In this issue
YOU decide!
Unions back IMPACT on gender pay gap
SNAs to ballot for action
Pensions and new entrants explained
IMPACT’s Callinan re-elected as ICTU VP
Deal on civil service specialist posts
SNAs to ballot for action
by Niall Shanahan
 
IMPACT’s 8,000 special needs assistants (SNAs) will ballot for industrial action immediately at the start of the new school year because of the Government’s failure, for the fourth year running, to announce next year’s SNA allocations before the end of the  summer term.

The SNA allocations establish the number of SNAs that are allocated to individual schools each school year. Until they’re published SNAs don’t know if they have a job to return to next September, but are unable to apply for redeployment in the event that they don’t. This year the publication was delayed until last Wednesday (5th July), almost a week after the summer primary school closure.

IMPACT says the failure to publish the allocations puts the education department in breach of agreements on job security and redeployment. The union says it has been forced into an industrial action ballot by the education department’s contempt for SNAs and the children they serve.

IMPACT deputy general secretary Kevin Callinan said there was no practical reason why the schools cannot get the figures in April or May, so that they can plan for the new school year and, where necessary, organise redeployment of SNAs in a dignified, effective and timely way.

 

Disgraceful

“The education department’s disgraceful and habitual failure to do this simple thing, which means so much uncertainty for our children and their schools, also means that SNAs don’t know if they have a job to return to next September. If it happened one time, it would be unacceptable. But it happens every year – and that shows contempt for SNAs, and for the children, parents and schools they serve.”

Kevin said IMPACT had contacted the Department of Education on the matter scores of times. The union also raised the issue with Minister of Education Richard Bruton at the union’s education conference in April, and wrote to him again in June. He said the union continued to make daily contact with the department in an effort to get the allocations issued.

The union says the department is in breach of agreed redeployment procedures, under which a ‘supplementary assignment panel’ is in place for SNAs who lose their post because the child they serve moves on. This year, posts have been advertised on the panel, but with closing dates that precede the publication of the 2017-2018 allocations.

This puts SNAs in an impossible position, because they don’t know if they need to apply for redeployment, but will lose the opportunity if they don’t do so. As a result, an SNA could lose their position at the end of the 2017 school year, but be unable to apply for an alternative post next September. The union says this undermines the effective application of the panel system.

“We have repeatedly warned them that their failure to do so is raising the industrial relations temperature. But they aren’t listening, and so we are now going to ballot for industrial action to ensure that SNAs achieve the same job security as the national teachers they work beside in the classroom,” he said.

Extra posts

Last Wednesday’s allocation announcement included an extra 975 SNAs for the next school year. It was also reported that Cabinet agreed that the process on the provision of special needs assistants would not be decided so late next year.

But IMPACT says this commitment is too little and came too late. The allocation delay has already caused significant difficulty for SNAs and the avoidable uncertainty about their working life has moved into palpable anger.

IMPACT’s response follows successive years of avoidable delay to publish the allocations in a timely manner. The department needs to demonstrate, with its actions, that SNAs will no longer be treated as an afterthought in the planning of the new school year.

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