Sir, - The Review Body on Higher Remuneration in the Public Sector granted pay increases ranging from 18.7 per cent to 33.3 per cent and, as I understand it, this has also been sanctioned by ICTU. The Taoiseach, in a recent article in your newspaper, asked what the ASTI strike was about. As a member of the ASTI, I would like to tell the Taoiseach that our strike was simply about a pay increase - similar to the one that has now been sanctioned by his Government.
I would also remind him that the action by his Government before Christmas in not paying me on a day when I was at work was, in my opinion, illegal. The most disturbing aspect of this action was the silence of the trade union movement and the leaders in ICTU at this flagrant breach of a natural and constitutional right to be paid for work done.
In this materialistic society of ours, with the decline in the influence of the Hierarchy, it seems to me that ICTU has taken on this role. Its leaders see themselves as the modern bishops, with their doctrines of no salvation outside ICTU and the PPF as the only show in town. The ASTI, like any other trade union, has a constitutional right to leave ICTU and to pursue its pay claim independently. We still live in a democracy where all citizens must be treated equally. All we in the ASTI are saying is that we would like to be treated in exactly the same way as politicians and higher civil servants were in the Buckley Report. Grant us our pay increase now. - Yours, etc.,
Pat Cahill, (Standing Committee, Region 13, ASTI), Whitehall Road, Dublin 12.