NUT / NASUWT joint action welcome - but proposals fall short of what's required

Plans for joint action announced – but firmer action needed to protect teachers and education 

The announcement at today’s joint NUT/NASUWT Press Conference that plans are being put in place for joint strike action between the two main teaching unions, the NUT and NASUWT, will be welcomed by teachers who have been waiting since Christmas for national action to be called to oppose Gove’s plans to impose performance-related pay. However, as the details become clearer, we think that many members will feel, as we do, that these plans have to be strengthened if we are to successfully oppose Gove’s attacks on our pay, pensions and conditions.

Download an edited pdf version of this article from the Lewisham NUT website: https://local.teachers.org.uk/templates/asset-relay.cfm?frmAssetFileID=10484

A school-term lost without action being called

It was in early December that Michael Gove made his announcement that, under legislation to be imposed after Easter, fixed incremental pay scales will be abolished and all future pay-rises would be tied to performance. In addition, teachers moving to new posts face the risk of huge pay cuts as their existing points on the pay scale will no longer be protected. This huge attack will leave teachers’ livelihoods dependent on arbitrary judgements of ‘performance’ and on the health - or otherwise - of an individual school’s budget. As the history performance-pay has always shown, it will also have a deadening and demoralising affect on education as a whole. All of this comes on top of the ongoing attacks on teachers’ pensions and the relentless workload still being imposed on staff.

Given the scale of the attack, and the speed at which these plans were being imposed, a minority on the NUT National Executive, including ourselves, have argued that national strike action should be called THIS term - in time to try and persuade Gove to back-down before legislation was enacted. Regrettably, and despite contrary evidence from elections, surveys and most Union meetings, we have been told that members weren’t ready to support strike action, and certainly not unless the NASUWT took joint strike action too. Strikes have not been called for this term and nor has a serious enough campaign begun to explain the threats facing teachers’ pay in order to build for that action.

Can we fight off these attacks school-by-school?

This term’s delay means that legislation will now become law before unions have taken action. As a consequence, all schools will be expected to adopt new pay policies that link pay rises with performance by the summer.

Regrettably, instead of starting with unifying national action, the battle will now be starting with school-by-school struggles to persuade governors to adopt pay policies that circumvent most of Gove’s plans. Given where we are now having to start from, the plans announced today for the NUT and NASUWT to publicise a joint pay policy are correct. However (and we have not yet seen the details of the policy ourselves), even the best policy will not be able to protect teachers moving to other schools where governors have refused to guarantee to protect existing pay points. Short of winning withdrawal of Gove’s legislation, unions will therefore need to mount a battle that can persuade the vast majority of schools to adopt an acceptable pay policy. How should that be done?

The NUT and NASUWT have also announced today that the ‘Action Short of Strike Action’ (ASOSA) campaign, launched jointly in September over workload, observation protocols and appraisal policies, be extended to cover pay policies too. The threat of non-strike action, escalating to strike action if required, has succeeded in making gains in well-organised schools groups and Local Associations. However, even then, compromises over the finer details of observation policies were sometimes made in order to reach agreement. The same may well happen over pay policies. 

The real weakness of such a school-by-school action approach is that, faced with intransigent management at a school and/or Local Authority level, some teachers will not feel confident in taking isolated action. In addition, even the best-organised Association will struggle to have the capacity to monitor and support members across all the individual schools in their area. The danger will be that less strongly unionised schools become isolated and only a minority adopt acceptable pay policies.

In order to overcome this isolation, action will need to be co-ordinated across as many schools as possible and, where Local Authorities refuse to recommend acceptable policies, across the whole Association. However, this requires that both unions adopt a far more urgent approach to warning teachers about these pay threats and in encouraging ‘ASOSA’ than has been seen up to now. But the best way to overcome isolation, and to show both teachers and governors that unions are serious about opposing these pay attacks, is to launch a vigorous campaign of national strike action. This should be combined with a bold public campaign to explain how Gove’s plans threaten education.

These plans are not strong enough to defend teachers

In our view, the plans announced today for joint action do not show Michael Gove, our members or Heads and Governors that we are taking this battle as seriously as we need to be. The plans suggest that there will be no national strike action in the summer term, just the beginning of rolling regional action in one area, on 27 June in the North-West of England. The indications are that this should be followed by further regional strikes in the Autumn – but with no national strike action being called until nearer Christmas.

