Two Lecturers in TCD with long service have been made redundant and a long serving member of the Library staff has also been issued with notice of dismissal.

Mike Jennings, General Secretary of IFUT, said that “last year, IFUT members, with considerable reluctance, voted to endorse the Croke Park Agreement following detailed clarifications from the Department of Education as to how its provisions would apply in the university sector.

“In return for agreeing to substantial extra productivity and input, we were guaranteed no job losses and no further pay cuts on top of the substantial reductions already suffered by staff. The authorities in TCD have, in spectacular fashion, broken this agreement. No party to an agreement could be expected to continue to honour it when the other party so blatantly welshes on their commitments.

“This dispute will, at IFUT’s request, now be investigated by the Labour Court in March. Until then, IFUT is putting its participation in Croke Park on hold”, Mike Jennings said.

The IFUT Media Release is available here.

“While recognising that there are some positives in the proposed agreement, the offer of a blank cheque for the renegotiation of staff contracts, with fundamental and far reaching implications for educational standards, is simply not acceptable,” IFUT General Secretary, Mike Jennings, stated.

The Executive of IFUT also decided that the conditions of employment of its members will not be subject to aggregated vote by other unions on the proposed agreement and reserved the right to make whatever decisions are necessary if members’ jobs and conditions are put in jeopardy.

The matter will be put to a full ballot of the union’s members following its Annual Delegate Conference on 24 April next.

The IFUT Press Release is available here.

“If they cut our pay, they can hardly expect us to continue working as though nothing had happened. I expect that IFUT members will disengage from non-core duties, particularly in the administrative area”, said Mike Jennings, General Secretary.

IFUT will also re-ballot its members to take part in any national or education sector-wide strikes in opposition to a pay cut for these members.

“At a time when there are more students than ever before in Higher Education, a combination of the drastic understaffing caused by the misguided staffing embargo and the collapse of morale caused by the cut of pay seems guaranteed to do untold damage to the education system just when so many more people need it”, said Mr. Jennings, who was speaking following a meeting of the National Executive at the weekend.

The IFUT Press Release is available in full here.

The launch was attended by IFUT President, Hugh Gibbons, the General Secretary, Mike Jennings, members of the IFUT Executive and IFUT Council and a number of past Presidents.

Photographs from the event will be available shortly.

IFUT’s General Secretary, Mike Jennings, said “We are very pleased that our members agreed with our recommendation that the deal was the best available in the current climate.

“However, no one should interpret this decision as implying acceptance by IFUT of the draconian education cuts contained in the recent Budget. In fact, the opposite is the case. Once the pay deal is resolved, we will be able to concentrate on winning the battle for popular and political support to overturn these cuts which will have such a devastating impact on our higher education system.”

The IFUT press release is available in full here.

“In recent years university teachers and researchers have offered very considerable flexibility in accepting ever greater workloads. The issue of pay will be reviewed again in the context of allocations to Education in the forthcoming Budget and the pressure under which our members are expected to do their job,” IFUT General Secretary, Mike Jennings, said.

IFUT will use the clause of the agreement which provides for a total review of the benchmarking process as a mechanism to pursue productivity claims in recognition of the massive additional workload taken on by university staff over the past decade, he says.

The IFUT Press Release is available here.