the public the ASTI seems "more involved in internal internecine disputes than in a coherent and rational strategy to resolve its pay dispute", the chief executive of the Labour Relations Commission, Mr Kieran Mulvey, told the conference.
Mr Mulvey, a former general secretary of ASTI, urged delegates to rejoin ICTU and said delegates should "reflect very seriously" on the current action. He said he was speaking out of "a genuine sense of concern and sadness".
As Mr Mulvey questioned the approach of ASTI, he was heckled repeatedly from the floor. Responding to an address by President Catherine Fitzpatrick, he referred to ASTI as "this troubled ship and crew in very turbulent waters".
The nature of the business of industrial relations was compromise. Every dispute had to have a solution and preferably one which had been mutually agreed and over which parties retained ownership.
It was "a question of having a sense of the potential, achieving the possible, avoiding the cul-de-sacs and knowing where and when to have an exit strategy," Mr Mulvey said.
It was "not about ruling out the mechanisms to achieve solutions, or avoiding any realistic opportunity to resolve the issues in dispute by a blind adherence to coercive activities which soon become self-defeating in their effect".
He said parties in disputes had to make it possible for each side to deal with each other, and impossible demands and terms for settlement could not be conciliated if these become a precondition to the negotiations themselves.
"Time and time again those of us, who behind the scenes have attempted to establish the parameters for a settlement in the ASTI dispute, have been thwarted by such decisions," Mr Mulvey said.
It was "a high-risk strategy" for any trade union to decide to stay outside of the national process agreed upon between the national representative organisations for the determination of pay and allied conditions of employment including the important decisions on the support plans for education.
Mr Mulvey said the response to the benchmarking report would be determined largely by those unions affiliated to ICTU and by any new national agreements negotiated by the social partners.
Referring to the "internecine dispute", he said union deliberations at central executive committee or at standing committee level, were "an open book to be read in the next day's national media with no credit or advantage to the interests of the members of to the reputation of the Association".
Earlier ASTI president Ms Catherine Fitzpatrick was heckled when she suggested the need for changes in voting arrangements within the union. She said the current practice of holding branch ballots did "not facilitate or encourage a maximum turnout".