As in March 2012, when Martin, as a NUT National Executive member for Inner London, went all-out to help build a regional strike called in the capital city alone, we will work hard to build action that is called. However, then and today, many teachers will have understandable doubts about this proposed plan of action. Yes, regional action spreads out the ‘pain’ of pay deductions but, as London teachers questioned a year ago, will such a slowly unfolding regional action have sufficient impact?

Teachers are practical people. They will be prepared to put up with pay deductions if unions can show that this temporary loss is likely to achieve a victory that means that the long-term pay losses from the permanent imposition of Gove’s pay and pension robbery plans can be avoided. But the plans announced today are not yet up to the job. Both NUT and NASUWT members need to tell their Unions to go back and strengthen the proposed plan of joint action.

Unions should call national strike action next term

If, despite bullying from Ofsted and budgetary pressures, we are going to successfully persuade schools not to apply Gove’s wishes, then the planned action needs to be stepped up. If, and this is the only real guarantee of success, we are going to mount sufficient pressure on Gove to withdraw this legislation before the new rules lead to teachers’ pay progression being blocked from September 2014, then, again, a far more vigorous plan of action is needed.

 

Both unions need to raise their sights and shake off their timidity. We should have confidence that, when the scale of these attacks are explained to teachers, they will respond to a firm call to take national strike action. 

The NUT and NASUWT are right to call on the Secretary of State to meet with unions to discuss our demands over pay, pensions and workload and to suspend any implementation of his divisive performance-pay proposals.  But what are unions bringing to the table that is going to make Gove think again? Instead of starting with regional action, teaching unions should be calling national strike action next term, perhaps escalating from a one-day strike up to 48-hour strike action. That’s a program that would show that unions were deadly serious about defeating these attacks.

Defeating Gove or just influencing the General Election?

The problem facing teachers is that some of their union leaders, in both the NASUWT and NUT, are not confident about making a bold call to action. Some Executive members seem to be looking at the timescales for action in a very different way to us. We fear that some have wrongly concluded that unions cannot defeat the Coalition, and so think our campaign should be restricted essentially to localised campaigns over pay policies. In this scenario, wider strike action isn’t then really aimed at defeating Gove but, over a longer timescale, at influencing the outcome of the next General Election.

Firstly, that approach will leave many of our members suffering pay and pension losses, and ever greater bullying and workload thanks to performance-pay, before any General Election is called. Secondly, it’s clear that, whatever the result of that Election, we can’t rely on any of the main political parties to adopt policies that oppose the pro-cuts, pro-privatisation agenda that demands the imposition of performance-related pay. It’s a strategy that just postpones launching a serious battle, demobilising and demoralising our members – and risks serious defeat. Instead, that serious national struggle needs to be waged – and soon, before we run into a quagmire of local disputes.

This Government is not as strong as it seems. Instead of just hoping for the best from a future Labour Government, unions should be co-ordinating action now, rebuilding the momentum that has been lost since the co-ordinated national strikes of 2011, including building for a 24-hour General Strike that could really start to shake this Government off its present disastrous course.

NUT and NASUWT Conferences must call for a strengthened program of action

Teachers in both the NUT and NASUWT will be asking questions about the strengths and weaknesses of the plans announced today. There will be relief that a concrete plan of joint action has now been announced. However, we think many will fear, as we do, that the potential advantages of united action across both unions could be wasted if the joint program of action that is agreed upon is too weak to adequately defend members of either union.

Today’s Press Conference announced that joint rallies are being planned for April and May in a number of cities. Classroom teachers of both unions – and parents and trade unionists that might also be attending - need to be calling for a more vigorous campaign of action to defend teachers and education. But, in reality, it will be hard to change these plans unless delegates at the two unions’ Annual Conferences meeting this Easter have already voted to improve the plan announced today.

Of course, delegates will be urged to back the agreed plan and, particularly at the NASUWT Conference, that call to back the leadership will be influential. However, NUT Conference delegates need to make sure that a plan of action is agreed that is up to the task of defeating these attacks. If the NASUWT feel unable to call national strike action earlier than, say, November, then that must not stop the NUT Conference from deciding on additional actions besides those jointly agreed. 

