Bernadine O'Sullivan, the immediate past president of ASTI, is widely regarded as the driving force behind ASTI's militancy in its dispute with the Government over pay. She denies her centrality to ASTI strategy but the line she favoured, of nonco-operation with the Department of Education and outright rejection of the Labour Court recommendations, were overwhelmingly endorsed at this week's convention.
She looks 10 years younger than her 50 years - or at least she did at the beginning of the interview, which went on for over three hours and ran to 18,719 words. (This article is about 4,000 words). The interview took place at her home in Terenure last Saturday. She was engaging about her background: born in Frossers in Donegal, went to a co-educational and multi-denominational school in Donegal town, Scoil na gCeitrremhaistir, then to UCD at Earlsfort Terrace (the student luminaries, she remembers, were Adrian Hardiman, Jeananne Crowley and Neil Jordan.)
Since she left UCD (she read English, history and philosophy and then a diploma in education) she has been teaching at St Mary's School for the Deaf at Cabra - she had wanted to teach deprived or disabled students. She now teaches English and religion there. She says she was most influenced by her father who died five years ago, her mother, who is still alive, her mother-in-law and by Fergal O'Connor, the Dominican priest who taught political philosophy at UCD from the 1960s until recently. She spoke admiringly of her husband, John, several times, about how he was a much better teacher than her, but she would probably do better in an "accountability" audit.
She has two children, a son aged 21 doing philosophy at Trinity, and a daughter aged 16 at secondary school. At times, her answers ran to over 1,000 words (more than writers in The Irish Times are allowed for a column) often not connected to the question. She had not given a newspaper interview for years and saw this as an opportunity to dispel negative public perceptions of her - her focus, she insisted again and again with some plausibility, was not to secure higher remuneration for herself, but to secure the future of teaching.
On the phone yesterday, (as agreed beforehand with her, to update the interview) it emerged that her husband, John O'Sullivan, is from Broadford, Co Limerick, where I too am from. We were at the national school in Broadford together and I knew well (and also admired) Bernadine O'Sullivan's mother-in-law, to whom she had referred. She had not mentioned this connection in the course of the three-hour interview.
VB: How did you get involved in ASTI? BO'S: I was a member from 1972 when I started teaching. I attended my first conference in 1982 but only as an observer. In 1985 I attended for the first time as a delegate. This was when the coalition government (of Garret FitzGerald) refused to pay an arbitration award. Gemma Hussey was minister for education at the time. In the early 1990s I spoke on a number of motions, mainly to do with education for the disabled, and a number of people suggested to me that I should stand for the executive. I decided to have a go and I wrote to every one of the branches of ASTI in the country, putting forward my views on the future of secondary education. One of the things I put in it was that I wanted to protect teaching as a profession and the long-term interest of education in this country.
I was very proud the day I was elected because up to 500 people from around the country took part in the vote and I topped the poll.
VB: How did you come to stand for the vice-presidency (up to now the person elected vice-president of ASTI automatically assumed the presidency the following year)? BO'S: I was asked to stand for vice-president. I was nominated by 35 branches out of 56, the highest ever recorded in the history of the ASTI. I became president the following year. I just wrote to people and told them what my priorities for teaching were.
VB: And it was while you were president from August 1st 99 to July 31st, 2000, that ASTI opted out of ICTU and that ASTI was set on its course of confrontation with the Government. BO'S: Yes. I'll tell you the background to that. The conventions before I became president were dominated by the pay issue. At Easter 1999 it was agreed that the three teacher unions (ASTI, TUI and INTO) would pass a common motion demanding salary increases for teachers - the three executives had been meeting together prior to then. Teachers had fallen substantially behind other groups in terms of pay, so we were seeking to catch up on that and also seeking what was known as "an early settlers' claim", which was remuneration for having been the first unions to sign up with the partnership agreements. It was agreed among the teacher unions that there would have to be a review clause in any new partnership agreement which would result in additional pay for teachers in the lifetime of the new agreement.
