Solving the workload crisis - winning an enforceable limit on teachers’ weekly working hours

There are many threats to teachers and education that need to be urgently combated – not least funding cuts and the educational damage being done by SATs, selection and academisation. However, if there’s one issue that most concerns teachers whenever I speak at school or Division meetings, it’s teacher workload.

I am posting this blog as a personal suggestion about what could be done to solve the teacher workload crisis, particularly drawing on the news that a Fair Workload Charter has been agreed in Nottingham that proposes a two-hour daily limit on teacher workload on top of directed time.

Teacher workload - the facts

Teacher workload is driving teachers out of the classroom. The current expectation that teachers work long hours, at the end of the school day and at weekends, is damaging the lives of teachers and their families.  Its consequences - turnover, stress and demoralisation - are also damaging education.

The statistics are undeniable but here are a few key facts – all taken from non-NUT sources:

• The latest DfE workload survey (2013) reported that primary teachers work, on average, 59 hours a week, 55 in secondary schools. The average teacher reported that they worked 12-14 hours in the evenings and at weekends, mostly on marking and planning.

• A more recent March 2016 Guardian survey of teachers recorded 82% as saying their workload was “unmanageable”. More than three-quarters said they worked between 49 and 65 hours a week. 75% said their workload was having a serious impact on their mental health. In turn, 79% of schools said they were struggling to recruit or retain teachers.

• The latest DfE teacher workforce analysis (2015) shows that the annual 'wastage' rate - the numbers of teachers no longer teaching anywhere within the state sector from one year to the next – has now risen to over 1 in 10 in both the primary and secondary sectors for the first time.
• The UK also has the greatest pupil-teacher ratios in Europe, with rising class sizes adding to the workload burden of marking, planning for individual needs and data management.

The solution – a limit on working hours

In response to rising concerns about the unsustainability of current teacher workload, the DfE’s Independent Teacher Workload Review Groups issued a series of recommendations to reduce the workload associated with marking, planning and data management. However, given the same DfE is applying relentless pressure on schools to constantly ‘improve’ or face outside intervention – and pressure is similarly applied to teachers through the threat of denial of pay progression – I fear that the recommendations alone may only have limited effect. While the School Teachers’ Pay and Conditions Document continues to state that a teacher has to work ‘such additional hours as may be necessary to discharge  effectively your professional duties’, then teachers have no clear legal protection against excessive working hours that may be demanded of them by their managers.

Over years of debating this issue with colleagues, I have concluded that the solution has to be to introduce an enforceable weekly limit that would allow teachers to insist that whatever marking, planning, data management and other demands were placed on them, the overall workload must be able to be completed within that weekly limit.

Significantly, the need to impose a weekly limit on working hours is exactly the conclusion that has been arrived at by Nottingham’s Education Improvement Board (EIB), as highlighted in the Guardian. In conjunction with school staff unions, they have issued a Fair Workload Charter that includes, amongst other useful recommendations, this key expectation:

“the workload requirements of all policies should be reasonably  deliverable within an additional maximum two hour period, unless other contractual arrangements apply. For those with additional leadership responsibilities, a further one hour a day may be required”

I take that as meaning that, for a classroom teacher, no teacher could be asked to carry out tasks that take more than two hours on top of the school day and, presumably, none at the weekends. The precise definition of ‘additional leadership responsibilities’ might need unpicking but the extra ‘leadership’ hour would still help limit the particular pressures falling on school ‘middle managers’.

There are, of course, other ways of calculating a weekly limit which could be considered. The Nottingham Charter appears to set down approximately a 42 hour working week for a classroom teacher. This still works out at roughly an 8am – 5pm working day. That’s long but, especially if it came with a clear guarantee of no weekend work, would be considerably less than most teachers are working now.

The formulation reached by the Nottingham IEB is certainly one solution that could be applied by other employers. It could also be applied by the Secretary of State through a new Schoolteachers Pay and Conditions Document that finally gives real legislative limits to teacher working hours.

How could such a weekly limit be won – and enforced?

Nottingham IEB’s approach is to encourage schools to sign-up to the Charter so that they can then attract staff by using the ‘EIB fair workload’ logo in their advertisements and publicity. Against a background of increasing recruitment and retention difficulties, unions offering to endorse good employers to their members could certainly encourage both individual schools and wider employers – whether Academy Chains or Local Authorities – to follow the Nottingham model. Organising with members in schools to develop a collective bargaining approach to win similar agreements with other employers could certainly be a productive strategy for teaching unions.