There are other unions also calling for co-ordinated action at an earlier date. For example, at the TUC’s pre-Budget rally last week, PCS General Secretary Mark Serwotka publicly called for unions to take co-ordinated national strike action jointly with the PCS on June 26. As a minimum, surely that is a request that the NUT should support - and call on the NASUWT to do the same?

After months when calls for ‘confidentiality’ about talks between the two unions have prevented full and open debate within the NUT about the action that needs to be taken, today’s announcement needs to be the start of an urgent discussion leading up to NUT Conference, not a plan that is just presented as one that delegates are expected to rubber-stamp over the Easter weekend.

The Local Associations National Action Campaign (LANAC) will be seeking to aid that debate and bring together delegates who wish to propose a strengthening amendment to these plans. A fringe meeting on the Saturday evening of Conference in Liverpool (March 30) will be held to see if delegates can agree a common proposal to put to a Priority Motion expected to be tabled after this week’s meeting of the NUT National Executive.

Teachers should urgently discuss today’s announcements and let their NUT Conference delegates know what they think Conference needs to agree if we are to defeat Gove’s poisonous pay plans.

Martin Powell-Davies, NUT National Executive member for Inner London

Peter Glover, NUT National Executive member for Cheshire / Merseyside

Austerity IS working - for the bondholders

Yesterday was not a day for Londoners to be sitting at home. Thousands marched against the cuts to Whittington Hospital, against fire station closures, against the bedroom tax and more besides. At the same time, around a hundred trade unionists met in the TUC's Congress House for the SERTUC Conference on 'Resisting Austerity in Europe and the UK'.

The Conference heard from speakers from UNITE, POA, NUT, FBU and UK UNCUT about 'how trade unions can fight austerity'. John Hancock from the POA called on trade unions to act on the motion successfully proposed by his union at the last TUC Congress to consider the 'practicalities of a general strike'. But, as John added, now they have been considered, that 24-hour general strike needs to be called! 

Matt Wrack of the FBU spoke after coming straight from the demonstration against station closures in Clapham. Max Hyde from the NUT explained the attacks on both teachers and education as a whole and alerted the Conference that announcements would be made soon about further action that the NUT will be taking to oppose them.

The meeting also successfully put the battle against cuts in Britain in the context of the European-wide attacks on our pay and pensions, and on our conditions and communities. Fernando Mauricio from the CGTP in Portugal, Maria Pentroulis from SYRIZA in London and Paul Murphy, Socialist Party MEP from Ireland, spoke about the attacks being made across the EU.

Paul Murphy's key message was to explain that austerity IS working - for the bankers and bondholders in their efforts to use the crisis to steal away the gains that the labour movement has made in the past. He called for a socialist solution to capitalist crisis and for trade unions to adopt both industrial and political strategies in opposing 'austerity'.

Quoting Jim Larkin, Paul pointed out that our movement has two arms - an industrial arm and a political arm - and we need to use both! His excellent speech - along with a brief solidarity greeting from Alexis Tsipras, leader of SYRIZA in Grece who was also in the building for other discussions, is on this video: http://youtu.be/n-fAlSywf38

Coming in from the floor, Rob Williams from the NSSN pointed out that the best solidarity we can show to the workers of Greece is to build our own struggles, particularly in building a 24-hour General Strike to start to drive Britain's Coalition Government from office.

The second session of the Conference explained the economic context of the attacks with speakers including Owen Jones, Bill Greenshields from the 'People's Charter' and John McInally from the PCS. To applause, John explained why the PCS was starting national action on March 20th and called on unions to raise their sights and build co-ordinated strike action to defeat this Government's attacks.

Sarah Veale spoke about the impact of the cuts on women, black and other minority communities. Duncan Wheldon, TUC Senior Economist, pointed out that the graphs of economic 'recovery' for the UK first started to compare economic performance with the 90s, then the 80s - and now are having to be drawn in comparison with the 30's - but they still aren't showing 'recovery'! In fact the graphs now have to be drawn in 'landscape', not 'portrait' as the line just keeps crawling along showing continued stagnation of the economy.

That means, as I said in summing up the Conference from the Chair, that these attacks will inevitably continue - unless we act to stop them. The PCS are showing the way by taking national strike action on March 20th and beyond. Now other unions need to show the same determination to mount a serious battle against 'austerity' and its dire consequences for all our communities - in Britain and across Europe.

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.