Britain Needs a Pay Rise

As Chair of the SERTUC Public Services Committee, I've been drafting a campaign leaflet around the issue of low pay and austerity, for use particularly in the months up to the General Election. The text below is just a first draft for discussion by the SERTUC PSC Officers but, using wording information taken from TUC and TUCG materials, hopefully sets out the trade union case for why 'Britain Needs A Pay Rise':

Britain Needs A Pay Rise

David Cameron and George Osborne are boasting about ‘economic recovery’ but have you noticed your household getting any better-off?

Yes, in unequal Britain, a wealthy handful are doing very nicely. The average pay of a FTSE company boss works out at well over £1,000 per hour.  The 1,000 wealthiest Britons increased their collective wealth by £70 billion in the last year alone. That’s enough to give every working person in the UK a £2,000 pay rise.

In contrast, for most workers the real value of the pay that we take home has been falling in real terms for well over a decade. The average full-time wage is now worth over £2,500 less than when this coalition government came to power – that’s about £50 a week. 

Public sector pay has been deliberately capped beneath inflation. Divisive performance-pay schemes imposed in schools and other public services are also being used to drive down wages, forcing colleagues to compete with each other for pay increases.

Over 5 million workers are struggling to survive on rates of pay lower than the Living Wage, an independently-set figure calculating the very minimum needed to afford a basic standard of living. Even ‘Living Wage’ levels of pay, presently set at £7.85 an hour, or £9.15 an hour in London, are still hard to live on! That’s why the 2014 TUC Congress voted to campaign for a minimum wage of £10 an hour for all workers.

For those on benefits, or having to rely on ‘zero-hours’ contracts and other casualised work , things are even harder.  Small wonder that the numbers of people forced to use ‘food banks’ is rocketing.

Austerity isn’t working

If current austerity policies continue under the next government, things aren’t going to get any better. The Office for Budgetary Responsibility has forecast that economic growth will weaken before the vast majority of workers have seen any real benefit. The deep and rapid cuts set to follow the General Election will also help make sure that any recovery is short-lived.

Far from solving economic difficulties, cuts in wages have been part of the problem. 

Low pay leads to low consumer demand. This has led to a spiral of decline. Getting money back into people pockets is essential to securing a strong recovery.

Instead of further recessionary cutbacks, increasing public sector pay in real terms and raising the minimum wage could stimulate demand and economic growth.

Who will tackle the cost of living crisis?

Britain needs a pay rise. Britain needs a government that will tackle the cost of living crisis. So, in this General Election year, ask candidates where they stand on these TUC Congress policies:

• Stronger enforcement measures to ensure employers pay at least the national minimum wage.
• A living wage in both public and private sectors as  a means to end the blight of poverty
• End the cap on public sector pay increases – restore the real value of wages
• Scrap the cuts in funding for public services planned by the current coalition government
• Combat tax avoidance and evasion to ensure that the money required to fund essential public services is collected
• A tax and benefit system that supports workers on low and average incomes
• Support unions that take industrial action to oppose the government’s assault on pay

References:

TUC website – Britain Needs A Pay Rise: http://www.tuc.org.uk/economic-issues/britain-needs-pay-rise

TUC campaign plan: https://www.tuc.org.uk/publications/category/tuc-campaign-plan

TUC Congress Decisions: http://www.tuc.org.uk/congress/congress-2014/congress-2014-decisions-motions

TUCG pamphlet – The Great Pay Robbery: http://tucg.org.uk/publications/summary/6-trade-union-rights/43-great-pay-robbery

Living Wage Foundation: http://www.livingwage.org.uk/

A Teacher as an MP on a Teacher's Salary

As reported in the local press, I have put my name forward to stand as a parliamentary candidate for the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) in the Lewisham West and Penge constituency in May. Like many other TUSC candidates, I would be standing as "A Workers' MP on a Worker's Wage".

