Applications are now open for the 2019 Fórsa Gaeltacht grant scheme, which will make 80 grants of €150 each available to assist children of Fórsa members attending residential Irish language courses in Gaeltacht areas this summer. A further 40 grants of €70 are available to assist children to attend day-only Irish language courses held outside Gaeltacht areas.

Children of Fórsa members, who are aged between 11 years and 18 years of age on 1st July 2019, are eligible to apply for the grant scheme. You can download the application form HERE. 

Please download the form to a folder on your device prior to filling it out. If you cannot use the fillable form online then please print the form, complete it in black pen and return it to: General Services Committee, Gaeltacht Scheme, Fórsa, Nerney's Court, Dublin 1, D01 R2C5. It should arrive before 5.30pm on Monday 29th April 2019.

All queries and applications should be sent to gaeltacht@forsa.ie.

School secretaries outlined their experience of poor pay and uncertain short-term contracts to a hearing of the Oireachtas education committee last week. The committee was meeting to discuss the status of non-teaching staff in schools, and sought written submissions from Fórsa and other stakeholders.

In its submission to the committee, Fórsa said most school secretaries are very poorly paid, with uncertain short-term contracts that force many of them to sign on during the summer holidays.

Fórsa also highlighted the wide range of duties carried out by school secretaries in its submission. The majority of school secretaries and caretakers are paid from ancillary grants and are not deemed to be public servants.

The head of Fórsa’s Education Division, Andy Pike, said: “The routine work carried out by school secretaries in many instances far exceed the limits of responsibility as set out in the clerical officer job descriptions used by the Public Appointments Service for the purposes of recruiting new clerical officers across the public service.”

Andy added: “The majority of school secretaries, around 90%, work alongside colleagues with full public service status, but are locked out of the system without holiday pay, sick pay, pensions or access to public service salary scales.

“The remaining 10% of staff employed by Education and Training Boards (ETBs) are paid according to public service pay scales and have access to the standard benefits of public service status such as pensions and paid leave.

“School secretaries are uniquely disadvantaged in their sector, and the conditions under which they are employed falls far short of the standards set elsewhere in education.

“It’s time for these inequalities to be addressed, and for the terms and conditions of school secretaries to properly reflect their enormous value to the school community,” he said.

Fórsa’s submission to the Oireachtas committee included research by independent employment expert Seán McHugh, which demonstrated the wide range duties that school secretaries undertake.

It included details of challenges faced by other non-teaching staff. The union said special needs assistants (SNAs) should be allowed to serve on school management boards alongside their teaching colleagues.

Fórsa repeated its call for a common set of pay and conditions for staff working in education centres. In a recent submission to an Oireachtas education committee investigation into issues affecting non-teaching education staff, the union said the workers were employed on a range of salary scales and were not treated as public servants despite providing “key services to public servants.”

The submission also addressed the challenges facing staff working in the school completion programme (SCP). The union has argued SCP staff should be transferred to education training boards (ETB), or the child and family agency Tusla, to underpin governance and give national leadership to the service. Fórsa said SCP employees should also be given the same employment status as other public servants.

Fórsa has lodged a claim for special needs assistants (SNAs), who are seeking parity with teaching staff for breastfeeding break arrangements.

SNAs are currently entitled to breastfeeding breaks up to one hour per day, without loss of pay, for up to 26 weeks following the birth of a child (Circular 0017/2013). In 2018, this was increased from 26 weeks to 104 weeks for teaching staff. But SNAs have not be included in the improved arrangement.

Fórsa told the Department of Education that the unequal treatment of different staff working in school communities could not be tolerated.

The European Parliament has backed a new directive aimed at improving work-life balance for working parents and carers. The work-life balance directive provides for a minimum of ten days' paternity leave, plus five days' unpaid carers’ leave a year for all workers.

Under the new law, pay for paternity leave will be set by national governments, but must be at least the equivalent of sick pay. It also provides for a minimum of four months’ paid and unpaid parental leave per parent, of which two months are non-transferable between parents.

Fórsa’s Equality Officer Geraldine O’Brien welcomed the improved rights for parents and carers under the directive. “They will constitute an important step towards addressing the underrepresentation of women in the European labour market, particularly in management and higher grades,” she said.

