PIERCE H. PURCELL,
Sir, - Since Your Education Editor, Sean Flynn, referred to me in his article "ASTI moderates sidelined at angry conference" (The Irish Times, April 5th), I'd like to make it clear that the vast majority of the delegates and CEC members in Bundoran treated me with customary courtesy and joviality. A few of them were pretty sour over my public utterance of heresy, but fortunately I'm as thick as a plank, and if they intimidated me, I never noticed.
Mr Flynn is perfectly correct in writing that teachers are very angry. Would you blame them? Their salaries have fallen seriously behind those of comparable professions. It takes 25 years to reach the maximum on the salary scale. It takes 40 years to qualify for a full pension, and now there are threats that the present miserable pension arrangements may be worsened. In addition, the job of the secondary teacher is becoming ever more difficult.
The big question now facing the ASTI leadership is how to translate this collective anger into positive action in furtherance of a proper professional salary. The most obvious step is to make immediate contact with the INTO and TUI in order to formulate a joint strategy of industrial action for the new school year in the event that the benchmarking report is inadequate. This would have the twofold effect of raising the morale of secondary teachers, and also of acting as a warning shot across the bows of the benchmarking body and of the Departments of Education and Finance.
So far as public service pensions are concerned, the sooner the ASTI rejoins ICTU the better. The public service unions have enough clout to prevent any worsening of pension conditions. The ASTI should be in there, spearheading the resistance, and demanding the implementation of ASTI pension policy, so that teachers may retire on full pension after 30 years' service, as is the case with gardaí.
What I really dislike about Mr Flynn's report is the over-simplified division of the union into the Charlie Lennon wing and the Bernadine O'Sullivan wing. ASTI members are far too complex to be pigeon-holed in this way. As the sole member of the radical-dissident-militant-fundamentalist Purcell wing, I know that secondary teachers simply want a professional salary and professional working conditions. If the Government has any sense, it will look after the teaching profession properly. Otherwise the future of this country does not bear thinking about. - Yours, etc.,
PIERCE H. PURCELL,
Davis Terrace,
Clonmel,
Co Tipperary.
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Sir, - I must take you to task about the title of the letter from Colm McElroy, "Politics of the ASTI Pay Dispute" (April 9th). This letter was certainly not about that.
If action taken following proper trade union practices causes this sort of reaction, we must surely ask: What has happened to trade unionism? What herd instinct has drive a fellow worker to fail to mention any facts about teaching except those he can disparage? The ultimate test of any concession is whether it is abused. Teachers have conditions attached to their job. These conditions are not abused and were agreed because of the nature of the work.
There are emerging, people who, for various reasons, want to split the ASTI. There are those who are already politically committed elsewhere. There are those, above all, who have never accepted the individual and group right to non-conformist action.
The collective union has made a stand. Anybody shouting: "It is time to make a stand" surely needs to look again. - Yours, etc.
JOHN J CLARKIN,
Ballinablake,
Curracloe,
Co Wexford.