Towards the ends of the talks on the new partnership agreement, it was reported to us that early settlers was only going to be 3 per cent and that it was conditional on signing up to a new agreement. Also, part of the new agreement was to be a new way of paying public servants. It introduced the idea of performance-related pay.
Our CEC (central executive committee) met and decided to leave the Irish Congress of Trade Unions by a two-thirds majority, because the early settlers got only 3 per cent, they'd expected it to be much more and because it was conditional on signing up to a new agreement. Also because this new PPF (Programme for Prosperity and Fairness) had this new concept of paying public servants and this performance-related pay is to be rewarded in non-pensionable lump sums. That's the key to the whole thing.
The TUI agreed to stay in ICTU because they took out the words "performance-related pay" from the PPF but benchmarking is really linked to performance-related pay because the brief of the benchmarking body is to compare public service pay and conditions and the way in which reward systems are structured with those in the private sector. This has serious implications for the pensions of those currently at work and for our retired members. In a ballot the TUI members rejected the PPF but because they were part of ICTU they had to go along with it once a majority endorsed the agreement. In the INTO Senator O'Toole, vice-president of ICTU and one of the architects of the PPF, he was on the airwaves and in the print media advocating it and it still only got through by 0.5 per cent of the INTO ballot.
The basic objection was not about money but about the introduction of targets into the educational system - the fact that the last 4 per cent was conditional on a target that was set and that we had to meet. This target-setting was regarded as having damaged the educational system in England, where targets were set and the emphasis was on recording and testing at the expense of creative teaching.
I must say I admire Senator O'Toole tremendously because he managed to persuade his members to sign up to an agreement which said, and this was in March 2000, which said monies, if any, accruing under benchmarking will not be paid until after 2003. I think that's a remarkable feat! (She inserted the exclamation mark.)
VB: What basis of the 30 per cent claim? BO'S: The basis of the claim was that there is a pay claim for the year 2000 and we had cost of living in there, so we would have accepted another 5.5 per cent cost of living, down to 24.5 per cent and then certain proportions of that for past productivity. A certain proportion, the cost of living, past productivity, change in posts that were already filled, those kind of things.
VB: If the Government had given in to you they would have destroyed the partnership network, for unions who had opted out of the PPF had benefited spectacularly, as ASTI had hoped to do, it would have encouraged others to break the partnership route. BO'S: All of that was debated at CEC and the feeling was that they had nothing to lose. In other words, we had stayed in, we had been the models, model trade unionists, and that the partnership thing was just a disaster, an absolute disaster for teachers and the educational system. We have transformed the educational system and our salaries had become depressed over the lifetime of these agreements. In the new PPF there is no mechanism for teachers to get additional pay, no mechanism, no flexibility.
VB: But there's benchmarking? BO'S: Which is a fundamental new way of paying public servants and which was going to come only in 2003. Even if we didn't have a pay claim at ASTI we would have fundamental objections to bench marking. Anyway, why should we be confined to benchmarking when so many others are not? The IFUT university professors did not want to be benchmarked. IFUT wrote to Mr McCreevy, McCreevy passed the letter on to the Taoiseach and the upshot of it is that the IFUT university professors have been awarded 14.8 per cent in addition to the PPF without having the benchmarking criteria applied. The TDs did not have the benchmarking criteria applied.
We have just experienced one of the biggest scams in our history with the selling of the Buckley report [on pay levels for politicians and higher level public servants] as benchmarking because all of those groups, the TDs, the Senators, CEOs, what they got was straightforward relativity within the public sector. There was no comparison with conditions in the private sector.
The only people who had the bench marking criteria applied to them by the Buckley committee were a small number of civil servants and chief executives of semi-State bodies, and it was recommended that several of them get no increase. The reason they weren't recommended an increase was when Mr Buckley looked at their conditions, their holiday entitlements, their pension entitlements and compared them with someone in the private sector, he said no, you're not entitled to an increase.