However, the counteracting pressures on schools - Ofsted, league tables and spending cuts – means that too few employers will be as far-sighted as Nottingham. Therefore, alongside negotiations, unions will have to also prepare an industrial action strategy. This might require preparing members to take action in individual schools or across a whole employer.  This might require significant resources – but could win significant victories for overworked teachers – and for education overall.

Of course, winning an agreement through organising and collective bargaining will be only just a start – there will need to be an ongoing campaign to make sure the agreement applies in practice. For example, although the EiS union won a 35-hour contractual working week for Scottish teachers, in practice EiS members report having to work an average 46.5 hours a week. Clearly, any agreement on hours must be matched with school policies that explain how an hourly limit can be met. Above all, they must be backed up by union organisation in the workplace, with a confident union group and rep ready to step-in to make sure agreements are adhered to by both staff and management.

One advantage of the ‘additional two-hour’ limit adopted in Nottingham is it might be possible for many teachers to work those two hours before and after school – and therefore a culture built, and enforced, that teachers should not be taking marking and planning home with them when they leave. (although, as it is ‘non-directed time’ teachers should have  flexibility that allows them to meet individual commitments when they need to leave earlier). That would be a huge step forward.

But how will the work get done?

Winning support from members for such an hourly workload limit will require unions being able to answer some key questions that will inevitably be raised by staff:

Q) If I cut down on my workload, what if I don’t meet my performance management targets?

To address those understandable fears, I believe that, as part of the collective bargaining negotiations, unions would need to insist that an agreed Charter includes a guarantee that:

(i) no teacher will be set performance management targets – nor indeed ‘capability’ targets - that require them to work beyond the weekly limit on working hours
(ii) all teachers will automatically progress along union-endorsed salary scales

Q) What work can I get rid of to cut my existing workload in order to meet the new hourly limit?

First of all, we have to win teachers, not least middle managers, to the understanding that something HAS to be cut – continuing as we are at present is simply unsustainable.

Schools will need to arrive at policies that make clear how the limit can be achieved. The conclusions in the DfE Workload Reports provide some starting-points to how this could be done. How often does formal marking really need to be done?  What level of detail in planning is really needed – and how can shared planning and use of existing schemes of work and resources cut down on that planning time? What data really needs to be ‘captured’ and what systems can cut working time?

Of course, a workload crisis of the seriousness facing us may require radical solutions. While possibly controversial with some parents - and schools would need to explain that a Workload Charter was being introduced precisely because it is educationally essential -  one Essex school has recently concluded that the solution is to scrap homework altogether.

Of course, the other ‘radical’ but obvious solution, as explained below, is to increase PPA time so that every teacher has time to plan, prepare and assess during the working day. That could mean early closures to allow planning and meeting time – as some schools still operate.

More fundamentally it means having more qualified teachers (and not underpaid, unqualified cover) to increase teacher non-contact time - but that requires funding. This means our dispute over funding (see below) is inextricably linked to our campaign over workload and, indeed, workload was the issue that brought so many young teachers onto the strike rallies and demonstrations last July.

The reality as budget cuts start to bite, is that PPA is getting worse, not better. Some primary teachers report that the supposedly statutory minimum 10% non-contact time is being eaten into. Secondary teachers, who once could generally expect to have at least 20% non-contact time (‘free periods’) in their timetables, are seeing loadings increase every year – rising to match the inadequate 10% minimum in primary schools. Instead, we need a minimum 20% PPA for all teachers.

UPDATE (10.10.16): I should add - although it will seem obvious to teachers but not perhaps to politicians - that funding PPA by increasing class sizes is no solution either. The latest Education Policy Institute report again confirms the shocking levels of teacher workload in England using TALIS data. However, according to a Schools Week report, it concludes that it is “unlikely that teachers can cut down on workload unless classes are expanded so they have more time to prepare for fewer lessons". However, increasing class sizes are already one of the drivers of rising workload with teachers having to spend longer on marking and preparation for larger numbers of pupils. It is also an educationally damaging proposal that would leave children with less individual support. The real solution to teacher workload, alongside enforcing a limit on the demands made on staff, is to invest in more teachers.

