Teachers had money and violence on their minds yesterday. In a rare display of unity, the INTO, ASTI and TUI are all debating motions this week demanding that the next round of pay negotiations should "bridge the gap" - in the words of TUI general secretary Mr Jim Dorney - between teachers and other key public sector workers such as nurses and gardai.
There was no doubting the passion over this issue on the floor of the three conferences. There is a real feeling that the Government changed the goalposts after the Programme for Competitiveness and Work negotiations in the mid-1990s and "early settlers" such as the teachers lost out.
At the INTO conference in Galway, Mr Donal O Loingsigh put his finger on a growing dilemma for policymakers when he complained that young people on a teacher's salary were finding it increasingly difficult to buy houses in the Dublin area.
His union leader, Senator Joe O'Toole, has been urging the Government to consider some system of tax credits to make sure that vital public sector professionals such as teachers, nurses and gardai are not driven out of the capital by the house price spiral. The INTO general secretary was only echoing his angry grassroots when he asked the whereabouts of the "doubling of wealth that has taken place in this country in the last 10 years".
A related issue was voiced by ASTI president-elect Ms Bernadine O'Sullivan in Killarney who asked how second-level teachers were going to get recognition in their wage packets for the bewildering range of new responsibilities they have had to take on in recent years. These range from new Junior and Leaving Certificate syllabuses through Transition Year to personal and sex education programmes.
INTO members said the same thing about the introduction of a huge new primary curriculum. TUI members talked about the explosion in the number of Post Leaving Certificate courses.
The TUI's famously militant delegates - the union has been dubbed "USI for adults" - did nothing to help its leadership line up with the other unions behind a united pay claim when they passed an amendment which apparently forbids the TUI from entering any negotiations which have productivity on the agenda.
The Government insists that productivity must be part of any new public sector pay deal. Delegates ignored Mr Jim Dorney's common-sense plea that the only way to close the differential with other public sector workers was to join the other teacher unions in arguing the case for bridging it. The pragmatists in the leadership found it hard to contain their exasperation as the militants from Donegal and the Dublin colleges won the day.
The other burning issue yesterday was discipline and bullying.
INTO treasurer Mr John Carr demanded legislation to help protect teachers from increasingly disruptive and dangerous pupils. This would include the right to insist on a psychological assessment for such pupils and suitable services for them, even when their parents were un-co-operative.
The conference was told of one south Dublin school for children with special needs where more than half the staff had sustained physical attacks. However, a survey carried out for the TUI by Dr Mona O'Moore, the head of TCD's anti-bullying centre, showed that the bullying of teachers was far more likely to be carried out by principals and other senior managers than by students.
The congress was brought to a standstill by a courageous address from a young woman teacher from the south-west, who related in stark phrases how three years of bullying in her second-level school had driven her to attempt suicide.