The NAHT school leaders’ union has told the employing authorities and Department of Education in Northern Ireland that its “unprecedented” industrial action will be escalated from the start of September.
The union has been in dispute in Northern Ireland since last October, following a ballot of members that resulted in what the union describes as “a resounding mandate for industrial action in the face of a decade of real-terms pay cuts, now approaching 30 per cent”.
The escalated industrial action short of strike action includes a refusal to submit census and other monitoring forms electronically; a refusal to conduct financial planning for more than one year at a time; and the removal of any branding of the employing authorities, the Department of Education or any support body from school material.
NAHT general secretary Paul Whiteman (pictured) said: “School leaders in Northern Ireland have taken industrial action democratically, following very serious and extensive debate and discussion and voting.”
He said there was “a sense of frustration that school workers in Northern Ireland seem to be so poorly valued by those who should be investing in the future of our schools and our children”.
Mr Whiteman added: “The seriousness with which they are taking this dispute was demonstrated powerfully when they took the unprecedented step of strike action, alongside the other teaching unions, in April.”
NAHT industrial action over pay
NAHT Northern Ireland president Liam McGuckin said: “NAHT members are angry, and justifiably so. We have watched teachers and school leaders in other parts of these islands receive pay rises on top of previous pay increases, while remuneration for the teaching profession in Northern Ireland remains stagnant.”
He added that the NAHT would “continue to protect the children in our schools, but will increase the pressure on the employing authorities and the Department of Education by escalating our actions, which are directed at them”.
Mr McGuckin said it was “unprecedented for school leaders, who have held together an increasingly fragmented and broken system for so long, to take such action”, as “we are normally the problem-solvers, the fixers who sacrificially fill in the gaps where other systems and services collapse”.
He called on “local government and our managing authorities to pull out all the stops now and come to the table with a fair proposal”.