In the Buckley report there is a famous quote: "It is not well enough understood that in the benchmarking process there are winners and losers." Do you seriously believe that the benchmarking body is going to deliver huge increases for public servants? Just remember there are 50,000 teachers.
VB: Why not take your chances and see what comes out of the benchmarking process? BO'S: I look at the composition of the body, which is mostly made up from people in the private sector. I look at the criteria and the terms of reference, which says you have to take in the pay and conditions of those in the public sector, compare them with those in the private sector.
VB: Isn't that fair? BO'S: What I'm saying to you is that there is a fundamental difference. Up until now, there were unique conditions to teaching.
They are now going to be factored into the equation in the comparison and that is a fundamental new way of paying public servants and has implications for pensioners . . . What will happen, I would think, is that initially there might be something in the benchmarking process to get us into that process but if it's something the Government wanted, I do not have confidence in it to deliver for us.
We want to be reasonably well paid so that the next cohort of teachers into teaching will actually stay there. That they'll go into teaching and they'll say yes, I'm going to do this for the next 30 years. This is what I want to do with my life. That is what is the backbone of our education system at the moment.
VB: So this is all a disinterested campaign, what you are fighting for is not more money for yourselves but for the good of the next generation? BO'S: You see, while it's in the interest of the public to see that teachers are well paid, you and I know that politicians and governments, they don't give two hoots about the long-term interests of teaching or education. All they're interested in is the public service pay and the pensions bill.
VB: In his letter to ASTI of March 14th, Bertie Ahern makes the point that the ASTI pay claim has gone through several independent adjudications and ASTI has rejected the recommendations of each of these bodies. The claim was examined by an arbitrator and rejected. A facilitator was appointed who recommended that the Labour Court examine the claim, the Labour Court did so and you rejected the outcome. The Labour Court clarified its recommendations and now you want to have that rejected as well. BO'S: Unfortunately, the arbitration board didn't arbitrate anything. Then the facilitator shunted us off to the Labour Court and they could have done something to resolve the situation but didn't. They didn't budge an inch.
Knowing full well our objection to the PPF and to benchmarking, they simply recommended that we accept the PPF and benchmarking.
VB: But the Labour Court has held that you have a sustainable case for an increase and has clarified what is involved in benchmarking. Why now don't you simply get on with it and see what the outcome is? BO'S: Because once you buy into the system then you're accepting this new way of paying public servants. Anyway, there will be no payments under benchmarking until June 2002, so are we expected to hang around until then? Up until now it was only pay that was taken into the equation in any salary increase, now our hard-won conditions of work will also be on the table. Many public servants, right across the board, are concerned about benchmarking because if the conditions or work change then those who have retired may not have their pensions increased.
VB: Do you think that the tactics used by the ASTI have been wise? BO'S: All of the tactics and all of the strategies were devised by a strategy committee which reported to the standing committee which was endorsed by CEC. I think it didn't matter in one way what they did. This Government was going to drag this process out to the bitter end and that's what they've managed to do.
VB: Do you think now that the resort of the "nuclear option", the threat to the Leaving Certificate was a mistake? BO'S: The media reaction was certainly intense and it, no doubt, shaped public opinion. But there was one report which had a significant impact, I think, and which was entirely false. This was that the ASTI would picket examination centres in the event of the Leaving Cert going ahead without them. I can honestly say that this was never mentioned by anybody.
VB: Do you think now it was a mistake to target the most vulnerable third party to the dispute, the Leaving Cert students? BO'S: That withdrawal from co-operation in State exams has always been, I suppose, part of the industrial armoury.
VB: But, is it fair? Is it right that you should focus on those students who have most to lose, innocent third parties who have most to lose by your actions? BO'S: I suppose I could turn that question back and say . . .
VB: Before you turn it back, could you answer it? BO'S: I think in any industrial relations situation, especially where third parties are concerned, and that is why industrial action by nurses and teachers, which involves other people, attracts such publicity.
