The offer from the benchmarking pay review will concentrate minds in teacher unions in the coming weeks, writes Sean Flynn, Education Editor
The pay offer to teachers from benchmarking is neither a bonanza nor a disaster; it is somewhere in between.
On the face of it an offer of 10-15 per cent is something short of the ATM cash machine signalled by Senator Joe O'Toole. But the deal does not herald the end of teaching as we know it. There is no performance-related pay and, it appears, there are few strings attached. The dire warnings by some in the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI) that benchmarking would demand Japanese-style productivity from teachers have not come to pass.
The Government can be expected to talk up the deal. It will say that the new offer is in addition to the 22 per cent-plus, which teachers have already received from the current pay deal. One teaching union figure was also talking up the deal yesterday. "By any standards an offer of about 12 per cent represents a good deal; it is more than teachers have ever won from a salary pay review."
It can be expected that both the Irish National Teachers' Organisation (INTO) and the Teachers' Union of Ireland (TUI) will take some time before framing a response to the offer. Both unions will want to explore the details. In particular, they will want to know if the long 24-point pay scale for teachers' pay is to be cut. The INTO will also want to know if there is a recommended increase in the allowance for school principals.
Earlier this year, Senator Joe O'Toole said that benchmarking needed to deliver three main elements. These were:
- Provide a salary of €50,000 for the unpromoted teacher.
- Provide a principal's allowance, beginning at €12,500.
- Cut the teachers' pay scale by half - from 24 points to 12.
It is too early to say if the benchmarking report will meet these criteria. An offer of about 10-15 per cent across the board would bring in some of these demands, but the devil will be in the detail.
At this stage, it seems almost certain that both the INTO and the TUI will put the benchmarking offer either to a special congress or to a full ballot of members. For their own reasons, both unions will want to talk up the offer. Both decided to remain within the partnership tent, even when the ASTI voted to go its own way. Both would like to portray the report as a vindication of their policy.
Ideally, they would like to turn around to members and trumpet a good deal, achieved without resorting to the more aggressive approach of the ASTI. The message will be: the ASTI is bruised and battered after a two-year war of attrition. But what has the union actually achieved?
Which brings us to the ASTI itself. The union famously opted out of benchmarking amid fears that Irish teachers would be forced to deliver the kind of productivity favoured by the Toyota plant in Nagasaki.
It has not worked out like that. At the same time, an offer of about 10-15 per cent is well short of the famous 30 per cent demanded by the ASTI. Or is it? In fact, the union has never clarified what precisely it wanted. Was it 30 per cent including the national pay deal? Was it a once-off payment? Or was it to be spread over a three- or four-year period?
FOR all that, an offer of about 10-15 per cent is unlikely to impress the new leadership, elected at the union's highly charged annual conference in April. The incoming president, Mr P.J. Sheehy, and the incoming vice-president, Mr Pat Cahill, have both been vociferous critics of benchmarking. Both have been openly critical of the more measured approach to pay negotiations favoured by general secretary, Mr Charlie Lennon.
But the ASTI now faces some difficult choices. After a two-year campaign, is it now ready to crank up the machine and unleash a fresh rash of industrial action? Are its members ready to support a fresh round of strikes and disruption? Is there any sign that the Government will improve on the offer - especially if the other teaching unions accept it. There are other pressures on the Government, not least the faltering state of the public finances.
For his part, the new Minister for Education, Mr Dempsey, will desperately want to bring closure to the whole damaging ASTI dispute. He will hope that the benchmarking report will open the way for him to do this. He will hope that benchmarking will herald a prolonged period of peace and stability in the classroom.
But an offer of about 10-15per cent provides no guarantees. It is as someone once said good but not great; decent but not over-generous. Everything will turn on the response of the teaching unions; they have much to ponder in the coming weeks.