Adult Education Tutors to protest in Nenagh

Action planned in Nenagh and Clonmel

Adult Education Tutors are to hold protests in Nenagh and Clonmel this month.

Caoimhin Woods, Tipperary ETB Adult Education Tutor (AET) with North Tipperary ETB, said AETs employed by Education and Training Boards (ETBs) across the country are hourly-paid, are forced to claim social welfare during school holidays, face uncertainty about hours and annual income, and receive no rise in pay after years of service. AETs are public servants paid from the public purse but without public service contracts. “AETs from ETBs across the country have united and organised, and have been campaigning for the regularisation of their situation with a public service contract and the establishment of an incremental salary scale that accounts for their years of prior service,” Mr Woods stated.

“We also want pay parity for colleagues who joined us after 2011. “In March 2020, after years of engagement at the WRC and after the Department of Education refused to make any meaningful improvements to the terms and conditions of AETs, the Labour Court recommended that the DES should formulate an offer. We waited until July 2022 for DES and DFHERIS to promise our union representatives that a proposal would be on the table before the end of September. “Various Dáil deputies have applied pressure on our behalf in the form of Parliamentary Questions. In spite of all this, we’re still waiting.

“We’re told that a proposal is under consideration by DPER but we know how slowly those wheels grind and it’s already two months past the promised deadline. We also have no confidence that when an offer is finally made it will be in any way satisfactory to us.”

The Adult Education Tutors Organisation have organised a protest on Friday, April 21 at North Tipperary ETB Head Office on Church Road, Nenagh at 2pm. A protest will also take place Tipperary ETB Head Office, Western Road, Clonmel, at 12.30pm.

“The purpose of the protests is to highlight our demands and to bring pressure to bear on the Government to finally put an end to the glaring injustice of Adult Education Tutors’ lack of a proper contract,” Mr Woods said.

“AETs’ contribution to creating an inclusive economy and community, delivering education to some of the most disadvantaged and marginalised people, cannot be overestimated. We facilitate the ability of many sectors of our society to become contributing members of the community.

Yet, AETs are treated as second class citizens and marginalised within our sector.”