Sinn Féin councillor Thérèse Ruane has said advertisements carried on the JobBridge website that seek to employ primary school teachers for €50 a week are “exploitive and demeaning to the teaching profession.”
Councillor Ruane, a qualified secondary teacher, was responding to the advertising of teaching positions on the JobBridge website. “One position advertised on the JobBridge website for a school in Mallow, County Cork, was for a year’s internship for an applicant with a teacher training degree who would be expected to deliver the school curriculum and perform a range of additional duties for €50 a week.
“This disgraceful exploitation of teachers demeans this most important profession. It has been introduced by a government that has imposed punitive cuts to wages, pensions, and allowances across the teaching sector and shows a level of contempt that is very worrying.”
Cllr Ruane understands that “the INTO has refused to endorse these internships and I commend them for adopting this position and that most young teachers will not even qualify for the scheme because they would have to be unemployed for six months. These internships are an attempt by the Department of Education and Skills to employ highly skilled teachers for next to nothing.”
She concluded: “It comes at a time that when the casualisation of work practises is forcing thousands of newly qualified teachers to emigrate to find work abroad and I challenge the Education Minister, Ruairí Quinn, to give his views on this matter. This is a step too far.”
