Monday 1 March 2010

March - only two more months of unpaid overtime to go!

The TUC have just released figures confirming what teachers, and their families, already know only too well - that we clock up hours of ‘unpaid overtime’ every week.

The report, released to mark “Work Your Proper Hours Day”, describes the 18.7 hours of extra work that an average teacher carries out in the evenings and weekends as ‘extreme’ overtime.

Put a different way, the report points out that, in effect, it as if we worked the first FOUR months of the year for free - before we actually start working the 1265 paid ‘directed hours’.

Teachers can be exploited and overworked in this way because the existing Pay and Conditions Document puts no limit on the additional hours that we have to put in outside the teaching day. That’s why we need a national campaign to win a National Contract that sets a binding limit on overall working hours.

That's why I have helped draft an amendment for NUT Annual Conference (again!) calling on the NUT to hold a national ballot to sanction a programme of both strike and non-strike action to win such a Contract. This should include clear guidelines that allow teachers to refuse to carry out excessive demands.

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