18th November 2020
“The scandal of unequal pay continues to affect the teaching profession. Over the last decade each of our trade unions has sought to end this ongoing injustice and significant progress has been made.
In 2019, the government provided us with a statement of intent to finally resolve pay equality within the next public sector pay agreement.
We hold our government to their word and expect pay equality to be confined to the history books in the coming public sector pay agreement.
Tomorrow we will take this opportunity to restate to the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education, Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science our commitment to ending pay inequality once and for all.
This inequality has led to demoralisation in the profession and has hampered our ability to retain teachers on this island.
Pay discrimination has resulted in a teacher recruitment and retention crisis that sees schools struggle to fill teaching vacancies.
It is grossly unfair to breach the ‘equal pay for equal work’ principle at any time and it is deeply offensive to all teachers, who have done so much to reopen and keep our schools open during the pandemic.”
Ends
- ASTI General Secretary Kieran Christie
- INTO General Secretary John Boyle
- TUI General Secretary Michael Gillespie
For media queries, please contact:
ASTI – Gemma Tuffy (gtuffy@asti.ie)
INTO – David Geary (dgeary@into.ie)
TUI – Conor Griffin (cgriffin@tui.ie)