The Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) can substantially affect the basis on which awards are made to teachers under the new conciliation and arbitration (C&A) scheme. This is true even if all teachers' unions are opposed to the ICTU position. Withdrawal from the ICTU by the unions would not alter the situation. Sounds like scaremongering?
Arbitration systems are fundamentally about criteria. There can be criteria of equal standing, over-riding criteria and secondary criteria. For example, in the controversial 1985 award, the arbitrator took the state of the public finances into account, but only as a secondary factor. Despite the appalling state of the public finances, he gave teachers a substantial award under the over-riding criterion of comparability in the old scheme. The award may have been reduced and phased but it was substantial.
Under the proposed new scheme, comparability is but one of five criteria of equal standing. The arbitrator will now be compelled to give equal weight to the state of the public finances. "The necessity to take account of the prevailing position in relation to any national policy on pay which may be agreed between the ICTU and the government as employer from time to time" - this is another of the five criteria. If the ICTU, despite opposition from teacher unions, embraces productivity and/or performance-related pay as an essential ingredient in a new national pay deal, the arbitrator must also give equal weight to this policy.
Already in Partnership 2000, despite opposition from TUI and ASTI to the deal, the ICTU has accepted "management of performance at all levels" as a principle of change. On a daily basis, Government ministers are preaching the need for performance-related pay throughout the public sector.
The Government has commissioned the Fitzpatrick Report on the implementation of performance-related pay and circulated it to the public services committee of the ICTU in advance of talks. The new president of SIPTU has indulged in harsh public criticism of performance in the public sector at the recent ICTU special congress.
It is very clear that the "national pay policy" criterion must be changed in order to give teachers' unions, rather than ICTU, control of the principles underlying the determination of teachers' pay.
It is, indeed, very encouraging that the presidents of TUI and ASTI have so firmly expressed opposition to performance-related pay in the pages of E&L in recent weeks. They have set out clearly the destructive nature of such proposals.
But leaving the ICTU will not protect the education system from the effects of performance-related pay. Unless the arbitration criteria are changed, the ICTU could continue to inject such principles into our C&A scheme after we had departed! There is an unanswerable case for re-negotiating the criteria.
Paddy Healy former national hon. sec. of the Teachers Union of Ireland
