School secretaries and caretakers represented by Fórsa are to ballot for industrial action when schools re-open following the summer break, after education department officials this week refused in talks to discuss proposals to overcome a two-tier pay system that leaves most staff on the statutory minimum wage. The union says this will likely result in industrial action in the next school term.

Fórsa officials who attended negotiations said they expected to discuss the substance of the union’s claim for pay justice. Instead, departmental officials announced their intention to postpone talks while they spent the next four months doing further work on costing the claim – despite having presented detailed cost estimates to an Oireachtas committee last month. The union says cost studies had also been done in 2010, 2014 and 2018.

The development came as the union revealed that over 12,000 people had signed its petition calling for fair pay and conditions for school secretaries and caretakers. The petition calls on the Minister for Education and Skills to end a long-standing two-tier pay system for school secretaries and caretakers by placing those currently employed directly by school management boards on public service pay scales.

Fórsa has mounted a campaign for pay justice for school secretaries, most of whom are very poorly paid and have irregular, short-term contracts that force them to sign on during the summer holidays.

This is because of an antiquated and discriminatory employment status, which was foisted upon school secretaries in 1978. It means that the few directly-employed by the education department have public service status, while the majority are employed by school management boards, which determine their pay and conditions.

Speaking after talks collapsed yesterday, Fórsa’s Head of Education Andy Pike, said industrial action looked inevitable so long as the education department refused to discuss the substance of the claim.

“School secretaries have done everything short of industrial action in their campaign for fair pay. They welcome the public support expressed in our petition, and the pledges of solidarity from politicians of all colours.

“But this is totally disconnected from the reality of the department’s position, which is to constantly stall and disengage. It's beggars belief that officials want to waste another four months on number-crunching, before spending an undisclosed period ‘considering’ the outcome. This when it presented its cost estimates to the Oireachtas less than two months ago,” he said.

School secretary Kathleen O’Doherty said: “Around 90% of our school secretaries are locked out of the regularised pay system. They have no holiday pay, no sick pay, no real job security, certainly no occupational pensions, and no access to public service salary scales. Most of them earn just above – or in some cases below – the legal minimum wage. It’s time this antiquated and discriminatory employment arrangement was scrapped, and replaced with a model that reflects the vast range of responsibilities and tasks school secretaries perform.”

In recent evidence to the Oireachtas Education committee, Mr Pike said school secretaries were uniquely disadvantaged in the education sector, and worked under conditions that fall far short of the standards set elsewhere. 

“The best a school secretary can hope for – and that’s only about 10% of the total – is to be paid the same as a public service clerical officer. Yet the routine work they carry out often far exceeds the responsibilities set out in the clerical officer job descriptions used by the Public Appointments Service,” he said.

Fórsa trade union has given a cautious welcome to the publication on Monday (27th May) of the SNA allocations for the 2019/20 school year.

Fórsa represents 8,500 special needs assistants (SNAs) nationwide. The allocations for the next school year are published annually toward the end of the current school year.

Fórsa official Seán Carabini explained: “The timely publication of the allocations is welcome, delays to this have caused problems in previous years.

“Our first comment on this year’s allocations is to sound a note of caution, because the numbers we’ve reviewed from the NCSE differ from those contained in the statement issued on Monday by the Minister for Education and Skills,” he said.

Mr Carabini said the NCSE figures published this week show 15,762.37 posts, while the minister has issued a statement claiming a total allocation of 15,950.

The figures show sizeable increases in both primary (+536.81) and post-primary (+230.25) although the increase for special schools, at +33.41 nationwide, is relatively low.

Mr Carabini added: “Overall, the figures indicate an increase of more than 800 posts compared to last year.

“However, while an increase is welcome, the full story of how the allocations are rolled out next year is not shown in the figures published this week.

“The allocations only show whole time equivalent (WTE) posts. How many of the posts are actually only part-time is not shown,” he said.

