Why do teachers dispute the two-tier pay scale?

I don't think you know what "grovel" means

By the way, AFAIK, the 10% lower starting salary applies to all new public servants, not just teachers.

Ahh the teachers and their unions.

Ever notice another sector of society is doing well and about to get something and they immediately demand they get something similar.

Years ago during the real celtic tiger economy, the tech and dot com bubble oneupto 2001, they saw engineers, computer science graduates, etc doing well they immediately wanted to be benchmarked against them.

Of course they didn't notice fact that these graduates were often working twice or three times their hours, especially when they factored in their very generous holiday time. Nor they didn't notice these graduates were not entitled to lump sums on retirement or for the most part huge non contributory pensions upon retirement.

Then they wanted to benchmarked against builders who happened to be busting their guts during the building boom.

And when said graduates and builders lost their jobs or got paycuts when the bubbles burst, the old teachers seemed to forget about benchmarking altogether.

Now when someone in government flies the idea that public sector front line workers that worked through the pandemic are going to get something, hey presto the teachers unions suddenly are front line workers also.

Funny I don't remember them in hospital wards where there might be covid patients, working in A&E with possible covid cases, transporting covid patients in ambulances, working in nursing homes riddled with covid patients or out manning checkpoints?

Hell I don't remember them working all hours like some delivery drivers delivering groceries to house bound at risk people.

I do remember them working on full pay and doing a few hours on zoom or some such.

Hell they didn't have the hassel of looking after a room full of kids for 6 months or so.

So fook them.

Back when the two tier system was brought in the existing teachers would not take a pay cut so the unions did a deal where they shafted new entrants or more correctly didn't get the often overly generous terms and conditions of the existing teachers.

They didn't care about recent or future members.

Now though there are a lot of newer members who are looking at the unions and wondering why the fook they should be a member since they have done fook all to get them terms and conditions of employment like some of their lazy less educated older colleagues.

The honest thing for them to do would have been to negotiate that saving to the state to be spread more evenly over all of their members. Instead they let the young teachers take the full brunt of it and are now blaming the government for the fact that they didn't stand up for them back then.

Threatening to strike is normal for them. No they shouldn't do it as often as they do, but that's what they do. In this case the younger teachers were doing the same job as the older ones but for about half the wages. And the union were happy for the saving to be borne by those younger teachers.

OP will those newer guys or yourself ever get the opportunity to make it to that top tier contract?

Costs had to be cut. Their options were to work with the government on a way to share the cost savings amongst their members or to not contest the younger (future) members taking the burden of the cost saving, with a view to contesting this in the future.

I obviously have problems with unions, I think you'd need to have your head buried in the sand not to see problems with them. And I think you'd have to have your head buried in the sand not to see problems of not having them. The teachers union are particularly dislikeable though. It feels like they threaten strike action a few times a year. During the pandemic we had heaps of people continue to work throughout it and no-one had adequate PPE from the start. But the teachers threaten strike if adequate measures aren't put in place. Their stance on getting priority on the vaccines was particularly bad - I never heard a justification for why a 30 year old teacher would be vaccinated before a 30 year old meat factory worker.

In this case, I criticised them at the time for selling out the incoming teachers and said that this would happen. And surprise surprise, here we are.

They don't get to keep their jobs. Anyone who is a teacher can take a career break and go and work at something else, go travelling etc. It's not an indefinite career break. That loophole for politicians was closed years ago. Max career break is 5 years which has to be applied for on an annual basis. They don't get paid while on career break and after five years they either have to return to teaching or resign.

No, existing members had commitments, families etc and the union should not have sacrificed them more than was the case already, especially at time when most workers did not have a pay cut. Some people lost their jobs then because their services were not in demand, but demand for teachers rose.

A lower scale was appropriate during the recession, rents etc were lower then. However, when the economy recovered 5 or 6 years ago the new people should have been put on the same scale as everyone else over a period of a few years. The government are quite shameless in their attitude,

I don't think you understand how unions work in Ireland. That is exactly what they do. Look at any industry (public or private where unions exist) and you find a whole load of "employees who joined before such-and-such-a-date are entitled to x, employees who joined before a-more-recent-date are entitled x/2 and employees who started after-the-most-recent-date get sfa.

This is very common practice. The unions get to tell their existing members that they fought the good fight and preserved their benefits. And in the years to come they get the new members to join by pointing at the mean employer/government who "screwed them" and they need to join the union to prevent it from happening again.

the only wanted it reversed after they had agreed to it (and preserved the payrises for the existing members).

As someone who has never worked in the public sector i can never get my head around the fact that people get the ame pay regardless of performance / ability etc.

And never can get sacked unless they murder someone in the office and even then...

You would have a point if we weren't all paying for it. You might also reflect on the fact that taxes are high for high earners here and services are basically awful. Not exactly value for money is it?

Could they maybe move into your area then if they are unhappy with what they are earning? It is also important to remember that teachers are not paid for the summer holidays. So they are really paid for 8 months work as opposed the 11 months that a normal job would have. So point 14 (mid) on the new scale is €57546 (7193 month), which would be equivalent to ~€79k if working the 11 months in a normal job.