Teachers in the NASUWT union who acted just before a strike could have their pay taken away for breach of contract.
That comes from a letter from teaching employers to school leaders, seen by BBC News NI.
Members of NASUWT in Northern Ireland took industrial action shortly before a strike in May.
The action affects a range of duties including deputizing for other staff, overseeing exams, lesson plans, inspections and parent meetings.
It came after teachers’ unions in Northern Ireland rejected a salary offer from employers as “unreasonable”.
NASUWT’s Justin McCamphill said the letter was “seditious and a naked attempt to intimidate and scare teachers just before summer break begins.”
NASUWT was the first union to respond, but the Irish National Teachers Association (INTO) will also vote its members on wage disputes.
INTO said some teachers “found it impossible to make ends meet in the face of escalating costs related to energy and food”.
Members of the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) also recently supported industrial action in an indicative vote.
The letter to school principals said the NASUWT action had implications for “teachers’ “contractual obligations.”
She came from Sara Long, Chair of Management Side, the umbrella organization for education employers in Northern Ireland – including the Education Authority (EA), the Council for Catholic Maintained Schools (CCMS) and the Department of Education (DE).
“The Management Side believes that by participating in the pre-strike action as directed by NASUWT, its members are failing to fully meet their contractual obligations and are therefore in breach of contract,” Ms. Long wrote.
She said a number of actions taken by NASUWT members violated the Teachers (Conditions of Employment) (NI) Regulations 1987.
These included things like not submitting lesson plans to the school board, limiting attendance at school assemblies to once a month, not meeting parents outside of class time, and not collaborating on inspections.
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“The management side cannot accept the partial fulfillment of teachers’ contractual obligations, and we have written to NASUWT to request them to stop what we consider to be breaches of contract,” Ms. Long’s letter continued.
“We have indicated that where this cannot be agreed, we must consider arranging for reasonable and proportionate salary deductions from those teachers who breach their contractual obligations.”
She also said that the management side is ready to meet NASUWT again in the coming weeks.
NASUWT said: “The union will respond firmly to the management side to remind them that their threats have little purpose other than to unnecessarily escalate tensions during the trade dispute.
“NASUWT will not hesitate to take action to protect the interests of our members and when employers escalate the dispute by attempting to retaliate against our members, NASUWT will not hesitate to call strikes.”
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