Fórsa has negotiated a new benefit for its members, who now have access to a free health and medical information helpline. Staffed by qualified nurses, the service provides information on health and fitness, as well as non-diagnostic advice on medical matters.

Advice on allergies, the side effects of drugs, and improving your general fitness are also available as part of this service.

The lines are staffed from 9.00am to 5.00pm, Monday to Friday, excluding public and bank holidays. But if you call outside these times, you can leave a message and a qualified nurse will get back to you during the normal operating hours.

The new service is part of a suite of helplines – free to Fórsa members – including a legal advice line, a confidential counselling service, and a domestic assistance helpline.

You can get details of these here.

Health and medical information helpline: Phone 1890-254-164

Fórsa trade union has written to the Department of Education and Skills seeking to open discussions on a new agreement on school secretaries’ and caretakers’ pay.

A 2015 arbitration finding awarded four separate annual pay rises of 2.5% for school secretaries and caretakers. The final pay adjustment was due in January 2019, and the agreement concludes this year.

In a letter to the department sent last Friday (1st February), Fórsa’s head of education Andy Pike said unions and the department had previously established a joint forum to consider pay arrangements for grant funded secretaries and caretakers.

Andy suggested that the forum be reconvened for the purpose of discussing a new pay agreement to commence in 2020.

Most school secretaries and caretakers are paid through their school’s ancillary grant, which means their pay is determined by individual school boards of management.

This arrangement has led, in the most extreme cases the union has encountered, to school secretaries earning as little as €12,700 a year, with no entitlement to benefits such as sick pay or pension rights.

The union is currently campaigning to change the existing pay model.

Andy advised the department of the union’s aim to have public service pay and conditions applied to school secretaries and caretakers. He added, “This is consistent with our original claim which was not resolved by the 2015 arbitration finding.”

Fórsa also addressed the issue in its December 2018 submission on the Department of Education and Skills strategy statement for 2019-2021.

Andy said: “Fórsa has suggested that the new strategy statement should commit the Government to regularising the employment status of school secretaries by establishing the ETB (Education and Training Board) school secretary salary scale as the common salary scale for all school secretaries, with access to comparable pension provision.”

ETB school secretaries are paid directly by the department.

For news and media coverage of the campaign so far visit the #SupportOurSecretaries page on the Fórsa website.

Fórsa has called on the Government to protect the incomes of public servants who reached the compulsory retirement age of 65 before the end of last year, but then stayed in work on a 12-month temporary arrangement because the state pension age had been changed from 65 to 66.

New legislation that allows civil and public servants to choose to work until age 70 has resolved the problem for staff approaching retirement now. But many were caught out before this measure became law last December.

In a submission to the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform (DPER), the union argues that these workers should be given the option to extend their 12-month retention arrangement up until age 70, and get increments due to them during this period.

When the new law was passed at the end of 2018, finance minister Paschal Donohoe said he would issue a report on public servants who were forced to retire between 6th December 2017 and the commencement of the Act, along with “potential remedies to assist this cohort of worker.”

Fórsa national secretary Billy Hannigan said the union’s recommendation was a practical response to the legal position we are now in. “It may not be the most ideal solution, but it is the most practical having regard to the fact that pension schemes are based on statute and that pension abatement rules are also governed by legislation,” he said.

The new law, which the Government introduced in response to union pressure, was necessary because many civil and public servants depend on the state pension for a substantial part of their retirement income.

Meanwhile, DPER has published a guide to the new legislation and its implications for civil and public servants. You can read it here.

A shortfall in funding is putting Ireland’s higher education “in danger,” according to Thomas Estermann, the director of governance and funding at the European Universities Association (IUA).

Mr Estermann recently told an event organised by the Irish Universities Association that our higher education system had received insufficient funding over the past ten years, despite a limited increase in investment since 2016.

Fórsa been campaigning for increased funding in the higher education sector in recent years. Among other things, the union wants a reversal of crisis-era staffing cuts among clerical and administrative staff and non-teaching grades in institutes of technology.

Staffing for these grades have fallen considerably since 2008, even though the number of students in third level education has risen by around 25% in the same period.

