Some form of industrial action in the second-level school system has seemed almost inevitable for some time.

The country’s largest second-level teaching union, the ASTI, has a number of grievances with the Government, any of which could potentially have led to a dispute.

The ballots for industrial action to take place in the weeks ahead, announced by the ASTI on Saturday, centres on pay for teachers who were recruited in recent years and allowances for supervision and substitution duties carried out by teachers in secondary schools.

The existing two-tier pay system in the public service came about largely as a result of a controversial decision by the then Fine Gael/Labour coalition in 2012 to abolish the payment of allowances , on top of pay, for public service staff taken on after that point.

Teaching unions contend that, as a result of this decision, recently-recruited personnel lost out on qualification payments worth several thousand euro annually, which continued to be paid to other colleagues.

At the very end of its period in office, the then Government agreed a formula - in a precedent-setting deal with firefighters last May - for reintroducing a single-pay arrangement.

However, this was on condition that unions agreed to productivity measures and signed up to the current Lansdowne Road public service pay agreement.

Two other teaching unions, the INTO and the TUI, appear to be very close to reaching a deal with the Government on ending the two-tier pay system for their members, based on the firefighters’ formula.

However, the problem with the ASTI is that its members rejected the Lansdowne Road accord.

The Lansdowne Road deal is the centrepiece of the Government’s public service pay policy and it is adamant that it is “the only game in town”.

It is this issue that has led to the row over supervision and substitution payments.

Productivity measures

One of the productivity measures which teachers had agreed under the original Croke Park public service pay agreement in 2010 was to work an additional 33 unpaid hours per year which were devoted to non-teaching duties such as planning and parent/teacher meetings.

This arrangement carried forward into the subsequent Haddington Road accord.

The Government believes that such reforms were effectively permanent and should continue under the current Lansdowne Road deal.

However, the ASTI disagrees and argued that as its members rejected Lansdowne Road, the obligation to work the so-called 33 Croke Park hours ended when the Haddington Road accord expired at the end of June.

The Government considered the withdrawal by the ASTI from the Croke Park hours as a repudiation by the union of the Lansdowne Road deal, and it invoked provisions under financial emergency legislation to impose penalties on its members.

These penalties included a suspension of incremental pay rises until 2018 and, crucially, the withdrawal of an arrangement to pay teachers about €1,600, over two phases beginning this month, for carrying out supervision and substitution duties.

For the Government, the imposition of the penalties on ASTI members and rank-and-file gardaí who remained outside Lansdowne Road was all about shoring up the pay accord.

It feared that if ASTI members did not have to work the 33 hours, productivity measures in other parts of the public service would begin to unravel.

The 33 hours may not save a lot of money, but broadly similar arrangements which saw nurses work 1.5 additional unpaid hours per week generate about €200 million in savings annually.

The Government is now facing potential school closures in a test of its resolve to defend the Lansdowne Road accord.