VB: The case of the nurses, they voluntarily and without recompense looked after the most vulnerable third parties in the area affected; you, instead of looking after the most vulnerable third parties, targeted them. BO'S: Interestingly enough, about the nurses, I haven't met one nurse who thinks they got a good deal; in fact they think they they've got a very bad deal.
VB: So you think the nurses made a mistake in not targeting, for instance, patients in intensive care? BO'S: I've heard some of them [nurses] saying that in Australia there was a very protracted nurses' dispute and they threatened to withdraw emergency cover and it was resolved. I wouldn't recommend that but nurses who have said to me is that this is what happened.
VB: You could have chosen to insulate the Leaving Cert students from your action, to continue teaching them, and stop other classes, but you didn't. BO'S: Obviously the strategy committee decided otherwise.
VB: What's your attitude? BO'S: I'm after saying to you that in any industrial relations dispute which impacts on third parties is different. For instance, if the ESB had been cut off in the last couple of weeks, would it have been seen as targeting those students who wouldn't have been able to get homework done. Incidentally, I would like to congratulate the ESB workers on getting a 21 per cent pay increase.
VB: Are you in favour of lifting the ban now on disrupting the Leaving Cert? BO'S: At the moment it's suspended, the ban in examinations are suspended, and what I believe at the moment is that the examinations should go ahead this year. Now this is quite contrary, let me assure you, to the phone calls from quite a lot of our members who feel that the suspension shouldn't have been lifted because it allowed the orals to take place. My own belief at the moment is that the exams should go ahead this year and my preferred option is that the Labour Court clarification be rejected.
VB: And what action do you think should be taken as a result of that rejection? BO'S: I'm not going to speculate it now, there's a whole lot of different options here.
VB: Do you think that basically it would be possible now to give in to ASTI and say OK you can have what you're looking for outside the PPF confines and outside benchmarking. Do you think that is politically possible? BO'S: Yes, I do. They could say that they're very concerned about the future of education in this country, that they're very concerned that young teachers are going to leave the profession.
VB: Nobody would accept that now. If the Government, having stood up to the ASTI so far, now backed off for some reason, it would do terrible damage to its credibility. Having defeated ASTI, why would the Government now surrender? BO'S: I don't think that the ASTI are defeated. This has been just the first phase of a campaign and it won't go away.
VB: A long war? It's going to be a long war? BO'S: That's what people are saying.
VB: Do you favour that if necessary? BO'S: What's interesting is that there must have been some very far-seeing people because the first motion now on our agenda this year is non-co-operation, and these had to be submitted last November, and it's non-co-operation with the Department. There's quite a long list of things that the Department want. New courses, new development, all of that. And what people are saying now is that if they want change or whatever, they're going to have to negotiate a price first.
VB: The ASTI convention has now adopted the strategy you advocated: no strike but massive disruption, through non-co-operation. Why don't you do the decent thing and opt for strike? BO'S: That is what the Government wants us to do. They broke the nurses after nine days. Young teachers have been hit very hard by the strike days to date, they have gone into debt with credit unions and the banks. We believe that this new strategy will prove to be the most effective.
VB: If the management in the schools get in parents to undertake supervision, will ASTI seek to disrupt that? BO'S: That has not been discussed. It is a matter for the boards of management. The strategy will be a matter for the standing committee and I am not a member of that any more.
VB: Would you favour the obstruction of other supervisors coming in to keep the schools open? BO'S: I think that the best arrangement is for teachers to do the supervising. In France they have lay supervisors and it doesn't work as well because they don't know the students. It is important that the teachers get to know the students in all settings.
VB: What if this new strategy also fails? BO'S: The delegates believe it will not fail. The most important outcome to the conference was the motion that was passed with a 75 per cent majority to reject the clarified recommendations of the Labour Court and to recommend to the members that they reject them in the ballot. This is just the outcome from the convention that the Government did not want.