The overall employment rate of women in the EU is 11.5% lower than that of men, while just over 57% of women are in full-time work compared to 75.5% of men.

According to the EU, over 30% of women who are not active in the labour market cite caring responsibilities as a reason for not being in work. This compares to just 4.5% of men.

The directive also enhances rights for both parents and carers to request flexible working arrangements, including reduced and flexible working hours and flexibility on the place of work. It means employers must respond to such requests and give a reason for any refusal.

Irish Congress of Trade Unions' (ICTU’s) Equality Officer David Joyce welcomed the directive, but said the EU could have gone further. “This is a positive development for working parents and carers. It represents real progress even if it could have gone further. Trade unions wanted stronger rights – such as a minimum European threshold for payment and paid carers’ leave – but the eventual compromise package is still an important improvement," he said.

The work-life balance directive is part of the European Commission’s broader approach to addressing women's underrepresentation in the labour market.

You can find more information HERE and HERE.

The inaugural meeting of Fórsa’s Disability Network took place earlier this month, with a strong focus on the workplace experience of people with disabilities. The new network provides a forum for members across the union to meet and discuss issues relevant to disability rights in the workplace.

The first meeting was officially opened by Finian McGrath TD, the Minister of State for Disability Issues. Mr McGrath said: "It has always been important to me to understand the practical challenges facing people living with a disability and their families.

"Disability is not a health, transport or employment issue. It's an equality issue. It's a rights issue. It goes right across every department.”

The minister said he took pride in the Government’s decision to adopt the UN convention on disability rights last year, and commended Fórsa for being an agent of change on the issue of disabilities.

Questions
Questioned about the level of recruitment of people with disabilities across government departments, the minister acknowledged a slight decrease (0.2%) in employment of people with disabilities in the HSE, and cited a few examples of state agencies and departments where employment exceeds 6%.

He said these levels were achieved in areas where efforts had been made to support and encourage employment of people with disabilities, and he urged employers and unions to be ambitious on this issue.

Delegates asked the minister to comment on policies to progress disability services for children, the challenges of looking at working and educational environments to ensure they accommodate people with disabilities, and about safeguarding policies for vulnerable adults.

Workplace rights
Siobhan Barron, Chair of the National Disability Authority (NDA), said unions have an important role to play to support, provide guidance, and to monitor the performance of employers and the support they provide to people with disabilities.

The NDA monitors compliance by more than 270 state bodies to achieve employment targets.

Ms Barron said many of the questions the NDA receives from employees and HR managers are about who is covered by the definition of having a disability. She said the NDA’s goal is to ensure people with disabilities can get a job and enjoy a rewarding career, and outlined the range of employment supports in place.

Delegates posed a range of questions about transport access, the workplace assessment process for people with disabilities (with regard to psychometric testing), stigma, privacy in the workplace, and attitudes of work colleagues.

Fórsa Equality Officer, Andy Pike said the national meeting is the second in a series of new equality networks to be established by the union’s equality committee in the coming months. “We were delighted to welcome delegates from all over the country, and very encouraged by the quality of engagement throughout the day,” he said.

More information about the work of the National Disability Authority available at HERE.

#ForsaDisability

A new affordable childcare scheme, which comes into effect in October, will replace existing targeted programmes with a single, streamlined plan. Unions have welcomed an increase in the qualifying income threshold for State childcare support, but says more needs to be done to address low pay among early years’ providers.

The National Childcare Scheme (NCS) will support families with children aged between 24 weeks to 15 years old who attend any Tusla-registered childcare service. The early childhood care and education programme (ECCE), also known as the free pre-school programme won’t be affected.

Two types of support will be available from October. A ‘universal subsidy’ will be available to all families with children under three years, as well as those over three years who have yet to qualify for the ECCE programme, while a means-tested ‘income-assessed subsidy’ will be calculated on the basis of families' specific circumstances.

Andy Pike of Fórsa’s equality committee is also the head of the union’s education division. He welcomed the additional supports.

“The increase in the qualifying income threshold is a significant development, which will help more families and parents with childcare costs. The lack of affordable childcare is the most significant barrier facing women wanting to return to the workplace.

“However, much more needs to be done to provide affordable, subsidised childcare for working parents. But this is at least a step in the right direction,” he said.

