June 23, 2018 at 9:11 am
Press Release: MUT declares Trade Dispute with Church Authorities – Union will not accept inferior conditions compared to State counterparts
The MUT is declaring a trade dispute with the Secretariat for Catholic Education which is carrying out negotiations of a new Collective Agreement for teaching grades in church schools with MUT. After months of negotiations on a new agreement, negotiations failed since the demands by the MUT to bring working conditions of teaching grades in church schools in line with their counterparts in state schools are not being met by the Church authorities. The MUT is listing the areas of disagreement:
1. The church authorities are not agreeing to a proposed mechanism whereby schools recognise the service of teaching grades already employed in church schools and who wish to provide their services in another church school;
2. The church authorities shall not be providing laptops to Kindergarten Educators and Learning Support Educators;
3. The church authorities are expecting to have a pick and choose mechanism when it comes to summative and continuous assessment which will lead to increase in workload;
4. The church authorities are employing teaching grades whose salaries are funded by the respective school and are providing conditions and salaries which are inferior to those of teaching grades whose salaries are funded by the Government;
5. The church authorities are not giving any adequate compensation to make up for the added workload caused by the preparation of exam papers;
6. The church authorities shall leave a group of seven counsellors outside current negotiations despite the fact that their salaries and conditions were always aligned in previous agreements with those of other grades in the same agreement.
The MUT shall not be accepting conditions of work which are inferior to what is being expected and shall be updating members about the situation during a dedicated meeting.