Pilot

Mr Carabini said the union is examining the allocations cycle in relation to the NCSE’s SNA pilot project, which is due to be rolled out in 75 schools in Kildare, West Wicklow and parts of Dublin from September 2019.

“We are looking at how the pilot might offer more certainty beyond only a one year allocations cycle. The pilot scheme may move it to a two and three year cycle, which offer a great deal more certainty than at present,” he said.

Fórsa believes the proposal to front-load the allocation of SNA posts on a two-three year cycle offers the prospect of permanent SNA posts for the first time.

Speaking at Fórsa’s recent Education Division conference, Head of Division Andy Pike said: “We want to crystallise what appear to be genuine opportunities to improve the standing of SNAs in the schools system once the new schools inclusion model is agreed and rolled out over the next few years.”

Former Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) official, Esther Lynch has been elected Deputy General Secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC).

Esther was elected to the top job last week by delegates at the 14th ETUC Congress in Vienna, Austria. Voting delegates included general secretaries and presidents of some 90 national trade union organisations from 38 European countries.

The ETUC is the voice of workers and represents 45 million members from 90 trade union organisations in 38 European countries, plus 10 European Trade Union Federations.

Esther was ICTU’s Legislation and Social Affairs Officer between 1993 and 2015, before moving to the ETUC to take up the post of Confederal Secretary following her election at the 2015 Paris Congress.

Esther worked closely with one of Fórsa’s forerunner unions, IMPACT, on the development of protected disclosure (‘whistleblowers’) legislation and secured an advisory role for trade unions in the development of the Register of Lobbyists.

ICTU General Secretary, Patricia King, warmly welcomed Esther’s appointment to the four year Brussels-based post, and congratulated her personally after the vote.

Patricia said: “I was delighted to be among the first to offer my congratulations, and those of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, to Esther on her well-deserved appointment.

“The level of support that her candidacy received reflects the very high regard in which she is held across Europe.

“Esther was a superb choice with long experience of what the job involves. This is a great result for the 45 million workers who are members of ETUC-affiliated trade unions.”

Fórsa also extended congratulations to Esther on behalf of the union.

The ETUC aims to ensure that the EU is not just a single market for goods and services, but is also a social Europe, where improving the wellbeing of workers and their families is an equally important priority.

Ten national political parties, who between them fielded over 1,000 candidates in last week’s local elections, have signed up to a trade union pledge to increase local authority funding and restore local council powers in areas like housing, water and environmental protection.

The figure rises to over 1,100 when independents, and individual signatories whose national party didn’t back the pledge, are included.

The ‘Local Power Pledge’ was endorsed at national level by Fianna Fáil, Sinn Féin, the Labour Party, the Social Democrats, the Green Party, People Before Profit, Solidarity, Independents 4 Change, Aontú and the Workers Party. Almost 300 (290) candidates also signed the pledge individually, including 15 Fine Gael candidates and 52 Independents.

The pledge is part of the ‘More Power To You’ campaign for enhanced local democracy and community services, which was launched by Fórsa, Siptu and Connect in March. Between them, the three unions represent over 30,000 local council workers.

The unions called for substantially increased revenue and funding powers for local authorities after they published research that shows Irish councils have less autonomy from central government than their counterparts in 39 European countries. Their ‘More Power To You’ campaign also calls for legislative changes to facilitate directly-elected mayors and restore and expand town councils, which were abolished in 2014.

Fórsa Director of Campaigns Joe O’Connor, who has coordinated the campaign, said the overwhelming response demonstrated a hunger for stronger local democracy among citizens and their elected representatives.

“The fact that only 8% of Irish public spending occurs at local government level, compared to an EU23 average of over 23%, is compounding shortcomings in services as diverse as housing, water, waste and sustainable domestic energy use,” he said.

Prior to launching the campaign in March, the unions commissioned research from Dr Mary Murphy of Maynooth University. It found that Irish local authorities perform fewer functions than municipalities across Europe.