I pledge that, if elected as MP, I would continue to take only my existing classroom teacher's take-home pay, with any additional essential expense claims fully open to public scrutiny. I would donate the considerable additional salary that a London MP is entitled to towards trade union and community campaigns and to assist the work of TUSC and the Socialist Party.

In doing so, I am following in the traditions of workers' representatives like Joe Higgins and other Socialist TDs sitting in the Irish Dail and Dave Nellist, former Labour MP from 1983-1992 and now National Chair of TUSC. (See: "Dave Nellist: The Coventry MP who gave away half his pay" via http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-coventry-warwickshire-23289962).

I, alongside other TUSC candidates taking this pledge, won't be doing so out of 'charity' but as an essential part of the platform of any genuine people's representative. Firstly, to make crystal clear that we are different from the distrusted career politicians that so often represent the establishment parties. Secondly, to make sure that we don't lose touch with the pressures and problems facing our constituents struggling at the sharp end of the 'austerity' policies peddled by those same self-seeking MPs.

Contrast Dave Nellist's stand as a Labour MP with the career of the New Labour MP that he first shared a Westminster office with - Tony Blair. The former PM has dismissed press claims that his personal fortune could be as much as £100 million, claiming that he is 'only' worth £10 million! Whatever the actual figure, it is a sum that would shock those pioneers like Keir Hardie who first fought for Labour Representation in Parliament. It is a sum that also signifies how New Labour has abandoned its socialist and trade union roots, and why TUSC must make its stand for genuine workers' representation in Parliament and in local Councils this May.

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10173107/MPs-pay-rise-how-politicians-pay-has-risen-quicker-than-the-workers.html

Contrast the public support for Dublin TD Joe Higgins, dubbed as "the best fighter that money can't buy", with the opinion poll ratings of most MPs, especially in the wake of their various expense scandals. 

Contrast the real-terms pay cuts that most of us have endured with the 10% increase being awarded to MPs, bringing their basic pay to £74,000 after the General Election. I pledge that any salary increase that I accept would only be the same as I would have received as a classroom teacher.

Of course, even that 10% increase is not enough for Tories like Mark Simmonds MP who is standing down next year claiming that the salary and expenses rules have made him have to choose between his family and his parliamentary career! Of course, I and my partner, Linda, would still need to make sure we could pay our bills and support our kids - but by facing the same pressures facing other local families, not through parliamentary privileges.

Read more via: http://www.socialistparty.org.uk

Finally, although our incomes as a schoolteacher and a shopworker might be small compared to, say, the income of a Lewisham household where both partners were MPs, many constituents will be struggling on less. 

The Office for Budget Responsibility have revealed that Osborne's plans for a supposed 'balanced budget' by 2020 depend on household debt as a share of household income rising by almost £1 trillion - as they attempt to shift the debt off the government books and onto the individual in the form of credit card debt, pay-day loan debt, store cards and mortgages.

That's why, as part of the TUSC platform for the May General Election, I'll be campaigning for the demand, supported by the TUC nationally, for a £10 an hour minimum wage. 

I'll also be calling for an end to the failing austerity policies supported by all the main parties and for investment in permanent jobs to replace the scandal of 'zero-hour contracts' and supposed 'self-employment' that is now being used to throw out many hundreds of City Link employees without even a redundancy payment this Christmas.

Sedgehill - pressure having an effect - no IEB yet

A letter just posted on the Sedgehill School website confirms that the school's existing Headteacher, Ken Mackenzie, and the elected Governing Body will still be in place on the first day of the January term after all!

That's because, as the letter explains, the Secretary of State, Nicky Morgan, hasn't yet made a decision on Lewisham Council's application for an IEB and won't be considering this until the beginning of next term.

The battle to Save Sedgehill is far from over but pressure is clearly having an effect - and helping to make sure that things aren't going quite to the Council's plan. In particular, this delay must raise doubts as to whether their plan to impose management from the Bethnal Green Academy is still viable. I suspect a mass campaign of opposition isn't what BGA signed up for when they met with Lewisham Council!

