After a damaging five-month pay campaign, secondary teachers have now turned to the country's leading PR guru to advise them on the way forward.
Ms Terry Prone, a director of Carr Communications, addres sed the ASTI executive for 40 minutes yesterday. Her advice may be coveted in politics and business, but she only managed to take the podium after opposition to her address was resisted. Some members of the ASTI had objected to Ms Prone taking up their valuable time.
Ms Prone, whose client list is often said to be indistinguishable from Nealon's Guide to the Dail, gently advised the 180member ASTI executive to clean up its act - at least from a PR point of view. She began by saying she would not be telling them where it all went wrong. Media commentators had already done that.
Instead, she spoke about her personal "dirty dozen" PR mistakes which emerge when organisations come under intense pressure. In such circumstances, divisions which were simmering under the surface would come to the boil and the organisation would tend to shoot the messenger.
Ms Prone was received with polite and respectful applause. Afterwards one source said she had been "unexpectedly gentle" with her audience.
For reasons of client confidentiality, Ms Prone refused to discuss her talk when contacted by The Irish Times last night.
Among certain PR professionals, the ASTI pay campaign - which appeared at times to alienate the trade union movement, the media, parents and students - has now taken on the status of a case study. One experienced professional said the campaign should be subtitled: "How to Lose Friends and Not Influence People".
Last year, the union invested more than £200,000 in a TV campaign designed to soften public opinion. But its strategy of targeting exams - which has now been abandoned - lost it public support.
At its executive meeting yesterday, the union voted to defer a ballot due later this month on industrial action, writes Emmet Oliver. The ballot - on withdrawal from supervision and extra-curricular duties - will now take place in late September.
The union is waiting to see what will emerge from talks under way between the Department of Education and the other teaching unions on a pay structure for supervision.