Despite these improvements, Andy also noted the lack of progress made in improving the working conditions of staff in the sector. “It’s unfortunate that the new provisions were not accompanied by any steps to ensure that early years’ childcare staff are paid fairly,” he said.

To apply for the scheme online you will need a verified MyGovID account, plus the date of birth and PPS number of each child.

Once the application is approved, the child will receive a CHICK (Childcare Identifier Code Key), which is all the provider needs to register them for the NCS. In cases of dual guardianship, a child can have multiple CHICKs and can attend different providers depending on who has responsibility for them on a given day.

The subsidy will be paid directly to a family’s chosen childcare provider and the provider will then subtract this from the overall bill the family pays.

As a transitional arrangement, children registered on existing national schemes can remain there for the balance of 2019-20 if they wish.

This website has a useful eligibility guide. Once the scheme launches, an official subsidy calculator will be available.

Fórsa has welcomed a Government Bill, which would compel firms to report on their gender pay gaps. But the union says it wants to see a quick expansion of the number of companies covered by the new law.

The Gender Pay Gap Information Bill 2019 effectively confirms the Government’s intention to limit gender pay gap reporting to organisations with more than 250 employees, at least initially. Fórsa says this omits about two-thirds of the workforce, and says it’s imperative that the threshold falls to 50 after three years, as envisaged in the Bill.

Assistant General Secretary Geraldine O’Brien also welcomed provisions in the Act that require data to be disclosed by pay band and job classification.

“This implies that gender pay data will be available on a grade-by-grade basis. I’m also pleased to see that regulations could give employers a duty to publish the measures they are taking to close the pay gap. This would give Fórsa and other unions a great opportunity to negotiate actions to address pay inequality,” she said.

The legislation will also require reporting on differences in bonus pay, part-time pay and the pay of men and women on temporary contracts.

“These are positive steps, but a further 22% of the workforce will be covered once the reporting threshold falls to 50. We’ll be watching closely to ensure that this happens in the three-year timescale proposed,” she said.

Last June, Fórsa criticised the Government for publishing its own legislation on the issue, rather than amending an existing opposition Bill that was already well advanced. “The failure to amend and support Ivana Bacik’s pioneering Bill has slowed down the process, and there is now an onus on the Government to enact this legislation quickly,” said Ms O’Brien.

Fórsa has been at the forefront of the trade union campaign for legislation on gender pay gap reporting, which it says would encourage employers into tangible action to bridge the gap.

Fórsa officials recently made a presentation to Jigsaw, the national centre for youth mental health, which is one of four mental health charities that received funds from the union’s 2018 charity cycling initiative.

The union focused on groups providing mental health supports and suicide awareness and prevention services.

Eamonn Donnelly and Dessie Robinson initially led the cycling event to IMPACT's national conferences from 2008, and the practice has carried over into the new union to raise funds for a number of charities. It has attracted donations from every branch of the union, and each event features a growing number of participating union members.
Last year the cyclists travelled from Limerick to Killarney on the opening day of Fórsa's national conference in May.

Jigsaw is committed to ensuring that no young person feels alone, isolated and disconnected from others around them.

Jigsaw provides vital supports to young people with their mental health by working closely with communities across Ireland, engaging in research to improve mental health services and delivering an education and training programme to build the skills and confidence of young people to support youth mental health in their community.

Visit jigsaw.ie

Fórsa has queried a National Competitiveness Council (NCC) warning that wage costs are rising too quickly to maintain Ireland’s competitiveness. The NCC’s annual ‘Cost of doing business in Ireland’ report, which was published last week, cited wage costs among potential threats to future competitiveness.

A union spokesperson pointed out that the report itself conceded that labour costs had risen by less than 3% last year. This came after years of moderate growth and pay cuts for many. The report also found that Ireland’s productivity has improved relative to other EU countries.

“Irish workers have just exited a decade characterised by pay cuts, wage stagnation, increased taxes and charges and cuts to public services. The reality is that Ireland and its economy need a pay rise, not more stagnation,” said a Fórsa spokesperson.

The report said that the Irish economy continues to perform well, and that Ireland is becoming more cost competitive relative to the rest of the euro area.

Special needs assistants who are members of Fórsa are now eligible to join the Dubco credit union. Membership is open to the whole family, including extended family, and new members will be in with a chance of winning €250 in their first month.

