Thanks for visiting my blog

If you have decided to take a look at my blog after receiving a ballot paper for the NUT Executive election, many thanks for taking the time to read further.

There is obviously only so much that I can write in the few hundred words allocated to each candidate in the election address booklet. I hope the various posts on this blog will help explain what I stand for - and explain why I am asking for your support in this election.

I am standing for election because, bluntly, the NUT's present strategy has failed to defend teachers and education. That doesn't mean that the NUT is to blame for the problems we face - that's down to the shared policies of all the main parties who have been responsible for Ofsted, SATs and league tables, privatisation and all the endless initiatives piled upon us (and upon our pupils too). But it does mean that we need a leadership with a strategy that can start to successfully respond to these challenges - and the even greater ones to come after the General Election.

On pay, workload - and now on SATs - our national campaigns have lacked a clear direction. I will argue for clear campaigns, where the Executive goes out and builds support in schools so that we can take the collective action needed to defend teachers and education. For example, as one primary rep who had just heard about the restriction of the SATs ballot to just Heads and Deputies told me yesterday, "We need someone on the Executive who knows what they are doing - I'll be asking all my staff to vote for you".

I have a long record of dedicated support for members and successful campaigning. That has included battles against Section 11 redundancies, Performance Pay, opposing Academies (with my research quoted in the latest Civitas report on "The Secrets of Academies’ Success"), marches and rallies with parents against cuts and closures (like the one above through Lewisham High Street), for London Allowances - and many more.

One of my proudest achievements was the successful defence of Alison Moore, a black teacher attacked by racists in her school grounds. We successfully encouraged Alison to stay in her workplace - where she still is today - and organised a huge rally of local people standing together against racism in their community.

I am also proud of the dedicated support that I have given hundreds of teachers over the years, helping to win numerous cases and to defend members against allegations, capabilities, disciplinaries and so on. That individual work has also helped build Lewisham from the 900 or so members it had when I first became NUT Secretary to around 1800 today. Lewisham NUT is now a strong Association with consistently quorate meetings, a diverse range of members and committee officers, and always one of the best Associations in the country when it comes to turnout in action ballots.

But I also know that there are real limits to what a Local Association can achieve alone. The present Executive strategy of fighting school-by-school on issues like workload just isn't good enough. National issues need national action, bringing all members together so that they are confident to act. That's what I have successfully argued at the last two NUT Annual Conferences - but the Executive has still not implemented that vital policy. My election can strengthen those of us - like the supporters of the 'Classroom Teacher' newsletter (see web link on right) - that want to cut workload through national action. So please VOTE POWELL-DAVIES 1!

SERTUC Public Services Conference success

The desire to build united opposition to public sector cuts was evident in the response to yesterday's meeting called by the SE Region of the TUC at Congress House.

Trade union delegates from across the public sector packed in to hear firstly from the economist Graham Turner. He pointed to the madness of cutting posts in HM Revenue and Customs while tax avoidance and tax evasion continued to bleed the economy of the funds needed for public services.

As I pointed out from the Chair, for some delegates it was still a 'phoney war' waiting for the cuts to come but for others the attacks are already very real. Chris Baugh, PCS Assistant General Secretary, explained why their civil service members will be taking two days of strike action on Monday and Tuesday. Mark Campbell from the UCU Executive outlined the massive cuts that have been announced for post-16 education, in both FE and HE.

But the tone of discussion in both the plenary sessions and the workshops was not that these cuts were inevitable but that, together, we must organise to defend pay, pensions, jobs and services.

The joint demonstration to "defend the welfare state and public services" from Embankment to Trafalgar Square on Saturday April 10th was announced as an important date in the diary to build for.

Those of us on the SERTUC Public Services Committee will also be meeting later in March to discuss the campaigning proposals made on the day, including the suggestion that we hold another conference after the General Election to respond and prepare to the attacks that may soon be announced by an incoming Government.

With International Women's Day on Monday March 8th, the workshop on equalities at the SERTUC Conference was particularly timely. Teresa Mackay from UNITE reported back on a range of issues from bullying and harrassment, inequality in pensions provision, homophobia and the danger posed by the BNP.

