What we learned from the secretaries' and caretakers' strike
Crossing picket lines, trying not to be the first school to close, and mixed messages from representatives
The FORSA strike of caretakers and secretaries has exposed how little the government values the work of secretaries and caretakers, and how fragile school leadership really is.
After seven days of strike action, the Minister for Education, Helen McEntee posted on social media that her department were finally going to take things seriously and go into talks.
I think it’s important to do a bit of a post mortem on last week. I imagine the relief of not having to stand outside their schools in the rain as their colleagues passed them by every morning, while unpaid, will ensure that most secretaries and caretakers will welcome the statement and, perhaps move on from whatever frustrations they have felt during the week. And perhaps they’re right.
However, there is a strong possibility that these talks won’t come to anything and I feel it is important to be honest because we may find ourselves in a situation where strike action might happen again. Even if I’m wrong, I feel it’s important to mark it. Essentially, we cannot let what happened last week happen again.
We are working in a system where everybody seems to be petrified of stepping on anyone else’s toes. As in Séamus Heaney’s poem “Whatever you say, say nothing,” the education system is run by those who speak politely but avoid taking a stand. I’m no Séamus Heaney by any stretch of the imagination but I’m also not one to say nothing.
While, like everyone else, I am relieved the strike has been postponed, I’m fairly angry. I’m angry that for over a week, the people that should have been there, had to be shamed into speaking up, and when they did it was too little, too late.
The first thing we learned is how little the government values the work of secretaries and caretakers, and how little they value the rest of us working in schools. FORSA warned of strike action early in the summer and the Department of Education only half-heartedly met them the day before the strike with no intention of resolution.
If one thinks about it for even the smallest second, a pension and sick leave scheme for secretaries and caretakers costs relatively nothing in the grand scheme of budgets. This could have been an incredibly simple situation and, for whatever reason, they must have miscalculated that:
The public wouldn’t give much support to secretaries and caretakers
A strike wouldn’t really have much impact on people’s lives and thus would peter out
Principals would basically take up the slack
Of course they were wrong on most counts, certainly the first two. The Department of Education, and perhaps others, don’t know how complex and important the work of secretaries and caretakers are in 21st century schools. Gone are the days when it was simply answering the phones and making sure the boiler was running. Secretaries are Office Managers, Financial Controllers, Payroll Officers, Receptionists, Data Officers, Communications Officers, Confidential Advisers and much more.
Caretakers are Facilities Managers, Cleaners, Groundskeepers, Security Officers, Health & Safety Monitors, Emergency First Responders, General Fixers and Problem-Solvers.
If I were to list every duty I can think of here, it would take up pages, so I made it into a Google Doc, which you might want to read!
Ultimately, with all these responsibilities, if no one else was around to do them, you can imagine how quickly things would fall apart. The famous adage: if the principal is out nobody notices, if the teacher is out their class notices, if the secretary is out close the school, rings very true.
However, where the government might have been right was point number three. Principals would take up the slack; and that’s where I’ll travel next.
We have to ask a very simple question. Why did so many principals take on the responsibilities of the secretary and caretaker? Some would argue the teachers’ union was very specific.
Yet, the same union advice was to pass the picket and to keep schools open for business. This advice was given on 21st August and reiterated without further clarification on 28th August, the first day of school closures. As the strike continued over the next few days, bins started piling up, lunch waste was left to fester and post was unopened. Nothing was forthcoming from the union. It left principals in a difficult position: should we close our school?
Some schools closed classes and a couple of schools’ SNAs refused to pass the picket, against their own unions advice, but no primary school in the country closed due to the effects of the strike. One school openly admitted breaking the terms of the strike with the blessing of their management body!
While it would be easy to make an example of this school, the truth is they certainly weren’t the only ones, not by a long shot. The only difference is most of the others took a leaf out of the Heaney poem.
It wasn’t only the unions that left schools to muddle through the strike, there wasn’t a single statement from the IPPN or CPSMA. I mentioned in my podcast that the IPPN is spending more and more time letting principals know that they are the only people that can talk on behalf of principals.
However, they didn’t seem to have any interest in getting involved in the strike until a lobby group, the National Principals’ Forum (of which I am a member) decided to take matters into their own hands and ask principals what questions they would like to ask the representative bodies. They collated the questions and sent them on Thursday. Strikingly, the INTO, IPPN and CPSMA only issued statements after principals’ questions were collated and sent out by the National Principals’ Forum.