Her report, Democracy Works If You Let It, said Irish local democracy had been eroded by austerity-era budget cuts and staff reductions; the centralisation of services like water, driving licences and higher education grants; the privatisation of services like refuse collection and housing; and excessive executive direction and new management processes that have increased bureaucratic powers at the expense of political representatives.

Three of the national parties that signed the pledge did so with slight caveats. Fianna Fáil does not support the reintroduction of public provision of domestic waste services. The Workers’ Party and Solidarity do not support directly-elected mayors.

Read more about the More Power To You campaign HERE.

The standard domestic subsistence ‘day rates’ paid to civil servants who are out of the office on business are to increase by 10% from July. But overnight rates will remain the same.

Once the changes are officially sanctioned in the civil service, they will be rolled out to health, local authorities, education and other parts of the public sector.

The ‘five hour rate’ is to increase from €14.01 to €15.41, while the ‘ten-hour rate’ goes up from €33.61 to €36.97.

The changes come on foot of a regular union-management review of the rates, which takes account of inflation in cafes, restaurants, takeaways and fast food outlets, plus – for the overnight rate only – accommodation costs.

No increase is sanctioned if the relevant consumer price index-measured increases come in below 5%. This accounts for the lack of movement on overnight rates because inflation in accommodation costs – which make up the lion’s share of the calculation – were relatively low.

Fórsa official Billy Hannigan, who represents the union in the process, said he would now ask management to prepare a draft agreed report for adoption by the civil service general council. This will give effect to the increases, which will then be applied across the public service.

The number of civil and public servants reached 330,500 in 2018. This is above the previous peak of recent times, which was reached in 2009.

The biggest number (118,000) were employed in the health services, followed by education (107,000). There were 38,000 civil servants, 28,000 local authority employees and 13,700 working in non-commercial semi-state organisations.

The figures are set out in the Public Service Performance Report, 2018, which was published earlier this month.

The report also shows gross current expenditure of €57 billion, plus €6 billion of capital expenditure last year.

An impressive list of public service outputs included 930,000 students in primary and post-primary education, 1.5 million people accessing health professional or community health services, and 333,000 benefit payments and over 600,000 pension payments each week.

New circular on post fragmentation

Post fragmentation is where a post is sub-divided into smaller units. The union has long voiced concerns with such an approach to allocations, and has advocated for as many SNA posts as possible to be full time.

What, though, does the circular say?

Each year, the Department of Education and Skills revises and reissues the circular governing allocations. The latest circular, 30 of 2019, can be accessed here.

Section 17 states that where a school gains an extra allocation, it should generally follow the agreed protocol. Specifically, the additional posts should be offered to existing SNAs in order of seniority to bring them up to full time in the first instance.

Are there circumstances where this agreed protocol is not followed?

Yes – but the circumstances are very, very limited.

A special education needs organiser (SENO) may recommend that an allocation should be split in a certain way. This recommendation may not always follow the circular.

If this happens, the SENO will write to the school outlining the change. This must be provided to any SNA that is in this situation, they must give you the written determination from the SENO.

Let’s recap:

• Normally, a new allocation is offered, on the basis of seniority, to SNAs who don’t have full time hours
• In exceptional circumstances, a SENO may give a reasoned recommendation that the allocation be ‘fragmented’ differently
• Where this happens, the SNA it affects must be given a copy of the recommendation (the SNA shouldn’t have to ask for it).

Archived issues

Since April 2018 we've been publishing a special segment focussing on contract issues facing SNAs. Devised and written by assistant general secretary Seán Carabini, it has proved to be one of the most popular items in the Education news bulletin. 

We've archived all of these items for ease of access, and will publish an updated archive in each future edition of the bulletin.

If you have SNA contract issues you'd like to see covered in the bulletin, please contact us HERE and include 'SNA contract issues for the news bulletin' in the subject heading.

