600 march on Gove in London - now we need to strike

Police estimates - not union estimates - say that 600 of us marched through Westminster tonight in a protest against Michael Gove called by London Region of the NUT.

The rallying-point outside Westminster Cathedral gradually filled as teachers struggled in from all corners of London.

With many demonstrators wearing 'Gove-masks', we marched off to Gove's Department for Education buildings in Great Smith Street - just as the snow began to fall !

At the closing rally outside the DfE, teachers chanted in support of strike action. Everyone knew that the march had been a useful protest - but were waiting for news as to when national unions would be announcing the first date for a national strike.

A possible hint followed when, in the TUC pre-budget rally that followed around the corner in Marsham Street, PCS General Secretary Mark Serwotka called on all unions to join together in strike action on June 26th.  

Of course, the PCS aren't waiting to start action until then - they are taking national strike action on March 20th. The NUT needn't wait until June either. But united strike action, co-ordinated across the trade union movement, on Wednesday 26 June would be a big step towards rebuilding the momentum that has been lost since the co-ordinated national strikes of 2011 - and a big step forwards towards defending our pay, pensions, jobs and services against the attacks from Gove, Cameron and the rest of this rotten Government.

... and in Coventry, NUT members demonstrated too: 

LANAC prepares for NUT Conference - and beyond

On Saturday March 9^th, over twenty delegates and visitors, from eighteen different Local NUT Associations, travelled to Coventry from as far away as Plymouth and Hull to attend LANAC’s Steering Committee meeting.

Delegates reported how, across the Union, NUT members were expressing their determined opposition to Gove’s performance-pay proposals, but also expressing growing frustration and anger at the continued lack of national strike action.

By September, Gove’s legislation will have been enacted and schools will be expected to have adopted pay policies that show how all pay rises are linked to ‘performance’. That pressing timescale means that there is no more time for Unions to dither. LANAC believes that unions urgently need to implement a programme of strike action to combat the attacks on teachers’ pay – and on our pensions and working conditions too.

NUT Annual Conference in Liverpool over the Easter weekend will be key to making sure the Union adopts such a fighting strategy. NUT Associations have already submitted a number of amendments calling for national action to start soon after Conference. Birmingham NUT have called for a one day national strike in April with further action escalating each month of the Summer Term. Lewisham NUT have called for national strike action on Wednesday 1 May and on Thursday 27 June as part of an ongoing programme of rolling and/or national strike action continuing into the autumn term. Other tactical considerations such as how to build an effective organising and communications strategy, and the approach to take to negotiations and action at a school and Local Authority level, also need to be decided upon. 

The Steering Committee agreed that LANAC will have a pivotal role to play in bringing together NUT Associations who support our call for urgent national action to agree a common approach. That’s why we will be building a LANAC Fringe Meeting at 7.30 pm on the Saturday evening of Conference (March 30) to try and agree a joint amendment to put to the expected Executive Priority Motion on Pay, probably to be debated on Monday. We have also selected floor managers to try and counter the manoeuvring that was used against LANAC calls for national strike action in the pensions’ debate at 2012 Conference.

Whatever is agreed in Liverpool, events over the last year show that LANAC has a vital role to play in continuing to build and organise a network of local associations and school reps – and to build for the national action that will hopefully be agreed. LANAC will be holding a further Fringe Meeting on the last evening of Conference (Monday April 1) to look back on Conference debates and to build for the future. That will include a drive to push for more NUT Associations to affiliate to LANAC and to build networks of reps in the regions.

A debate was also started on how teachers in Local Associations that haven’t yet formally affiliated to LANAC could be represented on the Steering Committee (at present each affiliated Association is entitled to a vote) and whether LANAC should call for support for particular candidates in the upcoming elections for NUT National Officers, NUT National Executive and the elections for NUT General Secretary and Deputy General Secretary. These discussions, alongside the key discussions about building national action, will continue at the next LANAC meeting on Saturday May 18.

Three months on - and still no news of action

IT HAS BEEN THREE MONTHS SINCE GOVE ANNOUNCED HIS PLANS TO TEAR APART TEACHERS’ PAY - but unions are yet to mount a serious campaign to stop performance pay.

Download from http://classroomteacher.org.uk/ctmar2013.pdf

Unions haven’t sent anywhere near enough materials into schools to explain the seriousness of these attacks. Three NUT National Executive meetings have come and gone, and still (as of today, 10.3.12) there is no news of when a programme of national strike action will be starting.

Classroom Teacher, LANAC and others have tried to do what we can. The latest Classroom Teacher again tries to summarise these threats for teachers. (See http://classroomteachers.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/goves-attacks-could-cost-you-dearly.html) When these details of Gove’s attacks are explained, I have found they are met with anger and dismay - and a recognition that we have to take national action - and soon.