Winning a Workload Charter nationally -  the NUT’s dispute with the Secretary of State

July’s day of national strike action by NUT members in England was part of our national dispute with the Secretary of State over the need for the funding and legislative changes to allow:

• National collective bargaining on pay and conditions in all schools and academies
• Pending a new collective bargaining structure, for pay and all other terms and conditions to be no worse than those in the STPCD and Burgundy Book
• A significant improvement in the conditions of employment under which teachers work, in particular a limitation on class sizes to no more than 30 in the first instance
• Reduction in teachers workloads, in particular through limitation on marking, data handling and planning
• Reintroduction of pay portability, the pay spine points, fixed pay scales and removal of the requirement for all pay progression to be performance related
• A significant improvement in measures to ensure teacher retention, including security of employment.

The discussion above over winning a Workload Charter can be seen as part of this ongoing dispute  –with the aim not just to win battles locally but to win:
1) a nationally collectively bargained Workload Charter that applies to all schools, maintained and academies that sets an enforceable statutory limit on overall working hours
2) funding to allow a limit on class sizes of no more than 30 in the first instance plus a minimum 20% non-contact time for all teachers to reduce workload requirements
3) fixed pay scales and removal of the requirement for all pay progression to be performance related so that teachers won’t be bullied into taking on workload over statutory limits

I would welcome any feedback on these suggestions but I hope it can encourage a discussion about how we can finally – and urgently – solve the teacher workload crisis.

It's Only Teacher Wasteland

At the same time as Justine Greening was trying to grab cheap headlines (but little backing) for her plans for selection and the expansion of grammar schools, the Department for Education were releasing shocking statistics, data which again exposed the real issues which politicians should be talking about if they really cared for children's education.

The data came from the DfE's annual 'Local analysis of teacher workforce', now updated with the latest 2015 statistics on a range of different factors. Above all, the research confirms the ever-rising numbers of teachers leaving the teaching profession (or, to use the DfE's chosen, if blunt, description, the 'wastage' rates) .

As the notes explain, the data shows the annual 'wastage' rate - the numbers of teachers no longer teaching anywhere within the state sector from one year to the next - as being over 1 in 10. In Inner London, it is as high as 1 in 8 teachers. This is a shocking waste of talented, trained teachers who have entered the profession to try and support young people, yet feel that they cannot stay in the profession any longer.

It's also clear from the DfE data that the overwhelming majority of this 'wastage' is now by teachers who have left teaching to look for other jobs, not those who have retired. This trend is clear from the figures:

Some of the other revealing data is in the tables that have been produced giving the number of schools saying that they had at least one temporarily filled or vacant post on the November 2015 census day:

These figures give a lie to the official Government line that there is a negligible vacancy rate in our schools. The real facts are clear - nearly 1 in 4 secondary schools in England are carrying a post which they cannot fill permanently, rising to not far short of a third of secondaries in Outer London.

These statistics reveal the stark reality of the effect of years of demoralising, damaging Government attacks on teachers, not least the relentless workload which has never been addressed despite the various promises that have been made. Further funding cuts will only make matters worse.

Teacher wastage is damaging for schools and the individual teachers who feel unable to continue as state-school teachers. It is especially damaging for pupils who need a stable environment to support their development.

Instead of looking backwards at outdated selective models of education, the Government should be acting as a matter of urgency to prevent this continued haemorrhage from the teaching profession.

Click here for a downloadable copy of some of the main charts and graphs

"Three secondary moderns in every town"

If anyone was in any doubt about the backward reactionary ideas at the top of the Tory Party, then today's unintended confirmation that they plan to go back to 11-plus selection confirms it. Even Ofsted chief Sir Michael Wilshaw has called it 'tosh and nonsense', correctly pointing out that a “grammar school in every town” would also mean "three secondary moderns in every town". 

It would mean writing off most young people as failures at the age of 11. Of course, if you are planning for a future where most youth have no future, and an austerity Britain where budgets are slashed so that decent schooling is provided only for a select few, then the policy makes perfect sense. 

It's worth looking back to what was said back in the 1960s when society was looking forward to a better future, instead of backwards like today's Conservatives:

"If we are to help all children effectively, we certainly must assess their various qualities, measure and appraise them. Tests of various kinds are valuable and necessary for this purpose. Indeed, we need more guidance which is scientifically informed. But such information must be used to advance the progress of all children on a broad and varied front: the open road to personal fulfilment. Instead, we are today using it  as a regulator, a turnstile through which people are allowed to pass only in single file on production of standardized credentials".