Fórsa recently hosted a meeting of the Coalition for Publicly Funded Higher Education, which brings together stakeholders including trade unions, the USI, and other student and staff representative bodies, to call for increased investment in the sector, primarily from public funding.

Fórsa women activists from around the country took part in INSPIRE training at the end of last month. This was the third year the union ran the training, which aims to inspire and empower female activists.

The training included workshops on confidence-building, communications and campaigning, and an impressive panel of speakers – including former RTÉ political correspondent, Martina Fitzgerald and Claire Power, advisor to President Michael D. Higgins – shared their experiences of working in prominent positions.

That question-and-answer session was facilitated by experienced Fórsa activists Margaret Coughlan, who chairs ICTU’s women’s committee and also featured Fórsa president Ann McGee.

Martina Fitzgerald made the point that women are often described as being feisty, strident and emotional, while men who act in the same way are considered assertive and ambitious. Claire Power said women are often apologetic in their speech, prefacing a question or interjection with “I’m sorry, but…” or something similar.

She urged delegates to be confident in their contributions, saying they were just as valid as anyone else’s.

Ann spoke about how being born with spina bifida made her so much more resilient than she would have been without it. “In order to be successful, you must strive to turn a perceived negative into a positive and use that to your advantage,” she said.

Although Fórsa membership is comprised of 69% women, the majority of senior positions are held by men. Seminars like these aim to change the status quo and encourage more women to step up and run for elections to have their voices heard both within the union and beyond.

The Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) has called on the Irish Government to establish a ‘Brexit adjustment fund’ to protect vulnerable groups of workers and industries in the case of a ‘no-deal’ Brexit. This followed Enterprise Ireland’s prediction that, if it happens, 25,000 workers would be directly affected by such a shock.

It also emerged in newspaper reports last weekend that the Government is pursuing measures first mooted by Fórsa at its 2017 Brexit seminar. These include EU supports for agriculture and the food sector, and a temporary relaxation of EU state aid rules.

Last week Irish trade union representatives met political leaders in London to stress the need to uphold the Good Friday agreement, avoid a ‘hard’ Brexit, and prevent the reintroduction of customs infrastructure on the border between the Republic and Northern Ireland.

Owen Reidy of ICTU’s Northern Ireland office met the Northern Ireland secretary, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, and the leaders of the Liberal Democrat and Scottish Nationalist parties.

Speaking ahead of the meeting, Reidy said a hard border would be hugely damaging to workers across the island of Ireland. “In the absence of an alternative, ICTU, reluctantly backed Teresa May’s draft withdrawal agreement. We did so on the basis that this proposal, while clearly inferior to the status quo, would do less harm than a ‘no deal’ Brexit.

“It now remains to be seen if the UK political establishment has the capacity and indeed the wit to get its act together and avoid what the majority of politicians, and those of us who represent real people in representative organisations, want. That is an agreement between the UK and EU if there has to be a Brexit at all,” he said.

Earlier, ICTU general secretary Patricia King responded to the UK parliament’s rejection of the draft withdrawal agreement last week, saying it made a “no-deal crash-out Brexit” more likely.

“This is unacceptable, given the damage it will do to Northern Ireland and the consequential collateral damage to the Republic of Ireland. It is incumbent on the British political establishment to develop a consensus that is also acceptable to the EU, to protect the interests of citizens and workers across these islands. The coherence and sense of purpose of the EU 27 contrasts significantly with the chaos in Westminster. Workers across the island must not pay the price of this ham fisted Brexit,” she said.

She said trade unions and other representative bodies should be invited to play a central role in a ‘Brexit Stakeholders Forum’ under strand 3 of the Good Friday Agreement, to address the impact of Brexit in Northern Ireland.

The Department of Education circular 0062/2017, negotiated by the union on behalf of SNAs, establishes a sick leave scheme for SNAs who find themselves on sick leave because of an assault at work.

It's important to note that it is separate to the standard sick leave scheme. Any sick leave taken under the assault circular will not impact on standard sick leave limits.

The limits are the same as the limits for standard sick leave in that it allows for leave of up to 92 days at full pay in a rolling four year period with the possibility of extending it in exceptional circustances.

