A chara, – I refer to Sean Keavney’s letter (September 12th), in particular his incorrect assertion that the revised pay terms currently under consideration by public servants are “only helping to restore teacher pay to pre-economic crash levels”.
Teacher pay was finally restored to pre-austerity levels on October 1st, 2020, following intensive negotiations by teacher unions with the backing of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions.
These same teacher unions campaigned fervently to reverse pay inequality, which was imposed unilaterally on new entrants by two successive governments in 2011 and 2012. The starting salary of a primary teacher was slashed to €27,814 on February 1st, 2012.
The terms of the current public service agreement, Building Momentum, include the skipping of point 12 on the post-2010 primary teachers’ pay scale, thereby ensuring that graduates who entered the profession after 2010 will have no further losses in career earnings as compared to the career earnings of a 2010 entrant.
The proposals in the Review of Building Momentum will be going to a ballot of INTO members shortly.
If accepted by the majority of public servants, these proposals will significantly increase the starting salary of a primary school teacher to €41,385 from October next. These same proposals further increase the salaries of all primary teachers by an additional 6.5 per cent on top of the 2 per cent increases contained in the current agreement, thereby placing teachers’ salaries at least 8.5 per cent ahead of their pre-austerity levels.
Public servants on early scale-points, including teachers in the first seven years of their career, stand to receive higher percentage increases due to the trade union movement’s insistence on additional measures to target lower-paid public servants.
While the proposed pay agreement may not in its own right fully insulate workers against the economic hardship arising from a sharp increase in living costs, as a movement, trade unions are pressing Government to ensure that they deliver on their commitment to all citizens in the forthcoming budget, including measures to tackle the chronic housing crisis we are experiencing.
Mr Keavney questionably claims that “toothless unions” are “unable or unwilling to negotiate a deal that will significantly help” workers, despite the fact that the same unions committed to a public sector-wide campaign of industrial action over the summer in order to force Government back to the negotiation table, leading to this improved offer.
While everyone is entitled to their opinion, I would suggest a trade union movement that subsequently sharply secured a ¤1.6 billion package to protect the living standards of its members is far from “toothless”. – Yours, etc,
JOHN BOYLE,
General Secretary,
The Irish National
Teachers’ Organisation,
Dublin 1.