Education

Teachers criticise different pay rates

Delegates at INTO conference hear young teachers are paid less and denied career progression

Union activists at the INTO annual congress in Wexford. Photograph: Mary Browne

Peter McGuire
Wed Mar 30 2016 - 01:00

New and young teachers are being paid less and denied any opportunity for career progression, delegates heard at the second day of the INTO conference in Wexford.

The conference heard that teachers who entered the profession after 2011 were paid less than their colleagues for the same work, and the moratorium on promoting teachers to posts of responsibility had placed an impossible workload on principals.

Mary Woodcock, a delegate from INTO’s Killarney branch, said older delegates stood in full solidarity with their younger colleagues on lower wages.

“At the 1916 INTO congress a delegate called Ms Mahon proposed that women should receive equal pay for equal work, and she would turn in her grave to see that we have now moved from discrimination on the basis of gender to discrimination on the basis of age.”

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Orla Ní­ Fhoghlu (28), who teaches at Scoil Mologa in Harold’s Cross, Dublin, told how she was the only teacher in a school of 10 teachers who was paid less than her colleagues for the same work. “It is difficult and lonely, and it takes away solidarity.”

Grow up

Aoife Cullen, who graduated in 2013, said she had lost over 30 per cent of her pay and still lives at home. “I can’t afford to get a house, get married, or have kids. I can’t afford to grow up.”

Meanwhile, in her speech INTO general secretary Sheila Nunan called for an end to the moratorium on posts of responsibility and the ban on promotions. She pointed to the INTO’s directive on non-co-operation with school self-assessment, which comes into effect on Monday.

Teresa Walsh, a delegate from Dublin West, said a middle management was needed to “support principals who are over-stretched to breaking point”.

Primary teachers also expressed their opposition to proposals which would give greater autonomy to schools.

Several delegates said giving absolute power to principals to manage budgets, staffing and curriculum would absolve the Department of Education of responsibility.

Delegates voted unanimously to engage in a ballot for strike action if the incoming government implements the changes.

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