Longford’s school secretaries and caretakers this week commenced pickets across the county as part of an “indefinite strike action” taking place nationwide in protest of what has been described as unfair treatment and inequality.
Despite being employed under identical arrangements to teachers and Special Needs Assistants (SNAs), school secretaries and caretakers – all of whom are members of the trade union Fórsa – do not receive the same benefits and entitlements as their colleagues due to the fact that they are not considered public servants.
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On Tuesday this week, Fórsa members brought their picket to the office of Fine Gael TD Micheál Carrigy to highlight their campaign to secure equal treatment and pension inclusion for all school staff.
Speaking to the Longford Leader, Andrea Clarke, secretary for St Mel’s college, explained that the role of school secretary goes far beyond what people might realise.
“Our job involves an awful lot more than just answering phones. For instance, we look after VAT returns, RCT returns, monthly management, accounts, and project management. With St. Mels, there’s also a lot of building work that goes on, so we’d liaise with the department on that as well. We organise the payments, the different vendors coming in and out, and so on. The FFSU, our governing body, also oversees everything we do so we’re held to a very very high standard with regard to accounts. The role of school secretary is a massive one.”
She added, “When I moved to the school service 3 years ago, I was amazed by the amount of work school secretaries were expected to do on a very minimal wage.”
In the past, boards of management were responsible for paying secretaries and caretakers, and would do so using school funds in addition to grants from the Department of Education. While secretaries have since been moved to department pay, caretakers are still waiting for the same, despite a commitment that such would be in place from September onwards.
Andrea explains, “The department promised that caretakers would be brought on to department pay from September this year. Nothing has happened however.
We have one caretaker, James, looking after a massive campus at St Mels and we get a miniscule grant towards his wages, so we really want to get the caretakers brought on to department pay as well.”
As caretaker for St. Mel’s, a school with 650 pupils, James Geraghty is arguably carrying out the work of a team. As he explained, “there’s 25 acres of grounds to be kept, along with maintenance duties, caretaking jobs, and routine duties such as opening the school in the morning, setting up for exams, meetings, and so on.”
The move to strike comes following failed talks last week between the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) and officials from Fórsa. This week, the union’s head of Education, Andy Pike, expressed disappointment that the government had not taken any steps over the weekend to resolve the dispute, a feeling echoed by those on strike.
Nicole Crowley, secretary for St Mel’s College, told the Longford Leader, “we just want them to listen to us. The department however hasn’t reached out at all. We are just asking to have the same equality as the teachers and the SNAs.”
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Fine Gael TD Micheál Carrigy, who spoke with the picketers gathered outside his office on Tuesday morning, told the Longford Leader that he was “disappointed to hear that engagement with the WRC didn’t come to fruition”, and that he would encourage the Department of Public Expenditure “to sit down with union officials and hammer out an agreement that is fair for everyone.”
The Longford-based TD added it was “only fair that people working alongside each other get the same terms and conditions.”
