A chara, – Your education correspondent takes a rather cynical view of the teachers' conferences ("Conferences end with a whimper as teachers draw breath", Analysis, April 22nd). He claims the conferences ended with a whimper as "motions to strike over the need for urgent pay increases evaporated or were shelved". The Teachers' Union of Ireland conference I was at did not end with a whimper but with a real bang. A key emergency motion was passed, in the face of opposition from the leadership, calling for a ballot for strike action if the Government fails to meet our pay demands, arising from inflation, before the end of the end of the school year. He claims that, in order to wrong-foot the teachers, "In some neat choreography, public sector unions met with the Department of Public Expenditure just days before the conferences got underway, where officials made their case for significant pay increases. It didn't make sense for unions to start balloting for industrial action when the process had barely started." Well the wheels have already come off that strategy, especially after the Ictu speaker told the TUI Congress that "a positive outcome from the talks could not be guaranteed". This had a major influence on the outcome of the debate.
The reality is that teachers and lecturers are not going to take attacks on their living standards lying down. We are only now recovering from the austerity cuts when pay was cut a number of times and the two-tier pay structure was introduced which discriminated against new teachers and lecturers. The teachers unions did not respond to these attacks and now the lesson has been learned. If we don’t make the Government understand that living standards need to be protected then action will be taken. Other unions should now follow the lead of the TUI and indicate clearly that there will be consequences if the Government does not meet our pay demands. – Is mise,
EDDIE CONLON,
TUI Grassroots,
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Dublin 7.