Robin Pedley, the Comprehensive School 1963

It's also worth reminding everyone that comprehensive education was an undoubted success in widening educational achievement for all:

As Terry Wrigley summarises: "Those who believe that standards of education were higher in some previous Golden Age should look at the examination statistics. In 1972, 43% left school with no qualifications at all. Now it is less than 1%. Some argue that this means that the exams have become easier to pass; but it is hard to deny that the education of the 42%, who under the old system achieved no qualifications and now get some, has improved. In 1960, in a divided system, only 20% went to grammar school. The rest were more or less written off. In fact only 16% of sixteen year olds achieved five O-level passes. In 2011 53% of pupils in the state sector achieved five or more GCSE A*-C grades including English and maths. Including ‘equivalents’ to GCSE (see below) it was 59%".

Here's today's National NUT press release:

Commenting on the Department for Education’s advice note which was photographed today outside Number 10, Kevin Courtney, General Secretary of the National Union of Teachers, the largest teachers’ union, said:

“Theresa May said on the steps of Downing Street that she wanted ‘a country that works for everyone’. Yet now we hear of proposals to take education back to the 1950s, when children were segregated at age 11 and their life chances determined by the type of school they attended.

“Opening new grammar schools would not only be a backward step but is also a complete distraction from the real problems facing schools and education. For every grammar school there are three or four ‘secondary modern’ schools. All the evidence makes clear that segregating children in this way leads to lower academic standards. The argument that grammar schools create ‘social mobility’ are, in the words of the Ofsted Chief Inspector, ‘tosh and nonsense’. Evidence shows that in areas which retain grammar schools, disadvantaged students – who are eligible for FSM or who live in poor neighbourhoods – are much less likely to be enrolled, even if they score highly on Key Stage 2 tests.

“There is an opportunity with a new Prime Minister and a new Secretary of State to put education back on the right track. This means addressing the real challenges facing schools such as the funding crisis, teacher recruitment and retention problems, the chaos surrounding primary assessment and the fragmentation in the schools system. We need more coherence, not yet another layer of education provision in England.”

Thanks to @pollydonnison for the cartoon:

Workload and testing - is that 'just the way it is' - or can unions make a difference?

GCSE results day has been and gone and so teachers, in all sectors, know their summer break is coming to an end. 

Of course, many teachers will have been working hard even while schools have officially been closed. A YouGov poll for the TES confirmed that "a third of those in their first year of teaching expect to work for at least three weeks this summer" in an effort to keep up with the ceaseless demands placed on them. As new NUT General Secretary, Kevin Courtney, commented, "It’s no wonder that there are so many that leave the profession so early".
 
Hopefully most teachers will still feel they have at least had something of a summer break - but many will be resigned to the fact that the tsunami of workload - 60 hours a week even by official figures - is soon going to wash over them once again. 

The fact that teachers are having to work weekly hours  well over the European Working Time Directive is, regrettably, no longer 'news'. In fact, it has become such an accepted fact that teachers who question their workload are too often told by managers, even by their own colleagues, "that's just the way it is".

These working hours not only damage teachers' health, they damage education too. Overwork means teachers lack the time and energy to give youngsters the individual support they need. It's also a key factor contributing to a teacher retention crisis that will see many schoolchildren starting a new academic year with yet another set of new staff to get to know and, increasingly, some classes without a permanent qualified teacher at all.

Yet, as Anna-Christina Connelly explains in the Huffington Post this week, the idea that teachers are somehow 'failing' if they complain is even being reinforced by some teacher trainers (especially with so many teachers now being 'trained' on the job by overworked teaching colleagues): She writes: "From the moment I started my own PGCE, it began: “If you’re not crying, you’re not doing it right.” A tutor laughed. “NO COMPLAINTS“ read one of the several “motivational” posters which hung above the PC in the trainee room of my placement school. “Pain is temporary, quitting lasts forever.” But I was training to be a teacher, not a Marine". 

The UK already has the greatest pupil-teacher ratios in Europe

Anna-Christina's article rightly concludes that, if the scandal of teacher workload is going to be addressed, we certainly can't rely on the Government to act. The now departed Nicky Morgan was at least forced to acknowledge that the problem existed but she, and her successor Justine Greening, support an austerity government determined to cut public spending - and so increase workload. Cuts already means fewer support staff, larger class sizes and cuts to the time teachers have to plan and prepare outside of class. It will also mean more teachers being denied performance-pay increases, further worsening morale and teacher retention. We also have to remember that austerity also means greater child poverty, the inescapable factor that most affects educational outcomes despite the best efforts of hard-working teachers and school staff.

