As schools prepare to reopen this week and next, trade union Fórsa has described as “deliberate and indefensible” the exclusion of many school secretaries and caretakers from access to a public service pension and public sector terms of employment.
The union was commenting ahead of indefinite strike action scheduled to begin next Thursday, by around 2,600 school secretaries and caretakers who are Fórsa members.
The action is being taken in pursuit of terms of employment, such as pension rights, enjoyed by other public service workers.
School secretaries and caretakers warned back in June that they could strike when schools reopen after the summer break after a trade union ballot returned a strong mandate for such a move.
If it goes ahead, schools outside of the State’s Education and Training Boards sector will be affected.
Fórsa says the decision to take strike action has been backed by 98% of its school secretary and caretaker members.
The union’s national secretary, Andy Pike, described the State’s refusal to confer public service status on these workers as “a calculated policy decision to maintain inequality, regardless of the cost to those affected”.
He said the policy has “locked out several generations of school staff from secure income in retirement”.
Fórsa says the caretakers and secretaries, though employed in the same schools, under the same boards of management, and on the same departmental payroll as teachers and special needs assistants (SNAs), are treated as “second-class staff” by being denied key entitlements, such as occupational sick pay and bereavement leave.
“Decades of political engagement, promises and goodwill had failed to deliver pension justice, and the campaign by Fórsa members has not yet heard a single political voice raised in opposition to securing appropriate terms for this group of workers,” the union said.
Fórsa members plan to rally outside the Department of Public Expenditure on Dublin’s Merrion Street on the first day of the strike.
The union said it has formally advised the Department of Education that it remains available for meaningful talks on terms for public service status and pension inclusion.