Well done to everyone who has helped build the campaign to Stop Academies in Lewisham and to Save Sedgehill over the last few weeks  ... and to you all, a  Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

http://www.sedgehill-lewisham.co.uk/uploads/document/2_0_letter-to-parents-23-12-14.pdf

Lewisham Labour, who is failing who over Sedgehill ?

As schools across the country break-up for the Christmas holidays, students at Sedgehill School are going home without even knowing who their Headteacher will be when they return in the New Year.

Ignoring the overwhelming opposition of staff, students and parents, the Labour Group voted on Tuesday evening to support the Director of Education sending an application to the DfE to impose an 'Interim Executive Board' at Sedgehill. 

Although there is as yet no official response from the DfE and the Secretary of State, Lewisham Council has already acted on the assumption that they will support their IEB application. The school has been told that a new Headteacher will be starting in the New Year, brought in from Bethnal Green Academy. The names of the individuals intended to sit on this IEB are, however, still unknown - as is the timescale for Nicky Morgan to announce her decision on the IEB.

Instead of providing stability and support for the children whose interests they claim to have at heart, Lewisham Council have provided upset and uncertainty. Instead of praising the progress and achievements of Sedgehill's young people, they have unfairly criticised the School. 

I also believe that the Council's criticisms have been based on false assumptions that reveal a fundamental lack of understanding of the link between poverty, class and educational achievement.

On the one hand, they have tried to portray the opposition to their plans as coming from just a small unrepresentative group of 'privileged' parents and students. As they will find to their cost, they have misunderstood that this opposition comes from right across the school community. As the meeting at Sedgehill last week showed, this opposition is particularly strong amongst students - and their parents - who have previously been labelled 'failures' by Academies and who have come to Sedgehill to find a community that will value and support them (See: http://electmartin1.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/parents-and-students-speak-up-for.html ).

A group of 15 and 16 year-old Sedgehill students that met with representatives  of the Council on Monday have written to complain about the "incredibly condescending manner"  in which they felt they were spoken to and how it was "suggested that we were unrepresentative of the student body at Sedgehill due to our backgrounds and the support that we would have received at home". They add that "we each found this incredibly disrespectful as assumptions were made, due to the fact that we were confident, articulate and able to string more than a few sentences together".

In an article on the News Shopper website leading on the proposed strike action by NUT members, http://bit.ly/1wTofQA, and beneath some comments of my own, Mayor of Lewisham Sir Steve Bullock makes the questionable claim that  "Last year more than a whole class of students who had entered the school in year 7 at a level where we might reasonably expect them to go on to achieve five good GCSE passes including English and Maths, failed to make that grade".

First of all, as explained elsewhere on this blog, the Council are basing conclusions on one set of GCSE results, taken from a year where even the DfE itself admits that the changes to exam structures mean that meaningful comparisons and conclusions cannot be made. (See: http://electmartin1.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/lies-statistics-and-future-of-sedgehill.html).

Secondly, they are presumably trying to make predictions based on Key Stage 2 data and progress targets whose validity is increasingly being questioned. Even more questions are being asked now that the Guardian has reported on how some primary schools, including in Lewisham, are being investigated over how they have administered those Key Stage 2 tests. ( http://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/dec/16/mark-steel-academies-sponsors-ofsted-dfe-local-authority ). 

Lewisham, however, is still using Year 5 'banding tests' for school admissions, so has its own data showing the comparative intake across Lewisham schools. It shows that Sedgehill has the least 'comprehensive' intake of all. Do most Labour Councillors not think that this has a significant impact on GCSE results ?

Of course, if Sedgehill really was such a terrible school letting down its 'disadvantaged' pupils, then the Mayor would not be confronting such widespread opposition. However, I, like many parents, don't believe that the facts match the Council's claims. Another Sedgehill parent has produced an analysis on his blog (http://uk-youthviolence.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/abuse-of-statutory-power-lewisham.html) which includes the following comparison between Sedgehill and other comparator schools:

Again, it shows that Sedgehill's performance is broadly in line with what might be expected - unless, of course, Councillors want to ignore the well-established link between poverty and GCSE outcomes.

