SOME SMALL PRIMARY schools could remain closed next week as caretakers and secretaries are set to begin an indefinite strike for parity in public sector pensions and employment conditions.

Schools where the only keyholder is the caretaker, most common in small, rural primary schools, may remain closed as teachers have been instructed not to carry out the duties of their striking colleagues by unions today.

Secretaries and caretakers are due to start their strike next Thursday. Fórsa, the union representing the workers, have been in a lengthy dispute with the Department of Education over the classification of the workers within the public sector.

A ballot taken by the union found 98% of caretakers and secretaries support strike action for parity in public service pensions.

Secretaries in most schools have been on the public payroll since 2022, but are not classified as public servants and therefore do not have the same entitlements to public sector pensions.

Caretakers are typically employed and paid by the school’s board of management through its ancillary funding and grant schemes.

The workers feel that they are being treated differently to others in the same sector and want parity. Secretaries and caretakers working at educational training boards facilities are typically employed through a local authority and are giving pensions.

The decades-long row has come to a stalemate, with the Department of Education referring the dispute to the Workplace Relations Commission in recent weeks. A spokesperson said the department will continue to engage with staff and unions.

Noreen O’Callaghan, the secretary of Fórsa’s Secretaries branch, told The Journal that the role has changed over the last 20 years, to where it is now seen as a professional job which requires certain skills to assist with the day-to-day operations of a school.

She said: “I’m a PA to my principal, we do payrolls for bus escorts, we do the payroll for teachers and SNAs through an online claim system. We help with finding [substitute teachers]. There’s an awful lot we do. We’re professionals, and we have a high standard.”

O’Callaghan added: “Time’s ticking away, and we want to get it started. We really want to get this over the line, because thousands of secretaries have retired and they’ve got nothing.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Education said: “The department recognises the vitally important role of secretaries and caretakers within school communities. Without them, our schools would be unsustainable.”

They added that the department is “committed” to extending the 2022 working conditions deal – which put secretaries on the public payroll and gave them annual leave, maternity leave and sick leave – to caretakers.

Teachers will not fill gaps

The post-primary teachers’ unions, ASTI and TUI, and the primary-school teachers’ union INTO, have instructed their members to not carry out the duties and tasks of secretaries and caretakers.

This also means that extra staff cannot be hired to fulfil the role in the time that the strike is ongoing.

Fórsa has told special needs assistants that should they seek to join the picket that that should be a personal decision. Under industrial action law, unions cannot support members who have not been balloted to participate in strikes.

TUI General Secretary Michael Gillespie said the pension and conditions parity for the workers is “long overdue”, adding “they haven’t been looked after very well [by the department] in the last number of years”.

He said that an “interpretation” of the union’s instruction could mean that teachers refuse to unlock the school’s gates, if that duty is typically the role of the caretaker. He added that this would be commonplace in small primary schools and rare in the post-primary sector, which TUI represents.

In correspondence to primary school teachers, the INTO has told members not to undertake or ask that someone else undertakes the work of secretaries and caretakers during the indefinite strike.

“Members are strongly encouraged to show support to their striking colleagues before and after school time or during lunch breaks, where feasible,” the INTO told its members in an email seen by The Journal.

It added that its members are expected to attend work as normal, as it is not an ‘all-out’ picket.