Dundalk IT graduation returns to campus but industrial action still looms

Dundalk Institute of Technology (DkIT) has reversed its decision to hold this year's graduation in the town hall in Dundalk, with the ceremony now taking place at the DkIT campus, but the Dundalk Democrat has learned that this will not be enough to stop the planned ballot by Teacher's Union of Ireland (TUI) branch at DkIT from going ahead this week.

Chairperson of the DkIT branch of the TUI, Mr Kenneth Sloane, told the Democrat that they “very much emphatically are going ahead” with their ballot for industrial action.

The TUI branch at DkIT is to ballot for industrial action over a number of issues, including what they describe as "a proposal to create a new fifth school.” While it is not yet clear what it would fully entail, it is believed it may involve a private college element being introduced to the Dublin Road campus.

Mr Sloane contends that: “it’s a plan, developed without any consultation with academics, academic managers or most of the administrative staff, seeking to basically downgrade the standard of education that we can provide, and also introduce a lot of what we call really unsavoury and provocative measures.” 

Referring to previous incumbents, he added: “we’ve had a decade of austerity where senior managers and the president had very difficult and unpleasant decisions to make, but we always maintained cordial and even a warm working relationship.”

He continued: “We got through the whole austerity period, of almost a decade without ever once having to ballot for industrial action locally.

“In the last 12 months we’ve been compelled to ballot twice. And it’s part of this refusal of the president to engage, not only with the union branch committee but he refuses to listen to his own senior managers.

“We’re very proud of the fact that we deliver high quality at an affordable cost to people who were traditionally not able to access higher-level education, and it seems that the current thinking of the President’s Office is to substantially reverse that mission.

“This is an assault on the quality of what we do, and the members are highly motivated to protect the quality of the service that we provide to the region”, Mr Sloane added, saying that it was an “attack on academic standards and quality, as well as the way it’s being done and how it would affect our working practices too.”