SHOULD Jersey teachers be paid more than is currently the case? Yes, in all probability, they should. Is this the right time to press for a pay increase? Quite clearly, it is not.

Anyone with even a cursory understanding of the teaching profession will know that it is a demanding way of earning a living. For all the envious talk of long holidays and a relatively short working day, the pressures in the classroom are intense. In addition, most teachers spend long hours marking their students’ work and preparing lessons. In today’s school environment, they are also required to demonstrate that they can produce results and produce them consistently.

In spite of all this, teachers’ remuneration does not compare particularly well with what can be earned in other environments where similar levels of responsibility are required. Furthermore, as in the case of the nursing profession, the concept of ‘vocation’ is, tacitly, applied to justify limits on pay.

However, even if it is granted that teachers should be in line for improved terms and conditions, no one can seriously believe that the present economic circumstances are a suitable background for a claim – let alone for the threat of strike action if it is not met. The pay freeze now being imposed by the States on the whole public sector is neither a random act of malice nor a casual whim on the part of the Council of Ministers. It is, in fact, one of a range of measures necessary not only to counter the effects of recession, but also to ensure that the Island is well placed to deal with structural deficits when economic normality returns.

Although the teaching unions are not alone in threatening industrial action against the pay freeze, many would say that their members should be more capable of recognising the underlying logic of present policies and the fundamental realities of the current situation. They should also be capable of taking on board the idea that the States are, as matters stand, in no position to accept that any pay group can be regarded as a special case.

A course towards strike action has now been set by the National Union of Teachers and the National Association of Schoolmasters and the Union of Women Teachers, but these organisations should not imagine that there will be a massive surge of public support for them or their members. There will be scant sympathy from the many private sector employees who have accepted pay freezes or from the many Islanders who have no desire to see a resurgence of the counter-productive adversarial industrial relations practices of the past.