Adult education tutors call for details of Government offer to be published

Education and Training Board adult education tutors from around the country are to protest at the Dáil on Wednesday over the time it is taking for the Government to deliver an offer in relation to their terms of employment as the Labour Court recommended it should do almost three years ago.

The roughly 3,500 tutors at ETBs across the State are seeking an incremental pay scale, recognition of service and pay parity for those recruited over the past 10 years.

At present, they say, they are only paid for time actually spent in the classroom, not the preparation of lessons, and they are not paid during holiday periods, obliging most to depend on social welfare payments for significant periods of the year.

In March 2020 the Labour Court recommended that the Department of Education make them an offer based on what it felt it could afford and last year it told the tutors that it would put that offer to them by the end of September.

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However, the tutors have since been told that the matter is being considered by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform (Dper) and that the offer cannot be presented until it is signed off on there.

“That’s where it has been since July for us really,” says James O’Keeffe, a tutor who has organised a campaign for improved terms independent of the two unions involved in the sector, Siptu and the TUI.

“it’s not the Department of Education now, it’s Dper that’s put it on hold. We at least want Dper to show us what it is that is under consideration so we know whether we would be happy,” he says.

In response to a question from Paul Murphy TD last summer, Minister of State at the Department of Further and Higher Education, Niall Collins suggested that while the pandemic had delayed the department’s response to the claim and subsequently Labour Court recommendation, progress had been made on “some elements” of the dispute.

He said that a working group had been established to look at some of the outstanding issues and that he expected the department to bring forward an offer at “the earliest opportunity”.

In a statement, the department said “there is ongoing engagement between this Department, the Department of Education, which retains regulatory responsibility for the ETB sector, and the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform regarding the position of adult tutors in the Education and Training Boards.

“There has been previous engagement with unions regarding these staff and while agreement was reached on some issues, the claim to align tutors to a pay scale of an existing grade in ETBs remains unresolved.

“A proposal in response to the Labour Court recommendation is currently under discussion between the departments with a view to finalising the offer to the Unions,” it said.

Again, it said this would happen at “the earliest opportunity”.

Mr Murphy said the Government was “really dragging its feet on the issue”.

“They have sort of blamed the pandemic but the basic point is that the tutors are being treated appallingly”.

Dper was asked for a response.