Benchmarking provides opportunties and some potential difficulties for teaching unions, writes Sean Flynn, Education Editor
The 13 per cent pay offer to teachers from benchmarking is neither a cash bonanza nor a total disaster; it is somewhere in the middle range.
All sides of the Great Benchmarking Debate from ardent supporter Senator Joe O'Toole to fierce critic Ms Bernadine O'Sullivan can claim vindication. O'Toole can now confidently rebut the claims of Ms O'Sullivan and others in the ASTI that benchmarking would herald the end of teaching as we know it.
The hardliners in the ASTI claimed benchmarking would lead to the "industrialisation" of teaching, with performance-related pay. They said it would threaten public service pensions.
None of these fears has come to pass. Aside from a vague commitment to co-operation with "modernisation", there is no performance-related pay, no threat to pensions and no new productivity demands. Teachers are being offered 13 per cent with few strings attached.
On the other hand, the 13 per cent offer is something short of the ATM cash machine promised by Senator O'Toole. Teachers may have fared better than most other sectors from the process, but 13 per cent is some distance from the expectations of teachers even a year ago.
But the changing economic backdrop has reduced these expectations and perhaps weakened the stomach for battle among teachers. The changing mood was evident recently when over 87 per cent of TUI members voted to back the Government's revised offer on supervision payments.
One ASTI hardliner admits he was stunned by this vote from a traditionally militant union. Teachers, he said, appeared to be settling for a quiet life again.
Even before the report is published today, there are already signals that the INTO and the TUI are ready to cut a deal. The TUI's wily general secretary, Mr Jim Dorney, said yesterday the union's decision to co-operate with benchmarking had been fully vindicated. The body, he said, had acknowledged how teachers' pay had fallen behind. The new general secretary of the INTO, Mr John Carr, was also cautiously optimistic.
For both unions the key issue now will be the phasing-in of the new deal. The Government is already committed to paying 25 per cent of the award from last December. It would like to delay full payment until 2004, but the speedy implementation of the Buckley review findings for the most senior ranks of the public service will not help its case.
Both the INTO and the TUI will not be slow to remind the Government that they risked a great deal by staying within the partnership tent and signing up to benchmarking while the ASTI closed schools and cut up rough outside it.
Both the TUI and the INTO believe it is now payback time. If the Government agrees to the swift implementation of the 13 per cent. both unions are likely to recommend acceptance of the offer to members in separate ballots in the autumn.
Sources in both unions were anxious to talk up the deal yesterday. One said: "Teachers have got 13 per cent from benchmarking, 22 per cent from the national pay deal, up to 3 per cent from the new supervision offer plus the tax cuts of recent years. By any standards we have done well despite all the commotion from the ASTI."
Which brings us to the ASTI itself. The union famously opted out of benchmarking and has consistently refused to have any truck with the process. The new leadership of the union, the incoming president, Mr P.J. Sheehy and vice-president, Mr Pat Cahill, have been ferocious critics of benchmarking. Both have been critical of their own general secretary, Mr Charlie Lennon, and his more measured approach to pay negotiations.
The new leadership now needs to address some awkward questions. Is it ready to back strike action to secure more than 13 per cent? Is there any realistic hope that the re-elected Government will give in to its demand, especially given the state of the public finances? Will its members back a new wave of disruption in the autumn? Will the union itself come under grassroots pressure to put the benchmarking offer to a ballot of its own members?