Many women workers will be taking part in the civil service strike on March 8th and 9th. Try to visit the PCS picket lines at your local Job Centre and, if you are not working, support the London demonstration on Tuesday. It starts by the Imperial War Museum from 11.30am and finishes with a rally at Westminster Cathedral Hall from 1.00pm.

UPDATE: The latest TUC report, Women and the Recession – One Year On, warns that early public spending cuts would hit female employment hardest because around four in ten women work in public sector occupations, compared to less than two in ten men.

It points out that cuts to public sector pensions would also increase the gender divide in retirement income and lead to greater poverty for female pensioners.

Let's build national action on workload!

Lewisham NUT's AGM agreed the joint amendment that I have helped to draft for this year's NUT Conference. Let's hope that this time it isn't only passed, but acted upon!

Here are some of the main points:

Conference recognises that reducing teacher workload, vital to improve both teachers’ working conditions and children’s learning conditions, can only succeed if all of the following are achieved:
A. Limiting the duties of the teacher to those that are really necessary for teaching
B. Limiting class sizes
C. Limiting the number of hours of teaching
D. Limiting the overall number of hours of work
E. Ending the inspection and management culture that believes teaching is improved by making ever more demands on teachers in a more and more bullying way
F. Ending the Government’s fake ‘standards agenda’.

The inadequate provisions of the existing Schoolteachers’ Pay and Conditions Document do not provide such binding limits. Even these existing provisions are under threat through the increasing number of employers of teachers. For this reason it is vital that the Union returns to focusing its work on teachers’ workload and conditions of employment and on the development and implementation of the National Contract for teachers as agreed by previous Conferences.

The amendment includes these key campaigning points:
* to publicise and build our workload campaign from the start of the summer term, in preparation for a ballot for national action;
* for this preparation to include the organisation of local and regional meetings for union members to build support for the campaign and to consult on the nature of strike and non-strike action that might be taken following a successful national ballot.
* that, unless a satisfactory agreement has been concluded in line with this motion, for the union to hold a national ballot to sanction a programme of both strike and non-strike action, which would include new National Guidelines enabling members to ‘work to contract’ modelled on the ‘Beating back bureaucracy’ campaign
* to seek support from other trade unions, including through workplace joint-union committees and local trades councils, to join our campaign of national action.

The government has promised £1.2 trillion to bail out the banking system. That is more than ten times the UK's annual spending on health. RBS, which is 84% owned by the taxpayer, is paying out £1.3 billion in bonuses. So why is that education and other council services have to pay the price? Like many Authorities, my own local Lewisham Council announced this week that they may need to make cuts of up to £70 millionover the next 3-5 years, due to what they describe as 'difficult times'. We need to prepare united action to defend our jobs, pay and pensions - and children's education.

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.

Let's build united action to stop the cuts

The latest edition of Classroom Teacher includes an article I posted here last month ('The Axemen are Coming!') about the 'savage cuts' we can expect to hit schools in London - and nationally - , whoever wins the General Election. Indeed, as the BBC are reporting tonight, many Councils are already preparing for those cuts.

Since the original post, millions have joined a General Strike in Greece on Feb 24th to protest against cuts. That kind of determined action - backed up by community campaigns - can make Governments think again.

We ned to prepare for that action now. That's why I drafted the amendment below for the Lewisham NUT AGM - where it was agreed and will now go forward to be debated at NUT Annual Conference this Easter:

Reword point 5 to read:

5. The main political parties may be arguing over the exact timescale for cuts to begin, but this should not conceal the reality that, whoever forms the next Government, they will, sooner or just a little later, seek to inflict a savage programme of public spending cuts on a scale not seen for decades. Indeed, in some Local Authorities major cuts have already been announced.

Add new h, i and j. to read:

h. to encourage NUT Associations to approach trades councils and other local trade union branches to host joint public meetings in order to help prepare united campaigns and action to defend public services;

i. to approach the TUC and other national trade unions to propose the calling of a national demonstration to warn the incoming Government of our determination to act to defend jobs, pay, pensions and services.

j. to call on the TUC and other national trade unions to join with us in organising a co-ordinated ballot for a 24 hour public sector national strike as a swift response to any attempt by an incoming Government to impose a programme of public spending cuts.