Sir, - As a current member of the ASTI and a former member of the Central Excecutive Council, I am uneasy at the latest step by my union.
Many others share the same unease but refrain from doing anything about it lest they are accused of sabotaging "the war effort". They should be reminded of the maxim of Sir Thomas More - qui tacet consentire - and take on everyone who has led us into this mess. Many refrain from doing so lest they be intimidated, shouted down or even treated to photocopies of articles in your paper by a former ASTI president.
We all accept that teachers are underpaid, but now the dispute has moved to the method of payment. We sought comparison with the "private sector", but the sole arbitrators had to be ourselves and not any independent benchmarking body that would not understand our style, our dedication nor our professionalism. The taxpayer must pay out a sizeable amount - but please dont expect anything in return; that has already been delivered. Of course, our own union sold us short by allowing a whole load of new courses and curriculums to be foisted on us.
We still have not grasped that our two "sister" unions are happy with the benchmarking process and see some possibility of progress on payment for supervision and substitution while we move on to another pitch and throw totally unrealisable objectives into the debate. One wonders why we forgot to look for payment for the cousins in America.
Well, what can we do to resolve the current impasse? We can demand a special convention to rescind the current "strategy"; withold our subscriptions or even attent branch meetings; incur the wrath of the hardliners while demanding that the current nonsense cease and that the survey, which showed that 74 per cent of our membership wished to make a submission to benchmarking, be implemented. The silent must say that enough is enough.
Finally, may I point out that the ASTI's Central Executive Council is not very representative when it is realised that once a branch reaches 100 members it is entitled to three CEC representatives: the maximum permitted by rule. Thus a branch of 119 will have the same representation on this council as a branch of 772. - Yours, etc.,
EAMON KEARNEY,
Tramore Lawn,
Cork.
Sir, - As members of the INTO, we dissociate ourselves from the recent statements by Joe O'Toole on the ASTI and its current dispute with the Department of Education and Science.
Mr O'Toole is spot on when he talks of cliques running the Irish trade union movement. However, he has targeted the wrong people. In contrast to the ASTI, where all issues have been discussed, almost ad nauseum, by annually elected, truly representative bodies such as the Standing Committee and the Central Executive Committee (comprising 150 elected members as opposed to 15 in the INTO), the clique that runs the ICTU have made many unrepresentative decisions.
The latest was the backing of the Nice Treaty, without any consultation with ICTU members, which showed them to be totally out of touch with the workers they purport to represent. Joe O'Toole should maybe get his own house in order before attacking trade union members who just don't happen to agree with him.
His own leadership and advice will soon be put to the test when the Benchmarking Body reports. Already, right-wing economists such as Moore McDowell are reading between the lines of projected Government spending on teachers' pay in this years Budget and conccluding that the ASTI may well be vindicated in its stance. Benchmarking may not be the goose that lays the golden egg.
Joe O'Toole seems to have forgotten some basic tenets of the trade union movement. The ASTI, for the crime of stepping outside the new ICTU "corporate" trade union system, was the victim of a vicious, orchestrated campaign by a right-wing Government and its friends in the media. Instead of standing against this, he colluded in it. Forgotten is the old phrase of Connolly's and Larkin's trade unionism: "An injury to one is an injury to all."
We express our solidarity with our colleagues in the ASTI and call on Joe O'Toole to withdraw his comments immediately. - Yours, etc.,
DONAL O'DONOGHUE,
SHEILA JUDGE,
TONY BOWE,
CREA RYDER,
DEIRDRE CRONIN,
JOE DUFFY,
COLM Ó RIAIN,
UNA NÍ RIAIN,
CARL O'BRIEN,
Rialto,
Dublin 8.