What’s more, members receive a €20 One4all voucher for each member they introduce and, if you introduce a family member you’ll be entered into a draw to win €5,000.

Dubco offers competitive loan rates, with no wait period or minimum savings required before you borrow. The credit union also offers a budget account facility, which estimates the annual cost of your bills and facilitates members to pay them in equal instalments throughout the year.

You can become a member by downloading and completing a membership pack or by emailing membership@dubco.ie or phoning 01-887-0400. You can also contact Dean Ladrigan (087-795-0584) or Jane Corscadden (01-887-0421) directly.

The latest edition of Fórsa, the free quarterly magazine for Fórsa members, is now circulating in your workplace.

The latest edition includes special features on mental health, the history of the Limerick Soviet, gambling addiction, campaigns for school secretaries and stronger local government, a closer look at the Brexit People’s Vote campaign, automation, and new HR initiatives in the civil service.

We also feature union news and range of items on music, travel and food.

Blog

The blog section of the Fórsa website now includes a few feature items from the magazine. Writer Aingeala Flannery delves into her lifelong love for our library services, and we defy the Brexit mood with our favourite music from the neighbours.

Pick up a copy from your Fórsa workplace rep or download a copy HERE.

The winners of Ireland’s Got Talent will be on hand to help Cork celebrate International Workers’ day at an event on 6th May. Mayfest, a free event organised by the Cork Council of Trade Unions and ONE Cork, will be held at City Hall between 11am and 4pm.

There’ll be talks throughout the day on workers’ rights and trade unions, with entertainment for all the family including puppet shows and a dance performance from those Ireland’s Got Talent winners.

There’ll also be stalls showcasing local artisans, gourmet food producers, and craft makers – as well as information on employment services and labour history.

Trade unions, political parties, women’s groups, student unions, housing agencies and community groups joined forces in Galway on 8th April to stage a major rally on the housing emergency.

The ‘Raise the Roof’ initiative is demanding radical action on the emergency, including significant new investment in a programme of public housing construction through local authorities, action on evictions and rent certainty for tenants, an end to evictions into homelessness and the creation of a new, legal right to housing.

Raise the Roof is comprised of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions and One Galway and includes the Union of Students in Ireland, the National Women’s Council and the National Homeless and Housing Coalition.

The rally was called in support of a motion on housing debated that evening by Galway City Council.

PICTURED: Flying the flag for Fórsa at Galway’s #RaiseTheRoof rally on 8th April were (left to right) Tom Browne, Gordon Burke, Padraig Mulligan and Helen Cousins.

Fórsa’s recent ‘Green New Deal for Workers’ event shone a light on the impact of decarbonisation on workers in energy and other sectors, and the actions that unions should take to advocate effectively for climate justice.

John Barry of Queens university spoke about framing a ‘just transition’ process to protect workers and communities from adverse economic effects of climate action. He said a new economic model was needed.

Yvonne O' Callaghan of ICTU’s Global Solidarity Committee talked about the just transition process in Ireland. She said unions needed to work to create green jobs’ to avoid job losses like those that recently hit Bord na Móna, which is moving to a low-carbon model.

Michael Ewing of the Irish Environmental Network focussed ob actions that Fórsa and other unions should take to become national advocates on climate action.

Fórsa has already joined Coalition 2030, which was among his recommended actions.

Fórsa’s campaigning summer school is set to return for a third year on 21st and 22nd June. The two-day event will feature guest speakers, training workshops, and discussions on the unions main campaigns.

Fórsa’s campaigning director Joe O’Connor said the summer school is an important date in the unions campaigning calendar. He encouraged branch campaign officers, as well as divisional executive members and branch chairs, to sign up to the event.

Delegates attending the summer school are also invited to a social event, which will take place on the Friday evening (21st June). Spaces for the summer school are limited, so anyone who wants to take part should express their interest early.

Contact Joe O’Connor by Friday 19th April.

The annual Dublin May Day rally takes place on Wednesday 1st May at 6.45pm. Organised by Dublin Council of Trade Unions, demonstrators are asked to assemble in Parnell Square prior to a march to a public meeting at Liberty Hall.

The event will draw attention to the housing crisis, problems in the health service, climate change, inequality and discrimination against migrants.