Teaching unions in Northern Ireland have said there is “still time” for the Education Minister to avert potential strike action over pay.
Last week three of the largest trade unions representing teachers here announced they will ballot members for industrial action.
The National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT), Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (Into) and Ulster Teachers’ Union (UTU) said management has failed to make a satisfactory pay offer for 2024/5.
They said they have given notice to Education Minister Paul Givan that they intend to ballot for industrial action.
Speaking on BBC NI’s Sunday Politics programme, NASUWT national official Justin McCamphill said that while a joint union claim for a 13.5% rise “sounds high”, he argued the claim was in the context of high levels of inflation over recent years.
He claimed unions “can’t accept a situation where teachers in Northern Ireland become the worst paid teachers in the UK”.
“That is why we have made a claim for an above inflation pay award and we do accept the minister to deliver on that,” he told the programme.
“I think people need to remember that over the previous three years of the previous settlement we reached inflation was over 21% so we are looking at pay falling behind inflation.
“We make a claim the other side have to come back with a counter proposal that hasn’t happened yet and that is what we are waiting on.”
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Mr McCamphill admitted unions have not yet met Mr Givan personally during the negotiations but said he would be willing to meet him.
“We should have had something on the table at the start of September. Teachers in England and the rest of the UK had pay offers in June they had the money in their pockets in September,” he added.
“There is still time for the minister to make an offer to avert strike action and action short of strike.”
Meanwhile, Jacquie White from the UTU defended the above inflation pay claim as showing “what we believe our teachers are worth”.
“When you look at the programme for government you see the things the ministers are intending to deliver, things around special needs things around early education,” she said.
“What you need is a teaching workforce which is properly valued and properly paid at the centre of that.”
Responding to the threat of strike action last week, Mr Givan expressed his disappointment.
“On Monday, the Executive announced October monitoring allocations and I am currently considering the implications of the additional financial allocation to education,” he said.
“It was with disappointment that I was notified today of the decision by a number of teachers’ unions to proceed to ballot their members for industrial action in the coming weeks.
“Any proposals for a teachers’ pay award must be affordable and this is difficult given the current financial pressures, however we will continue to work with the Teachers’ Negotiating Council (TNC) joint pay group to seek a resolution.”