Like a sweat-shop employer that demands yet more from its workforce instead of investing in the new machinery that would really raise productivity, this Government instead relies on league tables, Ofsted and the threat of academisation as a stick to maintain the pressure on schools and their staff. In turn, too many schools simply pass on that pressure by imposing individual exam targets and assessment policies that rarely take account of what it is reasonable to expect - from both teachers and their students.

The result has been not just excessive workload but an 'exam factory' system of schooling that doesn't just demoralise teachers, it makes many children unhappy too. It's one of the factors behind the Children's Society's finding that children in England are "among the unhappiest in the world".

As the Government moves the goalposts by imposing assessment changes on both primary and secondary schools, more young people - and their schools - find themselves unfairly labelled as 'failures'. This year's GCSE results showed a 2% decline in the proportion of A*-C grades. At Key Stage 2, the number of pupils deemed to have met the 'required standard' in maths, reading and writing collapsed from 80% in 2015 to 53% in 2016. In reality, those figures represent only the consequence of shambolic Government changes, not the efforts and abilities of children and schools. However, that won't have stopped many youngsters feeling like 'failures' - nor will it stop the Government using those figures as an excuse to achieve their stated aim of academising more primary schools.

The pressure from high stakes testing is also distorting the curriculum. Schools have sought to protect themselves by doing what's best to meet the latest Government targets - which may not be what's best for their students. For example, as a result of the 'EBacc' measurement excluding arts/creative subjects, last week's GCSE results revealed that entries in these areas were down 21% since 2010 and 8% since 2015, reported as being "the largest year on year decline for over a decade".

This long-term trend will have been accompanied by a decline in the number of teachers employed to teach these subjects. As teachers leave, posts may not have been replaced - perhaps helping secondary schools to 'balance their budgets' but certainly making the trend much harder to reverse.

The damage being inflicted on children, teachers and schools by excessive workload and high-stakes testing is clear to anyone who genuinely understands education. The question is, what can be done about it?

Anna-Christina Connelly has a point when she says that "It’s up to Schools, not the Government, to protect new teachers from workload". Certainly, if more school leaders had had the courage to stand firm instead of simply passing on the pressure from Government onto their staff, then workload would not have reached such intolerable levels. However, it's hard for a school to stand up alone - what's needed is for schools and their staff to stand firm together. The best way to ensure that happens is through trade union action.

July 5 saw another well-supported national strike by NUT members. Anger against workload was, as the NUT's surveying has confirmed, one of the main factors that mobilised teachers to join the action.
 

July's NUT National Executive agreed that the national campaign on funding and workload obviously has to continue this academic year but that the NUT will also develop a campaign on primary assessment alongside other unions, parents and other campaign organisations. The NAHT General Secretary has already been quoted in the TES confirming that "a boycott remains a possibility for 2017 if discussions with the government are not fruitful".

So it's soon going to be 'back to school' but it can't be back to 'business as usual'. NUT members need to build our campaign against funding cuts, excessive workload and the Government's damaging testing regime, locally and nationally.

NUT strike: march and rally in London

On Tuesday, July 5, NUT members across England will be participating in a day of strike action to demonstrate their concerns about the Government’s plans to reduce funding for education, and its consequences for children’s learning and for teachers’ terms and conditions.

Members in London will be gathering for a march to Parliament Square.

March Details
Assembly: 11am in Portland Place, London W1A 1AA (outside the BBC)
March: 12 noon to Westminster through Central London. Route.

Rally Details
Time/Venue: 1.30pm in Parliament Square.
Speakers:
Kevin Courtney, National Union of Teachers
Madeleine Holt, Rescue Our Schools
Striking teachers
Speakers from Unison, UCU
Aislinn Macklin-Doherty (BMA junior doctor)
More TBC

Information about other rallies around the country can be found here.

Kevin Courtney, Acting General Secretary of the National Union of Teachers, the largest teachers’ union, said:

“The NUT is aware that strike action can be disruptive to parents and carers and for that we wholeheartedly apologise. Equally, teachers do not take strike action lightly. The problems facing education, however, are too great to be ignored and we know many parents share our concerns.