The circular, available here, explains the scheme in more detail.

Any SNA requiring sick leave following an assault should complete Appendix A of the circular and give it to their school as soon as possible. It's vital the protocols in the circular are followed closely to make sure that your standard sick leave is not affected.

The sick leave for assault ends when the SNA next returns to work.

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. Please include 'SNA contract issues for the news bulletin' in the subject heading.

• 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
• Post fragmentation
• I was a full-time SNA but have had my hours cut. Am I entitled to any redundancy payment?

Fórsa representatives were amongst those in attendance at the Raise the Roof housing conference in Dublin last Wednesday (30th January). The event focused on Ireland’s ever-increasing rate of homelessness, particularly the number of families and children currently without a home.

Irish Congress of Trade Unions’ general secretaryPatricia King addressed the crowd of about 200 campaigners, union representatives, politicians, community groups, students, housing agencies and members of the public. She recalled the launch of the Congress Charter for Housing Rights this time last year and noted that since then the homelessness figures have increased to practically 10,000 people.

“Twelve months on, there are 1,728 families homeless with 3,811 children in those families,” she said, noting that one additional family becomes homeless every eight hours.

The charter, supported by many unions including Fórsa, outlines five key principles that offer short, medium and long-term solutions to the housing crisis. The first step is to declare a national housing emergency and commence the building of a major public housing programme.

Fórsa lead organiser, Joe O’Connor said trade unions involved in the campaign will be ramping up the political pressure in the coming months. “This conference is just the beginning of a range of planned campaign actions for 2019, including a set of regional rallies alongside the tabling of council motions starting in Cork on 11th March,” he said.

A cross-party motion was passed in the Dáil last October, with the support of all opposition parties including Fianna Fáil. The motion commits to a set of measures which would bring effect to the Congress Charter for Housing Rights, including introducing a legal or constitutional right to housing.

O’Connor emphasised that Fórsa’s goal is to ensure political delivery on this parliamentary commitment, while working under the Raise the Roof umbrella.

Irish workplaces need to become more accommodating for the increasing number of workers aged over 65, according to a new study. The Dublin City University report, Living longer, learning longer – working longer? Implications for new workforce dynamics, also says greater flexibility in employment terms are needed to retain older workers.

The report highlights the rising age-profile of the workforce due to the increased mandatory pension age in the public service to 70, and planned increases to the state pension age.

It says offices and workplaces may need to be redesigned to accommodate an ageing workforce. It recommends introducing physical changes like magnifying glasses to reduce eye-strain and height set tables and chairs, as well physio developed stretching exercises.

The report adds that changes can lead to an increase in productivity, and lower levels of absenteeism in workforces with a higher age-profile.

Read the report here (via The Irish Times).

The age limit for eligibility for Fórsa’s critical illness, accident benefit, and death benefit has been increased from 65 to 70 under a revised benefits package – which now also includes a free health helpline.

Eligible Fórsa members are entitled to a range of financial benefits including €5,000 personal accident or illness benefit, or €5,000 critical illness or death benefit*. Spouses of members are also covered for death benefit.

The union also provides a range of free helplines, including a legal advice helpline (1850-77-66-44) and a confidential counselling helpline (1850-77-66-55).

You can see the full range of helplines and financial services here.

* Terms and conditions apply.

State action to tackle bogus self-employment is “insufficient everywhere,” including at the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC), according to Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) general secretary Patricia King.

She was speaking as representatives from ICTU and the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) gave evidence to the joint Oireachtas committee on employment affairs and social protection recently.

Ms King said bogus self-employment was costing the exchequer, with €240 million worth of PRSI and tax receipts lost in the construction sector alone.

The committee also heard that talks between RTÉ and the NUJ on the status of over 100 contractors working at the national broadcaster were “tortuous,” in the words of NUJ general secretary Séamus Dooley. The NUJ met RTÉ on the issue again last Friday.

The term ‘bogus self-employment’ refers to situations where workers who should be classified as employees are marked as self-employed. By classifying these workers as self-employed, employers can avoid having to pay PRSI and sick pay.