Cork City Council unanimously passes school warden pay parity motion

A motion on pay parity for school wardens has been unanimously approved by Cork City Council.

School wardens in areas which were originally part of the area of Cork County Council but moved over to the city during the 2019 expansion of city boundaries, are being paid 42% less, Solidarity – People Before Profit councillor Brian McCarthy said.

He tabled a motion at last night’s council meeting following a response from the executive stating that the matters were being discussed by the council with Siptu.

The response from city management in the Corporate Policy Group committee stated that the matters referred to “have been the subject of ongoing discussions and negotiations between the council and Siptu, which is the trade union that represents the school warden grade”.

“This is the appropriate forum for these matters to be resolved.

“The council is confident that these discussions will yield a satisfactory outcome in the near future,” the response added.

New contracts

Speaking at the meeting, Mr McCarthy said he did not accept this response, claiming: “In 2019, the school wardens who were moving to the city area were given new contracts to sign.

“But what they weren’t told is that the wardens in the old city area were getting paid more than them.”

He added that what he said was the “two-tier pay” for school wardens has continued since.

He explained that though they work the same amount of hours, they get paid 42% less a week, which he said “has a material impact on them, their families, and their standard of living”.

He added that this has been described as “a minor industrial relations dispute”, but said “this is not a dispute, this is a scandal”.

“I am not going to let this get swept under the rug.”

He called for an explanation to be provided as to how and why this decision was made, for the pay to be brought up and backdated to when the workers first moved over to the city, and that Cork City Council would issue an apology to the workers affected by this.

Mr McCarthy’s motion proposed that councillors would express “total opposition to two-tier pay for school wardens” and that pay parity should be implemented.

The motion was unanimously agreed.