“The strike is about the underfunding of our schools and the negative impact it is having on children’s education and teacher’s terms and conditions. Schools are facing the worst cuts in funding since the 1970s. The decisions which head teachers have to make are damaging to our children and young people’s education. Class sizes going up, school trips reduced, materials and resources reduced, and subjects – particularly in the arts – are being removed from the curriculum. Teaching posts are being cut or not filled when staff leave. All of this just to balance the books.

“No parent wants this for their children. No teacher wants this for their school or pupils. With political parties in turmoil since the EU referendum, it is imperative that education is put to the forefront of every election campaign. The problems schools face need addressing immediately. We must not let the education of the next generation be side lined.”

Our earlier statement confirming the strike and ballot result is available here: https://www.teachers.org.uk/news-events/press-releases-england/nut-ballot-result

Refugees, Racism and the EU Referendum

“The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new is yet to be born. So, in between both, a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” Italian Marxist, Antonio Gramsci, c.1930. 

My contribution to the Savaş ve Mülteciler (War & Refugees) panel debate being held today as part of the Day-Mer Festival of Peace and Hope 2016.

There is huge turmoil in Britain following the 'Leave' victory in Thursday’s EU referendum – but it’s just part of the global turmoil of a capitalist world in crisis, a system that offers the majority of the world’s population only inequality, poverty, war and insecurity, a system that destroys people’s lives and then tries to scapegoat its victims – not least the millions forced to flee their homes as refugees.

The UNHCR have just released their latest Global Trends report. They estimate 65.3 million people were displaced from their homes by conflict and persecution in 2015. That’s 1 in every 113 of us.

Yet it is the major powers within the UN that bear the main responsibility. Of those who fled to Greece, 85% have come from war-torn Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia. Historically, it was Britain and France that drew up most of the boundaries of many of today's Middle East states. Then, along with US imperialism, they worked to make sure their local allies and agents kept control. Oil and weapon companies have especially profited from this region. That includes trading with their supposed ISIS ‘enemy’. As usual for big business, profit comes before human or democratic rights.

The global financiers have created a world of chaos and misery to which they have no solutions. However, as Gramsci described above from a previous time of crisis, we also live in a world where the forces of solidarity do not yet have the strength to provide an alternative, socialist, solution. In the interim, we face a time of uncertainty but a time when a new world can, and must, be born.

In the aftermath of the EU vote, and the publicity being given to right-wing Brexiteers like Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson, then there is undoubtedly fear amongst migrant communities and many trade unionists, certainly many NUT members, that the future will be fuelled by increasing reaction and racism.

This is not just a danger in Britain. For example, there has been a growth of the far right throughout the Nordic countries including a wave of arson attacks on refugee centres in Sweden. In Austria, the far-right Freedom Party candidate came within a whisker of being elected President this April. In Germany, the right-wing nationalist AfD made major gains in the state elections in March.

However, that is only one side of the equation. Yesterday, there was a general strike in Belgium against draconian austerity measures inspired by EU directives ordering increased ‘flexibility’ in the job market – in other words, cutting benefits and imposing longer hours to boost bosses’ profits. This is alongside the similar heroic struggle of the French workers against the El Khomri law where last week the police appealed to the CGT union to stop their months of ongoing protests because they were too exhausted to keep up!

Over this weekend elections are taking place in Spain where the Left is predicted to make big gains – a Left which, by the way, learning from the experience of Greece, is moving to a position of socialist opposition to the EU.

In Britain - as in Austria and Germany - there is conflict and debate over how much the election and referendum results point to an increase in reactionary ideas, ideas which threaten refugees and migrant communities. It would certainly be naive not to accept that some of those voting 'Leave' or voting for far-right parties were not expressing racist views. Yes, particularly in the absence of a clear alternative view being heard, some workers will be taken in by the scapegoating of refugees and migrants. The risk is magnified when traditional workers’ parties fail to offer an alternative vision or to lead a fight against the neo-liberal attacks – in fact, they are too often leading those attacks.

However, again that only looks at one side of the equation. All of those votes represented, above all, a burning anger at  years of enforced austerity and growing inequality between rich and poor. Workers have taken the chance to put two-fingers up to the establishment politicians. As one woman explained to a Guardian journalist, "If you've got money, you vote in ... if you haven't got money, you vote out" 

In such a time of turmoil then community organisations, like Day-Mer, and trade unions, like the NUT, have a heavy responsibility to make sure that anger is directed into united opposition to the attacks on living standards and public services. The NUT’s national strike on July 5 is now even more important. It can become a day to focus attention on the real attacks we face – particularly on the threatened cuts to school and Local Authority budgets. The cuts will, of course, threaten what little support exists for refugee children in particular. 

