ETB tutors set to learn detail of staffing deal

Adult Education Tutors in the Education and Training Board sector who have been involved in a long-running dispute over their pay and conditions hope to know the detail next week of what is being offered by the Department of Further and Higher and Education to regularise their situation.

The dispute relates to the status of roughly 3,500 tutors who are currently hourly paid, receive no wages when colleges are closed and get no service related increments.

The Labour Court recommended in 2020 that an offer be made to address the situation but after a succession of delays the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Simon Harris, said last week at the Teachers’ Union of Ireland (TUI) conference in Cork that he was in a position to deliver a package he believed would satisfy the tutors’ demands.

It is understood the tutors are to be offered jobs on the Youthreach “resource” grade which ranges from €33,667 up to €57,729 when long service increments are factored in but there no clarity so far on whether the intention is to count their existing service when the positions are offered.

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Another of the aims of their campaign has been to achieve pay parity for tutors hired after cuts to the terms on offer in 2011.

Some of the tutors affected from different parts of the country staged what was the latest in a series of protests on Friday at six ETB centres with picketing taking place at the headquarters of the Dublin City board in Ballsbridge as well as colleges in Cork, Tipperary, Drogheda, Wexford and Mullingar.

The TUI have been involved in talks with department officials about the offer but have yet to receive written confirmation of the detail which they expect to receive next week when the union’s further education committee is scheduled to meet.

“The big issue for us will be the recognition of prior service and also the recognition of what we do as being full-time work,” said James O’Keeffe, one of the organisers of Friday’s protests.

He said tutors generally worked up to 22 hours in the classroom with additional hours spent preparing classes and undertaking other related work. This, he said, should be recognised as a full, 35 hour week in any agreement.

“We are teachers, not administrators, that’s a full-time role, it would be unacceptable to have any requirement that we work additional hours on admin,” he said.