As a socialist, I would be the last person to write-off working-class children as 'failures' that can't achieve academic success. The Tories who want to reintroduce grammar schools are those that draw that conclusion. However, like anyone who has any understanding of education, I know how poverty, poor housing, lack of access to books and the internet, long working hours and other social and economic pressures all impact on working-class children from an early age.  In the Labour Party that I once was a member of, those factors were usually understood. So was the idea that, in order to change lives for the better, you had to tackle inequality. It seems that, under New Labour, that's all been forgotten.

Read more on this via http://goo.gl/5zMdS1

No, New Labour education policy, as with so many parties internationally that have abandoned their trade union roots, is now firmly in the camp of the neo-liberal 'GERM', the  'Global Education Reform Movement'. The GERM wants the public to blame teachers and schools instead of blaming the  politicians who are really responsible for inequality and all that it means for educational outcomes. Scandalously, this  'blame-and-shame' agenda is being pursued as a means to open up schools to privatisation - so that the big business interests that are responsible for so much of that inequality can then make profits out of children's education.

Lewisham Labour's Councillor Paul Maslin stated on the ITV News coverage of the Sedgehill story that whether schools became academies or not was "immaterial" to him. I disagree. As the NUT's 'Manifesto for Our Children's Education' rightly explains "academies and free schools are based on the idea that a free market produces the best results". It doesn't. That's why the NUT Manifesto calls for the forced academies programme to be stopped immediately. It also calls  for an end to child poverty explaining that "whether children are ready and able to learn depends on a wide range of factors, may of which are outside teachers' control. Unless child poverty is addressed, millions will never achieve their full potential". On that, I fully agree.

The NUT as a Union does not back any particular political party (nor, for that matter, does the Save Sedgehill campaign). However, TUSC, the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition, does stand in support of what the NUT is arguing and has endorsed the NUT's Manifesto. Instead of arguing that whether schools are academies or not is 'immaterial', I hope to stand for TUSC  in the General Election in Lewisham West and Penge arguing that all academies should be returned to the control of democratically-run local authorities (for more on TUSC's policies, see: http://www.tusc.org.uk/policy).

Finally, I also want to stand to expose those who claim to be against 'disadvantage' at the same time as they vote through cut after cut to living standards and services, cuts which are widening disadvantage and inequality ever further. That, of course, includes Lewisham's Labour Council who are proposing £40million cuts this year, including cuts to children's centres and youth service budgets that will directly affect young people in the borough. Nationally, Ed Balls has made clear that a future New Labour Government will stick essentially to the same austerity policies that we have seen under the Tories and Liberals, so those cuts will continue.

That's why as a teacher, trade unionist and socialist, I want to offer a fighting alternative for local voters who are sick of politicians who just offer more of the same. I believe that TUSC, co-founded by the late Bob Crow, bringing together fighting trade unionists, socialists and campaigners in a coalition to fight in over a 100 seats in the 2015 General Election, can help provide that alternative this May.

Academy Strike Ballot: 98% YES for strike action

Over the last fortnight, Lewisham NUT members in five schools threatened with being turned into an Academy have been voting in an indicative ballot to judge the support for strike action to oppose any such change of employer.

The results of the secret ballot show overwhelming backing for taking a program of 'discontinuous' strike action in each of the five schools:

Bonus Pastor Catholic College:   YES 14   NO 0 

Prendergast Hilly Fields College:   YES 23   NO 1

Prendergast Ladywell Fields College:   YES 24   NO 0

Prendergast Vale College:   YES 21   NO 0

Sedgehill School:   YES 40   NO 1

Overall result across all five schools: 

YES 98.4%, NO 1.6% 

on a turnout of 73%.

As was explained in the covering letter sent to NUT members, "if the outcome of the ballot is successful and the dispute remains unresolved (i.e. we are not given a guarantee that the school will not be converting to an Academy), a formal ballot of members may then be necessary early in the New Year". 