• Incremental progression
• SNAs and assault leave
• Advice on the '72 Hours' and does an SNA have a supervision function?
• How is the pay for part time hours calculated?
• Notice periods
• Panel Appeals
• Displacement: Are You Doing Someone Else’s Job?
• Standard contract for 2018/2019 school year
• SNA allocation FAQs
• The NCSE's SNA review: main points and recommendations
• Q&A: NCSE Comprehensive Review of the Special Needs Assistant Scheme
• I was a full-time SNA but have had my hours cut. Am I entitled to any redundancy payment?

The Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) is set to launch a new policy document entitled “Realising the Transformative Effect of Social Dialogue and Collective Bargaining in Ireland” at its all island Congress this July.

Speaking last week at the European Treade Union Confederation's (ETUC) 14th Congress in Vienna, Austria, ICTU official Owen Reidy said Congress is seeking to address Ireland’s collective bargaining deficit. One of its key proposals is to promote the idea of an EU Directive on Collective Bargaining.

“There is one fundamental issue that unites and binds all of us together, the universal right for working woman and men to have the right to free collective bargaining in their work. Yet today in Ireland, all workers do not have this fundamental right.

“All the independent evidence shows that not only is collective bargaining good for workers in respect of their pay and conditions, but - it also boosts productivity, it improves efficiency, it improves workers wellbeing and it makes our societies and economies that bit more equal.

“You cannot truly have decent work without the right to collective bargaining,” he said.

He outlined the voluntary nature of industrial relations in Ireland to delegates and said: “Trade union density and collective bargaining coverage is in decline. We have to ask who does this model serve?”

Mr Reidy said it is in the interests of all European trade unions that workers right across the continent enjoy decent work, decent pay. “Without a right to collective bargaining, this cannot be achieved,” he said. He asked the assembled unions in Vienna to support and endorse the work of the ETUC to promote collective bargaining right across the EU.

The ETUC is the voice of workers and represents 45 million members from 90 trade union organisations in 38 European countries, plus 10 European Trade Union Federations.

The ETUC aims to ensure that the EU is not just a single market for goods and services, but is also a social Europe, where improving the wellbeing of workers and their families is an equally important priority.

You can read the full text of Owen Reidy’s speech to the European Congress HERE.

The Retired Members Group attended the recent conferences in Kilkenny and Sligo and we were very encouraged by the responses we received from delegates.

We distributed a substantial number of application forms and information packs.

All the information shared at the conferences is located on our dedicated page at forsa.ie.

The Retired Members Group will be in further contact with branches in the near future to keep members informed.

Fórsa was among the unions that backed the ‘School Strike for Climate’ demonstration in Dublin last Friday (May 24th). It was the second national protest led by secondary school students calling on the Government to take action to address the climate crisis.

The protest was one of hundreds staged by young people across Europe on the same day.

Merrion Square in Dublin hosted the largest protest, which was attended by around 3,000 people, and was supported by a number of civil society bodies.

Among the Fórsa representatives attending the march were members of the union’s new just transition network, which held its first meeting prior to the demonstration.

Discussions at the just transition network meeting focussed on the development of a climate change strategy for Fórsa, how to inform members about the union’s work on climate change and encouraging greener workplaces.

Protests took place around the country, with the second-largest outside Cork City Hall. A number of schools also held smaller events in solidarity with a global day of action led by the Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg.

See related HERE.

President Michael D Higgins signed the Parental Leave (Amendment) Bill 2017 into law last week.

The new legislation increases unpaid parental leave from 18 weeks to 26 weeks. It will be implemented on a phased basis, with an extra four weeks in the first year and the second four weeks in year two.

The qualifying age of children has also been extended from eight to 12.

Parents who have already taken some or all of the current 18 weeks’ leave and who have children up to 12 years of age are permitted to take the extra eight weeks.