More than 600 secondary schools will be closed for up to four days next month due to a strike by the main secondary teachers' union. Members have voted overwhelmingly for the action.
Teachers will stage a national one-day strike on Tuesday, November 14th. But the Association of Secondary Teachers, Ireland (ASTI) is also planning to withdraw staff from voluntary lunchtime and yard supervision on at least three days during November. As part of an effective "work-to-rule", teachers will also withdraw short-term cover for absent colleagues.
Schools will not be in a position to accept students, for health and safety reasons, if there is no yard supervision or illness cover, according to Mr George O'Callaghan, general secretary of the Joint Management Body, which manages more than 400 secondary schools. "Boards of management will be advising parents to keep their children at home," he told The Irish Times.
ASTI is also planning a further national one-day strike in early December. Ninety per cent of its members voted for a campaign of industrial action in pursuit of their 30 per cent pay claim. In a record 70 per cent turn-out, almost 10,000 secondary teachers endorsed a strategy which allows the union executive to pursue a range of options. This includes possible disruption of next year's Leaving and Junior Certificates, which begin with oral exams in the spring.
ASTI president Mr Don McCluskey said the vote demonstrated the anger of secondary teachers and gave the leadership the "strongest possible mandate" to pursue a broad range of options. Teachers, he said, were fair, reasonable and professional people who had no wish to damage their students. "But the Government, by refusing to deal with their pay claim, has left them with no choice," he said.
Mr Charlie Lennon, ASTI's general secretary, said the 30 per cent demand was a modest one given the rate of inflation. He said the union would welcome the support of the other teaching unions, the Irish National Teachers' Organisation (INTO) and the Teachers' Union of Ireland (TUI).
The ASTI action will be the first teachers' pay-related strike in 15 years. On that occasion, all three teacher unions presented a united front on pay. This time, ASTI is alone. Both the INTO and the TUI accepted the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness (PPF) and are seeking further pay increases through a benchmarking mechanism which pegs public sector pay to trends in the private sector.
The Government has refused to negotiate with ASTI since it withdrew from talks on the PPF. Last month, the Public Service Arbitration Board rejected its 30 per cent demand. The powerful ASTI vote will intensify the pressure on the other teaching unions to secure more money than proposed under the PPF.