Sir, - As we are reaching a crucial stage in the current industrial dispute between the ASTI and the Government, I want to call on both parties to make every possible effort to avoid any further disruption of school life during the remainder of this school year. I write as a member of the ASTI who is also a school steward of the union in a voluntary secondary school. I am expressing my personal views, not necessarily those of all my teaching colleagues. However, I am satisfied that many other teachers would agree with me.
Recent developments indicate that the Minister for Education has no serious interest in bringing the dispute to a peaceful conclusion. After the ASTI agreed to participate in talks with a facilitator from the Labour Relations Commission, the Minister ordered the deduction of five days' pay from teachers' salary cheques on December 21st. Even if the Minister believed he had some legal grounds for such action, it could hardly be regarded as a constructive or imaginative gesture on the doorstep of Christmas. Some media commentators suggested that ASTI members wanted to be paid for days when they were on strike; this is a mischievous untruth, as teachers are only contesting the deduction of pay for work-to-rule days.
Dr Woods and some of his legal advisers claim that the tasks of supervision and substitution which teachers have regarded as voluntary tasks are in fact part of their contracted duties. Strange, then, that it is only a few months since the Department of Education was said to be close to agreement with management bodies on the provision of new funding for the performance of these tasks. It was also widely expected that the recent Budget would confirm that new financial arrangements would be put in place. One would not need to be very cynical to guess why the plans were postponed.
The ASTI withdrew from talks after the provocative deduction of five days' pay on December 21st. That was an understandable reaction, but the time has come now for the union to return to the talks process. AS the Minister is clearly incapable of showing the leadership that circumstances demand, I am calling on the members of the central executive council of our union to take a courageous decision at the weekend and to suspend the threat of further action.
Newspaper reports inform us that the Minister is putting plans in place for the supervision and correction of the June exams in the event of an ASTI boycott. Such speculation can only increase the worries of all those Leaving Cert students who are already so concerned about their prospects. Perhaps the Minister himself might also take a hard look at his own position, and seek to make some positive move to relieve the current tension. The times call for statesmanship, not brinkmanship. - Yours, etc.,
John Moran, (Secondary Teacher), Aughavas, Co Leitrim.