"We don't matter, we're not really teachers": Cork ETB literacy tutors set for protest action
Adult literacy tutors working in Cork city and county say they still haven't been offered proper working conditions almost three years after the Labour Court recommended them.
Adult literacy tutors working for the Cork ETB have spoken out about the insecurity of their working conditions as they prepare to attend a protest at Dáil Éireann in February.
The Adult Education Tutors Organisation, AETO, are set to protest in Dublin on February 15 after a three-year delay in recommended improvements to their pay and conditions.
The Labour Court recommended that the Department of Education and Skills make an offer to 3,300 adult education tutors working nationally, represented by the TUI (Teacher’s Union of Ireland) in March 2020.
Adult literacy tutors are only paid for their contact hours and are on Contracts of Indefinite Duration (CID) that mean they don’t know from term to term how many teaching hours they will be given.
Cecile Boltz McCann, who lives in Glanmire and has worked in adult literacy in Cork for 20 years, said the group was expecting around 100 people to join the protest.
“We are organising a protest to get better pay and conditions because we are working on part-time contracts and being paid by the hour,” Cecile told Tripe + Drisheen. “We don’t have holiday pay and those kinds of things. Any tutors who are working for ETBs who are not seen as teachers are paid by the hour.”
Forced to go on the dole during holidays
She said the uncertainty of contracts means that many of her colleagues are forced to go on the dole during the summer holidays.
Cecile herself teaches 20 hours per week, at a rate of €37 per hour. However, tutors are only paid for contact hours, as in, hours in actual classes, and not for any lesson planning, assessment or supporting paperwork. Preparation and surrounding work is more than one additional hour for every hour taught, meaning that Cecile often works far in excess of double the hours she’s paid for.
Many tutors also find themselves losing hours at short notice if enrolment is not sufficient in a particular learning centre.
“In September, there was a class in Midleton but there was not enough learners enrolled, so I found out in October that it was cancelled,” Cecile said. “We are never sure where or when there are hours.”
“There is a non-recognition of what we are and what we do. There’s a feeling from the ETBs that we don’t matter, that we’re not really teachers.”
A representative of Cork Education and Training Board (ETB), the co-ordinators of literacy programmes for the county, told Tripe + Drisheen that the terms and conditions of employment for its staff were “set out in national agreements. Cork ETB does not comment on individual employment matters.”
The Department of Education and Skills, not the ETB, was the national employer listed in the 2020 Labour Court recommendation, however this is now the Department of Further and Higher Education (DFHE).
One in six Irish adults have poor literacy
Almost one in six Irish adults score below a level 1 on a five-point literacy scale, meaning they struggle to read a passage of text, according to the OECD Adult Skills Survey.
Nearly 30% of the Irish workforce has reached Junior Cert education or less, while 10% have primary or no formal education.
40,000 adults go to literacy courses in Ireland, according to the National Adult Literacy Agency, who also say the budget for the ETBs to operate Adult Literacy Programmes is €33 million in total: €825 per learner.
Vulnerable learners with literacy problems “failed again”
Clare Hatcher, an adult literacy tutor based in Cork city, who is currently being paid for 20 hours per week in seven different centres, has worked as a tutor for 20 years.
Delays to the DFHE issuing an offer to tutors have left her and others “in limbo,” she told Tripe + Drisheen.
“The Labour Court recommendation was in March 2020. What the Labour Court said was that the Department should formulate an offer, and now it’s nearly February 2023 and there’s been no offer come through to us.”
She said the vulnerable adults who she taught were being failed again by the poor working conditions offered to tutors, because many tutors can’t sustain themselves on their earnings and leave.
“We’re losing fabulous tutors,” she said. “How can you pay a mortgage with such uncertainty? What happens is you lose some of the best tutors. They can’t live with that level of uncertainty. And if some of the best people have to leave, the adult learners are not being given the service they should be.”
“There are people who just need basic literacy for their everyday life: parents who need to be able to spell their children’s names, for example. The system has failed these people and there’s no place for them in the system. And what’s happened to adult education tutors is there’s no place for us in the system either.”
Cost concerns
The current ETB adult literacy system evolved from a volunteering situation and the cost of bringing tutoring wage and working conditions further in line with those of other teaching staff is large, Clare said.
Tutors may not hold teaching qualifications but are trained as adult literacy tutors.
“The penny dropped that the service being provided was more extensive than was realised because we’d been below the radar for so long and the cost was going to be more than anticipated.”
“I think it’s a historic issue because until the 1970s, there was no acknowledgement that Ireland had a literacy problem at all. The whole system came out of a group of volunteers that realised that there were all these people that couldn’t read and write.”
In its 2020 recommendation, the Labour Court acknowledged that the cost of bringing tutors’ pay agreements in line with teachers would be excessive and recommended that the employer “identify the scale of cost it is now prepared or able to absorb to address the Unions' claims, and should formulate an offer within the parameters of that scale of cost.”
TUI say Paschal Donohue’s department is causing delay
TUI Assistant General Secretary Colm Kelly told Tripe + Drisheen that an offer has been prepared by the Department of Further and Higher Education, but that delays were being caused by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform not signing off on the new plan.
Minister Donohue is currently embroiled in a controversy surrounding his election expenses and his relationship with businessman Michael Stone.
“We are lobbying politicians with a view to putting pressure on the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform to get this resolved and we expect that to happen in the coming months,” Colm Kelly said.
Working conditions for adult education tutors had been discussed for the past ten years and there had been incremental improvements in their working conditions, including in 2016 when they became eligible for a sick leave scheme, and a CID system in 2019, he said.