We have to point out that, when the Tories say they have no money for schools, homes and the NHS, the Governor of the Bank of England was able to rush out an emergency announcement yesterday telling the City that he had made available £250 billion of liquidity to support the markets – not millions but billions! Let’s be in no doubt, the money is there but, as always, it’s a question of who really produces that wealth and who has control of it.

Regrettably, there have been some who have been quick to condemn workers who voted ‘Leave’ as somehow being stupid or inherently reactionary. No, working peoples’ traditions have always been to unite in common struggle. It was the public outcry at the pictures of the drowned toddler Aylan Kurdi that helped to force EU politicians to change tack and relax border controls.

Of course, that did not last long and the EU leaders soon switched to the shabby deal with Turkey to try and stop the flow of refugees, cruelly dismantling the Idomeni refugee camp in Greece. Thousands more are still drowning in the Mediterranean while wars and poverty continue to force families to flee their homes. As just the latest example, the EU has just imposed a new round of ‘structural reforms' on Tunisia in return for a 500 million euro loan. More refugees will be created from the poverty and conflict that will result.

The EU and big business will only ever look on the rights of refugees and the movement of labour as a financial calculation. Back in August, the president of the German Federation of Industry (BDI) called for more asylum seekers to be accepted into Germany. For humanitarian reasons? No, because the German population is falling and is getting, on average, older. So German employers want more migrants, certainly skilled and professional workers. The German labour minister was absolutely clear: “we will profit from this too because we need immigration”. In turn, the BBC economics editor reported British businesspeople complaining “that Merkel is creaming off the most economically useful of the asylum seekers”.

Refugees can, of course, also become a new source of cheap labour, undercutting the already low levels of wages. Historically, the labour movement has always responded by fighting for workers’ unity, for every worker to be paid the rate for the job, for all workers to be fighting alongside each other in trade unions – and we must do so again. Just in the last few weeks there has been the example of Polish drivers being turned back by striking Polish members of the BFAWU at Pennine Foods. Migrant bus cleaners fighting for months of unpaid wages in Athens also won a victory after getting solid support from Greek trade union activists.

The far-right also play on the fears of workers who see their schools, health and other public services being cut and see their families suffering from the acute housing crisis. They want to use the old trick of ‘divide-and-rule’ to stop the anger of the 99% uniting against the 1%. That's why, to counter that threat, alongside demands in defence of refugees and the right of asylum, the trade union movement must also raise clear demands for jobs, schools and homes for all.

We have to explain that when the wealthy EU, with a population of 500 million, says it cannot cope with supporting a million or so refugees then it is, in reality, condemning its own neo-liberal policies as being incapable of providing decent living standards. There are an estimated eleven million empty homes in the EU, enough to solve the housing crisis of existing citizens as well as to house those fleeing war and poverty from outside the EU. Similarly, here in London there are an estimated 75,000 empty residential properties mostly owned by speculators who buy them solely to make a profit. Requisitioning them alone could house both London’s homeless and provide homes for thousands of refugee families as well.

Instead of leaving decisions about asylum in the hands of the Tories or other right-wing EU politicians, working people should be able to review and grant asylum. I would be confident that, once the truth of the plight of families are heard, then the traditions of working class solidarity would welcome those refugees and demand they are housed and supported in our communities. Teachers and schools would be to the fore in providing that support too.

Above all, we have to show that refugees and migrants are not responsible for endless austerity. Those that continue to profit out of war and misery should pay for the problems they have created, here and internationally.

We live in testing times, in times when sometimes the problems and threats loom large and the solutions seem out of our reach. However, let’s take confidence from the fact that this turmoil exists because of the failings of the 1%, and that they, above all, are divided and uncertain. Cameron gambled on the referendum and lost both the vote and his job. The Financial Times are describing the referendum as a ‘pitchfork moment’’ as they correctly glimpse the seething anger against the establishment that lay behind the 'Leave' result.

To condemn the mass of those workers who voted 'Leave' as fundamentally reactionary would be a huge mistake and one that would help the racists and far-right succeed in dividing workers against each other. It would also show a lack of appreciation of the EU's own role in imposing austerity and keeping workers divided. Let’s organise so the justified anger against the political elites, inside and outside the EU, can be directed into a united movement against war and poverty and to defend the rights of refugees and all workers struggling for a better future.