Cork school secretary: 'We’re sick of being treated like second-class citizens'

School secretaries and caretakers are due to begin indefinite strike action tomorrow after talks at the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) broke down this evening.

Representatives of the Fórsa trade union walked out of the WRC after three hours of discussions failed to resolve a long-running dispute over pensions.

Fórsa, which represents more than 2,600 secretaries and caretakers, said industrial action is necessary because their members are being denied access to public sector pensions and other entitlements.

The Department of Education has directed schools to open as normal tomorrow.

A rally, organised by Fórsa, will take place outside the Department of Public Expenditure tomorrow.

Noreen O’Callaghan, who has been secretary at Watergrasshill National School for the past 24 years, is school secretaries branch secretary of Fórsa.

This evening she said she was writing a note apologising to the parents of children starting in her school for not being there to welcome them.

“After 24 years of saying hello, I’m running around here now trying to make sure everything is hunky dory for people,” she said.

“I’m nearly in tears, because this is so important to us, I’m so tired, we are putting our hearts and souls into our jobs and it’s just so disappointing that we’re not valued for the work that we do every single day.

“People don’t see the work that we do, we thought that the Department of Education would surely show us some respect for the work that we do.” 

Ms O’Callaghan said there would be buses coming “from all over Ireland” for tomorrow’s protest outside the Department of Public Expenditure.

“We have such amazing support from everyone, and we’re going to blow it out of the water,” she said.

“Nobody wants to go on strike, but we have 2,600 people depending on us to get this across the line, because we’re sick of being treated like second-class citizens.”