Schools “dipping” funds to pay bills

Niall Shanahan

As the effects of inflation continues to bite into wages with higher energy, retail and services costs, Fórsa’s school secretaries have drawn attention to the added pressure on schools to meet their energy bills, and how some are cutting school secretary working hours in order to do so.

Speaking to the Irish Times at last week’s Fórsa conference in Killarney, branch chair Luisa Carty said schools have been making ends meet by cutting working hours to free up cash, and drawing funds from the grants from which most school secretaries and caretakers are paid. Luisa said these funds are being “dipped into” by schools to meet increasing costs.

Fórsa’s head of Education Andy Pike said Luisa had drawn attention to a practice which a new deal for school secretaries, agreed in March this year, is designed to stamp out: “This is precisely why the union vigorously pursued a campaign for a better deal for school secretaries.

“The current inflationary pressures, in this context, serve to illustrate the vulnerability of school secretaries under this antiquated model of employment and funding.

“Fórsa will actively pursue any schools currently engaged in this practice of cutting school secretary and caretaker hours in order to access funds to pay additional energy costs. It is not appropriate for schools’ boards of management to effectively have school secretaries and caretakers subsidise their energy bills,” he said.

In March this year school secretaries voted overwhelmingly to accept an historic new package of pay and working conditions, which places them all on public service salary rates after a decades-long campaign for pay equity.

The deal, negotiated by Fórsa, significantly improves incomes and paid leave arrangements for low-paid secretaries, and will see all school secretaries transfer to a new pay-scale aligned with the public service clerical officer scale. Prior to this, most of them were employed directly by schools, with most earning no more than the minimum wage.

Andy added: “The new centralised pay system and regularisation of pay terms cannot come soon enough, and school secretaries can look forward to a more stable pay regime when the new school term starts in September.”