Casualisation

Congress notes: the crisis of casualisation (resulting from precarious employment contracts) in teaching and lecturing; the rapidly increasing number of teachers and lecturers who are in fixed-term, part-time employment, many of whom are suffering income poverty; the corrosive effect of casualisation on morale, collegiality and the quality of the public education system; the greatly increased opportunity cost of pursuing a career in teaching or lecturing; the continuing increase in student numbers at primary, post-primary and tertiary levels; the routine refusal of employers to make permanent appointments other than where obliged to do so by process of law; the cynical efforts by employers to undermine the value of contracts secured by process of law; the offer by employers of inferior, un-agreed contracts; the abuse by employers of legislation that was designed to protect part-time and fixed term employees; the sustained and discriminatory pattern of attack on the salary scales of new entrants to teaching and lecturing; the failure of the Department of Education and Skills, the national managerial bodies and of individual school, college, centre and institute managements to adhere to basic principles of justice and fairness in their treatment of employees. Congress considers that the purpose of this casualisation is to: demoralise the teaching/lecturing profession; engender division among teachers/lecturers; exploit vulnerable and part-time employees; collapse the salary structure of the profession by generating a spurious rationale for equalisation through pay reductions; weaken trade unions, including teacher unions. Therefore, in order, inter alia, to achieve equality of treatment and parity of professional esteem for all teachers and lecturers; to secure application to all of the salary structure that applies to pre-2011 entrants; to protect the quality of the public education system by maintaining its capacity to attract entrants of the highest calibre. The Irish Congress of Trade Unions, in solidarity with the unions in the education sector, will undertake a sustained campaign to arrest and reverse the casualisation of the profession and to vindicate the rights and entitlements of teachers and lecturers. Establish a high level working group, under the aegis of the Executive Council, to develop and implement a comprehensive strategy to combat casualisation; advise Government that the reversal of casualisation is a key and immediate demand of Congress; organise and co-ordinate collective trade union responses and actions, as necessary; utilise all available industrial relations and legal processes and mechanisms, at both national and European levels, to challenge and reverse the drift towards casualisation; raise awareness within the trade union movement of the destructive effects of casualisation; support those unions that take action against casualisation; prioritise the issue in trade union training.