Pay cuts, bullying, longer hours

Teachers know only too well from the bullying, workload, observations and targets that they already endure how performance pay would mean stress, division, pay cuts & teaching-to-targets.

Cash-strapped schools, under pressure from Ofsted to implement Gove’s plans, will make cuts by blocking pay rises.

Recent research for the Trades Union Congress confirms that “teachers work more overtime than any other public sector workers, equating to £7 billion of free labour for schools a year”. Just think how much more teachers will be told we have to do - or face being told we have failed to meet our targets !

Union leaders have to give a lead

Teachers in school meetings and Union briefings that I have attended have overwhelmingly backed the call for an urgent programme of national action. Reports from across LANAC (the Local Associations National Action Campaign) show this mood is repeated nationally. That was clearly shown by the victory of Peter Glover in a NUT by-election. Peter stood on a clear platform that called for “National strike action to stop Gove”.

Teachers will take determined action if their unions give a clear lead. But that call to action has still not been made. Now time is running dangerously short to show Gove that he will have to back down - and to show teachers that their Unions are serious about this struggle.

Next term, Gove’s legislation will be enacted. Schools will then be expected to have new pay policies in place by the summer. We can’t leave teachers just to fight those battles school-by-school. Swift national action is vital !

NUT Conference must call action

On March 20th, civil servants in the PCS will be starting a new programme of national strike action to defend pay and pensions. Teachers should have been joining them - but our action seems to be postponed until next term. If so, action needs to start soon after the holidays - on May 1 or even before.

If the NUT Executive doesn’t propose what’s necessary, then we need to call on our Annual Conference delegates to vote for the action that is required.

LANAC will be organising to seek to ensure Conference sets those dates when it meets in Liverpool over Easter.

Lewisham AGM calls on NUT Conference to name dates for strike action

Tonight's Annual General Meeting of Lewisham NUT unanimously voted to support amendments to motions to this Easter's NUT Annual Conference inserting, amongst other proposals, a clear call for national strike action against PRP next term.

The amendments include the following paragraphs:

Conference agrees that, as part of the current campaign to oppose performance-related pay (PRP), we must make sure that publicity is produced aimed at parents and the public explaining the damage that PRP will inflict on education, and how it will further lower teacher morale, worsen the destructive culture of excessive targets and testing in our schools, and create undue pressure for both teachers and students alike. 

Conference deplores the proposed dismantling of our pay structures, particularly: 

i)       The removal of an expectation of annual pay progression along the main pay range, a feature of teachers’ pay arrangements since the 1920s;
ii)     the removal of specified pay scale points on both the Main and Upper pay ranges;
iii)   the abolition of ‘portability’ of pay points between schools with teachers paid on the Upper pay range no longer guaranteed to maintain that range on moving schools;
iv)    the threat that even the 1% pay uplift for September 2013 might only be awarded on the basis of performance;
v)     the use of Ofsted to pressurise schools into adopting performance-related pay with new subsidiary guidance suggesting that headteachers provide inspectors with “a table showing for each salary point, the number of staff, points they have moved from, and the number that met their performance management objectives”

Conference recognises that, in principle, united action across the teaching profession can strengthen our ability to oppose such challenges. However, the Union has to concretely weigh up at each stage the advantages to be won through amending our preferred strategy in order to achieve joint action as against the risks that we could be held back from pursuing a strategy which is sufficiently robust to tackle the problems and challenges we face.

Conference instructs the Executive to:

• Announce from this Conference that, as part of our national dispute on pay, pensions and working conditions, the NUT will be calling national strike action on Wednesday 1 May and on Thursday 27 June as part of an ongoing programme of rolling and/or national strike action continuing, if required, into the autumn term and beyond. 
• Express publicly our wish to coordinate that programme of strike action where possible with the NASUWT and other unions opposing attacks on pay, jobs, pensions and working conditions 
• Support reps and local officers in seeking to secure pay and appraisal policies that protect teachers’ pay and working conditions as far as possible, including through taking strike action in individual schools and co-ordinated across schools, while recognising that national strike action to oppose these national attacks remains the most powerful way of defending teachers and education. 
• Urgently put into practice a detailed organising and communications strategy including home mailings to members, materials aimed at the parents and the public, reps briefings in associations and some newspaper advertising in the run up to strike days.

£7bn Unpaid Labour - but Gove and Wilshaw want more

Wilshaw insults teachers in September

Today is supposedly "Work Your Proper Hours Day" but for those bullying Michaels, Gove and Wilshaw, teachers' 'proper hours' should be every hour of the day, every day of the week!

