In a conciliatory move towards secondary teachers, the Minister for Education, Dr Woods, has signalled that they stand to gain pay increases of more than 10 per cent from the new benchmarking review body and secure salaries of up to £40,000 a year.
The Minister, whose appearance at the annual conference of the Association of Secondary Teachers, Ireland (ASTI) sparked a mass walkout and repeated barracking from delegates, also signalled that payment for unpaid supervision could begin to flow from September.
The fresh commitments come amid increasing pessimism in Government circles that the 17,000 ASTI members are poised to reject the revised Labour Court offer in next week's ballot. Today, the ASTI general secretary, Mr Charlie Lennon, will outline a range of options for industrial action if the court offer is rejected. The union, he said, now faces a stark choice. It could cut its losses and go into benchmarking, or continue its war of attrition.
Dr Woods is offering a range of conciliatory gestures including:
A commitment that teachers will emerge from benchmarking with at least a 10 per cent pay increase;
Salaries of up to £40,000 per year for un-promoted teachers with honours degrees;
Payment for unpaid supervision and substitution duties;
A halving of the current 25point incremental pay scale.
Dr Woods said that a salary target of £40,000 for most teachers was now realistic - given the increases flowing from the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness (PPF) and teachers' excellent prospects in the benchmarking body. The Government, he repeated, would not oppose the Labour Court finding that teachers had a strong case for a significant pay increase.
But he insisted that the Government would not allow any breach of the PPF, as this would have serious implications for investment. He said he was in no way perturbed by the protests, which saw about one-third of the 500 conference delegates walk out.
Most of the debate on the teachers' pay claim will be conducted behind closed doors today and tomorrow.
Commenting on the ASTI's strategy to gain a pay increase, Mr Lennon said that people had sought to undermine it. "I could give you an analysis of the strategy that is perfectly reasonable and rational. The problems with strategy are that it's been undermined to some extent . . . The strategy wasn't popular publicly in some respects, and that led to difficulties as well."
He felt that if the ASTI was planning a campaign again it would adopt basically the same strategy, but teachers would have to take a "hard look" at imposing a ban on examination work again in light of the vociferous public opposition to it. He felt it was unlikely that such a ban would be re-imposed.
Mr Lennon said there was overwhelming opposition to the Labour Court recommendation in the sense that nobody believed the recommendation was a response to their pay claim. The issue for members now was whether to go back into a campaign of action or take the benchmarking route.
The outgoing ASTI president, Mr Don McCluskey, received sustained applause when he told delegates that whatever decision they made at the forthcoming ballot their campaign for a pay increase would continue until it had achieved its aim.
In a boost for hard-liners within the union, Ms Patricia Wroe, an executive member, secured a very creditable 204 votes in the campaign for ASTI president. Ms Catherine Fitzpatrick, the current vice-president, was elected to the post with 253 votes.