None of the schools have responded to the NUT with the assurances that we were seeking that there will not be a change of employer:

• At Sedgehill, Lewisham Council have gone ahead in the teeth of overwhelming public opposition to submit an application for an IEB - a step towards forced academisation of the school which has already seen the existing Headteacher announce his departure. 
• The Governing Board of the Leathersellers' Federation ( for the three Prendergast Schools) have set up a Working Party to report on a possible Academy conversion. This is due to report back in the New Year. 
• Bonus Pastor's Principal has written back to the NUT confirming that she has "submitted our interest to convert to an academy within the Catholic Diocese of Southwark"

Given the clear danger of a rapid move to Academy status in some or all of these Lewisham schools - and the clear backing for strike action shown in all five ballots - then Lewisham NUT will be immediately requesting that the National Union proceeds to issue formal ballots for strike action as soon as possible in the New Year.

The NUT is liaising with other teaching and support staff unions with the aim of being prepared to take strike action which is not only co-ordinated if necessary across all five schools but also across school staff unions too.

IEB imposed at Sedgehill - Time to take a stand in the General Election

In response to the news that the Council has ignored overwhelming opposition and gone ahead with its application for an IEB at Sedgehill School, Martin Powell-Davies, Lewisham NUT secretary, Sedgehill School parent and one of the driving forces behind the Stop Academies in Lewisham (SAiL) campaign has announced his intention to stand in next year's General Election.

Teachers' leader and Sedgehill parent to mount General Election challenge in Lewisham West and Penge seat.

Friday 12th December saw 400 students, parents, teachers and members of the community protest at Lewisham Town Hall against the threats to Sedgehill School, Bellingham. Through petitions, emails and letters, the Sedgehill School community answered the distortions being put out by the Council and explained why the IEB would damage education for Sedgehill students.

Disgracefully, it has now been confirmed that the Director of Education has gone ahead with submitting an application to the Secretary of State for the Interim Executive Board.

In response to this news, Martin said:

"Anyone who knows Sedgehill, knows it is not a failing school. As a parent of four children who have been so well-supported by Sedgehill staff, I am angered that a Labour Council should risk children’s education by imposing their plans against the wishes of the whole school community”.

“ Their unjustified actions could become the first step in the complete break-up of local authority schooling across Lewisham – just as we have seen take place across Bromley. It’s part of a wider agenda to cut Council services at the expense of our communities. It’s an agenda that has to be challenged”.

“I am not going to stand by and see the pro-privatisation policies that now dominate the New Labour machine ruining education. Voters should not be left to choose only between different pro-Academy, pro-Austerity politicians who differ only on the details of the cuts they plan to make. That is why I see no alternative but to put my name forward to the local Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition steering committee and mount a challenge to those parties in May's General Election."

"Today’s IEB submission confirms, once again, how little there is to choose between the main parties. They all offer a diet of cuts, austerity and privatisation. Yet, we saw with the Lewisham Hospital campaign and now with SAiL that there is mounting opposition to these damaging policies. Now we need candidates that will speak out and lead campaigns against the attacks on education, health and all our public services. I think that I can provide that voice in the Lewisham West and Penge constituency in May's election." 

TUSC

The Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) was set up in 2010, co-founded by the late RMT union leader Bob Crow, to provide a clear left-wing, trade-union based alternative to the main parties’ policies of public sector cuts, privatisation, poverty and environmental degradation. TUSC calls on trade unions to break from Labour and to launch independent political representation for working people. More information can be found at www.tusc.org.uk, including this video appeal from Dave Nellist, TUSC National Chair, formerly a Labour MP from 1983 to1992: http://youtu.be/H0mq1l_PHq8

In the 2015 General Election, TUSC will be standing candidates in over a hundred constituencies across England and Wales. Our candidates won’t be professional politicians but leading trade unionists and community campaigners, just like Martin.

Please get in touch if you want to help the campaign.

Download this post as a press release via http://goo.gl/HcHb8T