As the TES points out http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6322154  "Teachers work more overtime than any other public sector workers, equating to £7 billion of free labour for schools a year, according to an analysis of official statistics carried out by the Trades Union Congress (TUC)".

But things are set to get worse - unless we act. In September, Sir Michael Wilshaw insulted teachers by suggesting we were "out of the gate at 3 o'clock". Now he is issuing advice to Ofsted to make sure they are policing performance-pay regimes to try and bully teachers into working even more hours of unpaid overtime - for fear of losing their pay rise.

That's why it was right for Christine Blower, General Secretary of the NUT, to say in this week's NUT press release that "If the Education Secretary does not stop his systematic undermining of our profession the NUT will take action to defend teachers in whichever way is necessary, including strike action.”

Teachers now need those words to be turned into action. Decisions from yesterday's Executive are still subject to an embargo but an email sent to NUT members today made clear that
"The NUT wrote to Michael Gove immediately seeking urgent talks - since none were happening - making clear our willingness to negotiate ... Michael Gove's reply, however, has offered no meeting with him or his Ministers and no new talks about pay or pensions ... As a result the NUT Executive today reaffirmed its commitment to taking further strike action, if necessary, to protect our pensions, pay structure, and working conditions. The NUT is engaged in discussions with the NASUWT about continuing our campaign through joint strike action".

  

Unless action is called, Gove will continue to refuse to talk about the threats to pay and pensions. Worse, he may feel emboldened to also start to legislate to further worsen working conditions, such as by abolishing limits on cover and directed hours. Further strike action clearly is very necessary - and a plan of action needs to be announced as a matter of urgency.

UPS teachers - move school and see pay cut by £10,000

Discussions at the NUT National Executive over the last two days have confirmed that, from September 2013 onwards, with the abandonment of 'portability' of pay points from one school to the next, Upper Pay Spine teachers would have no guarantee of keeping that Upper Pay Spine status when they move to a new school.

Yes, not only might a UPS3 teacher be forced down to the bottom of the UPS, they might be forced all the way down to the Main Scale in a 'race to the bottom' to compete with other applicants for the lower pay-rate that a cash-strapped school might only be prepared to offer.

That means that a teacher resigning to take a new post this Christmas could be facing a pay cut of around £10,000 - depending on the decision taken by their new employer. For example, a UPS3 teacher in Inner London - earning £45,000 could be demoted to M6, the top of the Main Scale - and be paid only £36,387 - but they might even have to accept less than that!

This threat is spelt out in the wording of the new Draft Pay and Conditions Document which makes crystal clear that:
20.1 Any qualified teacher may apply to be paid on the upper pay range.

but that

20.5 Any decision made under paragraph 20 applies only to employment in that same school  

This is yet another reason why teachers need to be taking strike action to oppose these attacks. That's also why teachers gathered outside NUT HQ, Hamilton House, in Euston last night to talk to National Executive members and to encourage them to vote for a programme of strike action to oppose Gove's performance-pay proposals. Delegated teachers came from as far as Bristol and Liverpool with their NUT Association banners.

The decisions reached by the NUT Executive at today's meeting are, at present, subject to an embargo. Look out for further news.

Using Ofsted to bully schools into docking pay

A new letter from Sir Michael Wilshaw to Headteachers, backed up by Ofsted’s January 2013 ‘Subsidiary guidance’ to schools, makes crystal clear how the inspection regime will be used to bully Heads into rationing teachers’ pay progression under Gove’s new performance-pay proposals. It also shows how it will be used to set teacher against teacher, key stage against key stage, department against department.

Wilshaw advises headteachers that “in future, inspectors will ask schools for anonymised information from the last three years, which shows the proportions of teachers who have:

• progressed along the main pay scale
• progressed to, and through, the upper pay scale
• progressed along the leadership scale
• received additional responsibility payments, such as teaching and learning responsibility payments and special needs allowances.

The information provided should include information about patterns of progression through the different salary scale points, and comparisons between subject departments and/or teachers deployed in different key stages.

The subsidiary guidance ( http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/resources/subsidiary-guidance-supporting-inspection-of-maintained-schools-and-academies ) spells out that inspectors should:

• ask the headteacher about the proportion of teaching staff that has passed through to the upper pay spine
• compare this with the overall quality of teaching 
• find out whether there is a correlation between the two, and if there is none, find out why, taking into account the length of time the headteacher has been in post.

Examples of the information headteachers could provide include:

• the proportion of staff that progressed through thresholds this year/last year
• the proportion that did not progress through thresholds this year/last year
• a table showing for each salary point, the number of staff, points they have moved from, and the number that met their performance management objectives
• performance management information the school provides to governors
• any other relevant information with regard to the performance management process.