Talks between the Government and the ASTI on the secondary teachers' pay dispute are to resume tomorrow. Their aim is to find a formula for dealing with the secondary teachers' 30% pay claim. The ASTI has set a deadline of one week for these preliminary talks, and has warned that it may press for a down payment on its claim unless the talks make progress.
The union agreed last Thursday to enter the talks, and on Friday the teachers suspended their campaign of one-day strikes. The ASTI has set a deadline of one week to agree a framework for negotiations, but the Chief Executive of the Labour Relations Commission, Kieran Mulvey, has already warned that this time limit is unhelpful. Labour Relations Commission mediator, Tom Pomphrett, began meetings with an ASTI negotiating team and with officials from the Department of Education and Finance.
However, already the LRC chief executive, Kieran Mulvey, has warned that the deadline of just one week is unhelpful. Clearly, the issues are complex, he said, and the timetable for completion should be dictated by the ability of the sides to reach a workable compromise. Some sources believe however, it may be virtually impossible to deal with the secondary teachers broader grievances without leading to knock on claims from the other two teacher unions, the INTO and the TUI. The INTO and TUI are already pursuing their pay claims through the benchmarking pay for productivity process set up under the National Agreement.
