The TUI is no longer prepared to be the nice guy of the teacher movement, it was made clear yesterday, reports Emmet Oliver, Education Correspondent in Cork
How many different ways can you say the same thing? Ask the Teachers' Union of Ireland.
Yesterday its leaders ransacked the thesaurus for fresh ways to describe its threatened industrial action against the Government over pay. The union has made it clear if benchmarking does not deliver there will be sustained industrial action in hundreds of schools in September.
The TUI has been threatening this for months, but with the benchmarking report due in early summer its threats have taken on an ominous and urgent air and it does not intend to remain in the ASTI's slipstream much longer.
Thus yesterday the wordsmiths were out in force. "Pay the teachers or pay the price", "the die is now cast", "we have made the investment, now we want the dividend" were just some of the slogans emanating from the podium.
Some TUI members have worried over the last year about their radical clothes being pinched by their ASTI colleagues.
While the ASTI is sometimes snidely referred to as the "NASTIs" by their opponents, the TUI is growing weary of being described as "patient" and, wait for it, "sensible" by politicians and media commentators. "We are not used to being the nice guys," said one veteran TUI conference-goer in Cork.
But after a fiery speech yesterday by president John MacGabhann, who may have felt the union needed to show it could also hang tough, their minds were probably put at rest. While his speech was long and covered a range of local and national educational issues, the central message could be boiled down to five words.
No more Mr Nice Guy.
Unlike the ASTI's episodic strike action last year, MacGabhann said his union would take "systematic, decisive and unapologetic industrial action" in September if benchmarking was a failure. Crucially, he said the union would sustain its action until it got the pay award it wanted.
Members lapped this message up, although many hope it will not come to that. The TUI, unlike the ASTI, contains almost 3,000 third-level members, and this complicates the picture greatly. For example, what happens if TUI lecturers do well out of benchmarking and TUI teachers do not? The TUI leadership - John MacGabhann and general secretary Jim Dorney - have invested a lot in the benchmarking process and they are crossing their metaphorical fingers in anticipation.
The appearance at the conference of ICTU chief, David Begg, also illustrates that the wider trade union movement believes it owes something of a debt to Messrs MacGabhann and Dorney.
Begg, whose speech was well received, said there was nobody's counsel he more valued than Dorney's. The ICTU has become the bête noire of some teachers, particularly ASTI members, but the TUI has stayed firmly on board, despite the odd salvo from internal critics.
If the TUI had pulled out of ICTU in the last two years, like the ASTI, it would have posed serious problems for congress. But while there are still plenty of radical voices in the union, most of them see little point in taking action until benchmarking does its worst (or best) for teachers.
The Minister for Education, Dr Woods, is due to address the union today. While he is likely to thank it for its patience and restraint, the TUI has no shortage of other issues for him.
Mr MacGabhann and Mr Dorney yesterday said partnership at local level had broken down in many institutions (for example a strike is due in Co Sligo shortly) and the Department had done little to restore it. They also said the Department was an administrative shambles despite recent reforms.
But while important issues such as further education, teachers' pensions and indiscipline in schools, get the odd mention, there is little escaping the pay battle, although it is not as contentious at the TUI conference, and the ASTI's agonies show no sign of splitting the TUI.
As one member said, in many schools the two unions compete doggedly for members.