The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 12th April 2024
The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 12th April 2024
The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
…and the conference season begins. Back in the halcyon days of the 1970s annual general conference was the high-spot of the year – with the fate of the leaderships and policies of the big factions of the left and the right of the labour movement resting on the whims of delegates whose own agendas had to be, at least considered, by the biggies who needed their precious votes on the floor. Some delegates simply took advantage of conference expenses to explore the attractions of the resorts they inevitably ended up in. Others relished the double-dealing and back-stabbing needed to climb up the greasy pole of union bureaucracy.
Those times are sadly gone. Gone are the days when armies of delegates and observers could swap a seaside town during the season. Declining membership has led to cuts in expenses and reduced conferences. The Tory “reforms” and the dead hand of the bureaucracy has knocked the stuffing out of union politics – now largely confined to the lay officials and the factions that claim to serve the members but generally only serve to preserve the privileges of the full-time officers. Still where there’s life there’s hope…
As usual the season began with the teaching unions. First was the long established and splendidly named 296,964-strong National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT), which controversially claims to be the only union which represents teachers across the whole of the UK by dint of the fact that it has a wider geographical range than the larger National Education Union (NEU), which claims 445,601 teachers and lecturers in England and Wales. Both unions have seen slight falls in membership over the past few years despite the upsurge in industrial action, which of course saw large numbers of teachers on the picket line.
The NEU was founded in 2017 as a result of the merger of the National Union of Teachers and the smaller Association of Teachers & Lecturers. Of the two, the NEU is generally the most militant, but most of the rank and file members are not always appreciative of the political views of the activists who tend to dominate conference and local branches. Its general secretary, Daniel Kebede, who was elected two years ago, is the first sole post holder after a period of two joint post holders from both wings of the union.
It is difficult to gauge exactly what relations between the two unions are like. They do work together, but in their media statements they seem to find it difficult to mention each other’s existence. Hopes of one big education union have not moved forward since the 2017 merger.
Pay Battles
On pay both unions naturally want more of it. At the NEU conference delegates voted in favour of an immediate poll as soon as the next pay offer is made by the Government. At the same time they rejected ultra-leftist demands to hold a ballot even before the offer is tabled. By rejecting a ballot in June, the summer holidays mean that a postal ballot is unlikely until September. This went further than the more cautious line by the union’s NEC. If the offer is rejected a formal ballot for industrial action would follow. The indicative ballot was 90.3 per cent in favour of strike action, but the turnout was only 50.3 per cent.
They are likely to have a fight on their hands. The Department for Education claims there is only room in the next financial year’s budget to raise overall spending by 1.2 per cent, or £600 million. Each single percentage point of educational spending amounts to about £270 million, which suggests a two per cent increase even if all the extra money went on teacher’s salaries.
Last year’s rise was 6.5 per cent. This was supported by the union leadership who were told by the Government the offer would be withdrawn if they did not promote it. In the end it was accepted by union members somewhat reluctantly.
In contrast to NEU’s discussion of strike, NASUWT is demanding a National Commission on Teachers’ Pay to raise the status of the teaching profession, restore competitiveness, and halt the real terms decline in teachers’ pay. This would be a body “working with the profession, employers and the Government to restore the independence of the pay review body process, ending pay stagnation and jumpstarting the long term recovery of teachers’ pay”. This shows a touching faith in government bodies which experience ought to have dispelled long ago.
In response to a survey which showed that nearly 90 per cent of NASUWT members were worried about their financial situation and 11 per cent had to take a second job, General Secretary Patrick Roach said “teachers have seen their pay fall in real terms by as much as 30 per cent over the last decade. This is not a basis for recruiting or retaining the teachers needed to provide the world-class educational opportunities that children and young people deserve”. He added that “the teaching profession is in the midst of a crisis of recruitment, retention and morale, with 40,000 teachers leaving in the last year alone”.
