Teachers United Protest outside Anglo Irish Bank
national |
worker & community struggles and protests |
news report 
Monday February 09, 2009 22:38
by Paula Geraghty
Teachers say enough is enough as they are pilloried for their pensions and underfunded workplaces while banks plead they can't reduce top bankers pay due to 'contractual obligations'.
Teachers United held a demonstration outside Anglo-Irish Bank on Stephen's Green this evening.
A press release by the group said the picket was “to highlight the fact that the education system is grossly underfunded while the banks that were making €1 million a day in profit during the Celtic Tiger are being bailed out.”
Deirdre Cronin, a primary school teacher in an inner city DEIS school said: “Why is it that when bankers, who caused the economic crisis by speculating, get into trouble, the Government writes them a blank check?
“But yet the government will not bail out schools. They penalise them by cutting teachers, increasing class sizes and cutting the pensions of teachers. We always have to pay for their mistakes – its time to turn the tide”.
Bernard Lynch, a secondary school teacher, said: “By cutting pay and conditions of teachers and slashing the infrastructure of our schools, we are shooting ourselves in the foot."
The group had urged teachers and pupils to join this evening's picket.
They got quite a bit of support and coverage- so look out for tomorrows papers.
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Comments (9 of 9)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9TEACHERS WERE “furious” and “fed up” and may embark on work stoppages, a group of protesting primary and secondary school teachers said yesterday.
Naming themselves as members of a new grassroots teachers’ organisation, Teachers United, the 20 or so people gathered outside the headquarters of Anglo Irish Bank in Dublin carrying placards with such slogans as “Bail out education, not the banks” and “We will not pay for bankers’ greed”.
Gerry Murphy, a secondary school teacher in Dublin, said he was protesting because he, like other teachers, was taking a pay cut, while the banks were being subsidised. “We didn’t create this problem,” he said. “We shouldn’t be asked to pay while the banks get our taxes.”
Niall Smith, a primary school teacher in Dublin, said Teachers United was formed in December in response to cuts in education and had members in the three teachers’ unions. “We formed to give a perspective of the rank and file in all the unions.”
Asked why it was felt necessary to form a new group, he said the unions were “wedded to social partnership for so long they can’t see a solution other than social partnership”. “Why should we be made to pay for the sins of the banks? It’s just not on. It’s important at this stage that all workers unite. There is an attempt to pit public sector workers against the private sector.”
Anna O’Loughlin, a primary teacher in Dublin 7, said her take-home pay had fallen by about €200 a month and she didn’t know how she would pay her mortgage.
Taken from Irish Times: 10-02-09
Teachers United Public Forum,
This Thursday 12th Feb, 8pm
Central Hotel, Dublin
All welcome
A few facts:
1. Pension Levy won't save 1 single job in the private sector
2. Its not whinging- its called defending working conditions and pay which teachers and nurses have every right to do.
3. How many teachers will be sacked? In fact over 1,000 jobs are to go in teaching with the cuts
4. Teachers have always paid for their pensions- this is an extra levy on top of what we already pay.
Get rid of the tax haven business.
Stop letting people set up shell companies, so they can let a business go bankrupt, while they walk away with millions.
Impose a wage limit on any bank executives of banks that got taxpayers money.
Ban the practice of unreceipted expenses for TD, Senators, and councillors (and create a few jobs by employing people to check on the expenses, unless civic minded people are willing to shop them, they way they encouraged us to shop the people who pretended to have whiplash etc)
These builders and bankers got away with daylight robbery. Tax breaks, building poorly built estates and apartment blocks using a shell company, and then shutting down the company, and setting up another one for the next estate, all the while the banks didn't even pay the full costs of Garda and Army escort for the Securicor vans, and helped many of their customers illegally evade tax while overcharging the rest of us.
If any party expects my vote in the next election, or a yes on Lisbon, they are living in cloud cuckoo land.
The builders and bankers are bankrupt now Angry Taxpayer .
I share your anger about the BA*T*RDS for sure.
But now is now.
The other measures you suggest will bring in a pittance compared to the bills we have to pay.
The question remains:
How do we pay this bill if the Governmentt does not cut spending?
"How do we pay this bill if the Government does not cut spending?"
Yeah, it's not as if we have billions of euro worth of gas and oil in the sea off our coasts which our government is giving away for nothing to the likes of Shell.
Anyway, cutting education is harmless. It won't damage society to simply not educate the children to the high standards they get at the moment. It would be much worse if we had to make meaningful cuts to the high salaries of the hard working folks like hospital consultants, or the heads of bodies like the Garda Ombudsman, or FAS; or God forbid, TD's and bankers.
Oh wait that's backwards isn't it?
Hi
When is the next meeting of the Teachers United Public Forum??
Many thanks
CS
Next General Meeting of Public Service Alliance,
Date:Thursday Feb 26.
Time: 8.15PM.
Venue: Teachers Club, Parnell Sq, Dublin 1.
Next meeting of Teachers United is monday 23rd Feb @4.30pm at Anglo Irish Bank, Stephens Green. All welcome!
Around 30 teachers from across the three teacher unions took part in the picket outside Anglo Irish Bank today. A number of teachers attempted to stage a sit-in at the bank during the picket.
Pictures and video to follow soon.
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