THE TEACHERS’ UNION of Ireland (TUI) has moved to soften its opposition to the Croke Park deal after the Department of Education threatened to push for compulsory redundancies in the institutes of technology.
Yesterday, the TUI executive voted to ballot members on the “temporary suspension” of industrial action – only three weeks after a special delegate conference voted to maintain a series of directives, banning co-operation with school planning and inspections.
The Department of Education has vetoed any talks with the TUI until industrial action is suspended.
With members expected to suspend industrial action in the forthcoming ballot, the TUI will be able to enter talks on “clarifications” of the Croke Park deal. The Association of Secondary Teachers, Ireland is already engaged in these talks.
The TUI move will be seen as a significant victory for the Government as it seeks to push public service reform under the Croke Park deal.
As the TUI executive met yesterday, the department confirmed that guarantees of no compulsory redundancies, made in the Croke Park public service agreement, do not apply to unions like the TUI who have opposed the deal.
The department signalled that continued opposition to the deal could open the way for compulsory redundancy for lecturing staff in the institutes, if the department identifies them as surplus to requirements.
Sources say “about 100” staff in the institutes could be affected by any such move. Government sources claim there are “hundreds more” surplus staff in the institutes but most of these can be redeployed to other duties.
The staff threatened with compulsory redundancy are mostly those involved in apprenticeship training programmes.
With few apprenticeships available, demand for these courses has fallen sharply in the past three years.
The threat to enforce redundancies – highly unusual for public service workers – reflected the growing tension between the department and the TUI.
The TUI has been the most strident opponent of the Croke Park deal among public service unions. Members voted to reject the deal in May by a large majority. But its refusal to lift the various directives to schools meant it was isolated from other unions.
Yesterday, the Irish Independentrevealed correspondence suggesting that if a vacancy arose in the institutes, non-TUI members would be given preferential treatment for redeployment to fill those vacancies.
TUI general secretary Peter MacMenamin described the threat as “outrageous and illegal” and said it would be vigorously resisted.
Earlier this week, Minister of State for Labour Affairs Dara Calleary urged members of the TUI and other unions who had opposed the Croke Park deal to carefully reconsider their position.
The Government, he told the Seanad, “considers that any party that chooses to remain outside the provisions of the [Croke Park] agreement or that opposes its implementation cannot expect to benefit from the commitments it gave as part of the agreement”.
The principal commitments given were no reductions in pay, no compulsory redundancies and an extension of the period within which the January 2010 pay reductions will be disregarded for the purposes of calculating public service pension entitlements to the end of 2011.
