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.

In a recent Determination, the Labour Court upheld a Rights Commissioner Decision that UCC should pay an IFUT member the amount of redundancy payment claimed by IFUT, statutory redundancy plus four weeks. UCC was represented in the Labour Court by one of the most expensive legal firms in Ireland at taxpayers’ expense. IFUT is now advised that, incredibly, UCC has retained this expensive law firm and have embarked upon a very costly appeal to the High Court, allegedly “on a point of law”.

IFUT General Secretary, Mike Jennings, says the Minister should intervene “to prevent the college squandering more than 20 times the payment due to a former employee on a spurious legal adventure which seems designed purely to defer the payment. This is not a case of IFUT seeking more money from government. Instead it is asking the Department of Education to step in to prevent a monumental waste of taxpayers’ money”.

The IFUT Media Release is available here.

Documentation on the case, including IFUT’s letter to the Minister, is available here.

Dr FitzGerald was the only Taoiseach in Ireland’s history who was concurrently a full member of a Congress-affiliated trade union. He was always proud of that fact as were, and are, all of his many friends in IFUT.

Dr FitzGerald was the Principal Guest Speaker at the IFUT Annual Delegate Conference in recent years. He also took an active part in the campaign in defence of the principle of academic freedom.

Speaking of Dr FitzGerald, the General Secretary of IFUT, Mike Jennings, said “The amazing thing about Garret was that, despite his monumental status as an Academic and Statesman, he was the easiest person in the world to talk to. Was there ever such a great man who was on first name terms with literally everyone he met? IFUT is proud to say that he was one of our own. He will be sadly missed”.

The Irish Federation of University Teachers extends its deepest sympathy to all of Dr FitzGerald’s family and his many friends.

The IFUT Media Release is available here.

Dr Clarke is currently Head of the School of Education in UCD and has been a member of IFUT Executive for a number of years. Her biography and photograph are available on the IFUT Website.

The IFUT Media Release is available here.

Commenting on a report in The Irish Times on 4 March last, IFUT General Secretary, Mike Jennings, said there is no evidence whatever to support suggestions that the Department of Education has ‘lost patience’ with the Federation. “Rather, it has been IFUT that has expressed unease at the ’slow bicycle race’ nature of the process and it would appear that other vested interests have adopted an approach of ‘getting their retaliation in first’. In addition, IFUT wishes to clarify that it has not expressed criticism of NUIG proposals, as suggested in the article”, Mike Jennings said.

The IFUT Media Release is available here.

In one case, a Researcher in NUI Maynooth has been awarded four weeks pay per year of service (pys) on top of her statutory entitlement (two weeks pys) by the Labour Court, in a Determination that is binding on the university. The case was taken by IFUT. In two other cases in UCC, a Rights Commissioner awarded six weeks pay per year of service to two contract employees who had been made redundant following the expiry of their contracts.

Mike Jennings, General Secretary of IFUT, who represented all of the claimants in these cases, said, “These cases make a strong legal point that when contract staff are made redundant, for instance, due to the expiry of their contracts, they must be paid exactly the same redundancy payments as permanent staff would have been paid had they been made redundant”.

It is estimated that there are several thousand workers on contract in Irish universities and many thousands more throughout the Public Sector. This number is increasing due to current Government policy. Mr Jennings said, “What these important victories establish is that at least in the case of severance payments these workers must be treated equally. However, in many cases we believe that we can prove that the workers are in fact entitled in law to be made permanent”.

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.

It is calling on the Commission to investigate Ireland’s non-compliance with the fixed term workers directive, and Fixed Term Workers Act, 2003, the statute examined by the Labour Court in the run-up to its decision.

The 2003 Act provides protection to employees in the form of accrued rights, culminating after a set period, in the right to a contract of indefinite duration. However, exemptions on “objective grounds” are provided for.

In February 2009, the Court overturned a ruling by a Rights Commissioner in favour of the academic, Ann Buckley, awarding her a contract of indefinite duration, together with €5000 in compensation.

The full article from Industrial Relations News (Issue 31, 2 September 2009) is available here.

IFUT General Secretary, Mike Jennings, said that IFUT wanted complete transparency in the payment of allowances and was critical of those allowances which were not directly linked to the performance of extra duties. However, he was clear that with regard to those “legitimate” allowances that were paid to staff for taking on additional workloads, IFUT members would not be performing such role if they were not paid the allowance.

The full article from Industrial Relations News (Issue 30, 27 August 2009) is available here.

“In view of the crisis now facing our sector, I am proposing that the Heads of Irish Universities and all those in senior management in education unite with IFUT and other employee bodies in education, to work together to defend the entire sector,” Mr Jennings said.

The IFUT Press Release is available in full here.