However, all that aside, surely principals across the country didn’t need any further advice? The advice seemed simple: don’t take on the responsibilities. Yet in practice many principals felt they had no choice
Perhaps many principals don’t know who one listens to? Principals were left in an impossible position because they were hearing two very different messages.
From the Department of Education: keep schools open, and to help with the shortfall, teaching principals or deputies could be given extra administration days.
From the INTO: keep schools open too, but do not take on the duties of secretaries or caretakers.
The result was confusion. Principals were expected to run schools without doing the work of striking staff — but also without any real alternative being provided.
It’s not surprising, then, that many teachers and principals were unsure whose instructions took priority.
One of the biggest changes I’ve noted since becoming a teacher over twenty years ago is how the union engages with its members. The union has failed to attract ordinary members in a meaningful way. Branch meetings are mostly half empty across the country. It would be no surprise to me that many principals wouldn’t know that they must follow their union’s instructions over the Department of Education’s.
However, that’s possibly me being generous, or perhaps naive.
It’s possible that some principals were swayed by the Department’s offer of extra admin days. It would be interesting to know how many schools took up this offer and an FOI request might reveal the scale. But whatever the reasons, it’s hard to see how any school could have taken on these tasks without realising the wider consequences.
However, the most likely reason no primary school closed during the strike was fear of being the next day’s headline in the news. They had good reason too. When the SNAs in Saplings Carlow refused to cross the picket line, the school was forced to close and it was all over the headlines the next day with the principal, I’m sure, bombarded with media attention.
Ultimately, nobody wanted to be the headline in the national papers. Therefore, nobody closed their school. Rather than simply giving out to principals about this, we need to accept that this is the case, it’s understandable, and we need to know that if the strike has to continue that we do not put the decision for closing a school on to an individual principal or Board of Management.
With all that in mind, what can we now learn from last week and what should happen the next time?
There are a few things we now know. Firstly, the government realise that if caretakers and secretaries go on strike that they have the support of Irish people. I didn’t see a single article criticising the action. The government should also realise that schools were under significant pressure after only a couple of days and there was a risk that at least one school would close and then there would be a domino effect.
We also know that most principals will do anything to avoid being a headline in the media. This works in two ways. The first is being the first school that closes. The second is being a school that publicly undermines strike action. We saw two examples of this above.
Another thing we know is that the representative bodies need to do better. While it’s all well and good saying that you are showing solidarity, it’s another thing doing solidarity. Their inaction was no better than people who change their profile picture on their social media account and think they’re making a difference. It would seem to me, the INTO were as concerned about pleasing the Department of Education as they were FORSA. Surely within a couple of days, the INTO could have shown real solidarity by threatening to ballot their members to support the strike of their colleagues or giving a deadline to the Department of Education to enter talks or they would direct members not to cross the picket line. (I realise there are complexities to this but you get the point.)
It was very poor form that from 28th August until the day before the strike was postponed that no representative body, stakeholder or union gave direction to their members. I think it’s safe to say the only reason they did was because of the National Principals’ Forum’s press release. Of course this could be an incredible coincidence, and no doubt they will tell their members all the work they were doing in the background.
Ultimately, if these talks break down, and we’re back to strike, the INTO is going to have to be specific in their directive to their members. They are also going to have to take a stronger stance in showing their solidarity to FORSA members. Other stakeholders are going to have to be much quicker in providing real assistance to their members. It shouldn’t have taken a small lobby group to embarrass them into the smallest bit of action.
I also think that if a group of union members do not wish to cross a picket line in the future, this should be respected. We heard stories of delivery drivers, postmen and women, and many others who didn’t cross the picket line out of respect. I can’t say I heard of any families that didn’t send their children to school because they didn’t wish to cross the picket line and maybe that’s something we should also talk about.
Having said all that, I feel we owe the secretaries and caretakers the respect they deserve. I heard people describing them as the backbone or the glue of the school, and yet almost all of us did pass the picket each day, whether we liked it or not. If nothing else, I hope we’ll go in on Monday morning and help them with the duties that have piled up for over a week, whether that’s helping empty the bins, going through the post or any of the hundreds of jobs they do every day. After what they’ve been through, it’s the least we can do. But more importantly, the system must change so that secretaries and caretakers never have to take this action again.