However members voted by 78 per cent against moving to a formal ballot for strike action over pay and workload, although it is a mystery as to how many voted in that survey. Roach claims it is more effective to focus on local issues, boasting that the union had run over “10,000 successful individual workplace ballots last year alone. No other union has ever done more than this” and “issuing notices for more than 270 days of strike action as well as action short of strike action against pupil violence, bullying employer practices, and workload. But, never asking our members to take action for action’s sake”. Perhaps one or two national actions might reduce the number of smaller actions.
One such action is at Dame Allan’s Independent School in Newcastle where 100 teachers belonging to NASUWT and NEU took strike action last month and will do so again next week. They are up in arms about the school changing its pension provider and reducing its employer contributions in order to finance an £8 million building programme. The NEU regional secretary said teachers at the school were “angry and determined to defend what is rightfully theirs”. Management have been accused of threatening to fire and rehire.
Being an independent school this is probably not one of those schools where teachers work under leaky roofs. According to another NEU survey this fate befalls one in three teachers, with one in ten describing it as a “severe issue”. S third of teachers complain they have to teach in overheated conditions One in six say their workplaces are too cold.
The NEU says a solution to the building crisis is far away: “at the present rate of 50 schools per year, the government’s School Rebuilding Programme will take 460 years to complete its work. That is many more generations of children to fail.”
On the Front-Lines
Both unions favour light touch regulation for the education profession and share a common loathing for Ofsted, the trendy name for what used to be HM Inspectors of Education. Following the 2023 suicide of a head teacher in the wake of a harsh assessment the loathing of Ofsted has increased.
The NEU conference voted unanimously to support strikes against the workload pressures caused by Ofsted inspections and want to see it abolished entirely. Daniel Kebede said “only three per cent of our teacher members trust Ofsted to be a sound and reliable arbiter of standards. “It does need to be abolished. It needs to be replaced with an inspectorate that is supportive, fair and lends itself to a collaborative [approach] in which responsibility for education and learning is a shared one.”
At the same time many schools clearly need inspection. Teachers complain that many schools seem to resemble St Trinian’s. NASUWT voted to demand that school leaders receive suicide prevention counselling as teachers are turning to drink and anti-depressants to cope with the school day.
They also want clearer rules on restraining violent pupils and protection from troublesome parents who refuse to admit their little darlings are not always little darlings. Patrick Roach complained that “speculative complaints to the Teaching Regulation Agency’s (TRA) have gone through the roof. He described that Government agency as a “kangaroo court which ought to be abolished, denouncing lawyers who benefit from “milking the system” by making such complaints against teaching.
The NASUWT reported that 38 per cent of teachers in Wales experienced violence or physical abuse from pupils in the last 12 months. Teachers at two schools, in Monmouthshire and Barry have gone on strike over issues with pupil behaviour, while Scottish teachers denounce the SNP-Green coalition for their neglect of the problem.
Patrick Roach commented that “we do not accept a situation in which teachers in Wales feel abandoned by their employers or by the Welsh government, and left alone to deal with serious episodes of pupil indiscipline and violence. The Welsh government must open its eyes to the crisis unfolding in our schools”.
While NASUWT wants an end to what it claims is a 70 hour week and demands a 35 hour working week it took care not to call for industrial action. Roach said that national strikes before the general election would be “gesture politics” – a point his comparatively genteel members agree with. Roach claims this approach will make parents more likely to support union causes. He wants the union NEC to use “political and educational resources” to mobilise members to secure a “government committed to delivering the union agenda”. That seems to mean discussions over tea and biscuits rather than taking to the picket line. And an unconditional faith in Sir Keir Starmer, he might have added.
On a more positive note, NEU delegates voted massively for a motion which strongly denounced “Israel’s current hard-right, racist government [as] the main driver of conflict, violence and war in Palestine and Israel”, a move which drew the ire of Education minister Gillian Keegan who said it was “inappropriate” and “reflecting the NEU’s divisive ideology”.
As might be expected, this was almost the only part of the conference which was reported, unfavourably in the right-wing press.
Northern Lights Dim
Passing almost unnoticed at Perth, the annual conference of the Education Institute of Scotland - Further Education Lecturers’ Association (EIS-FELA) took place overshadowed by a long running dispute over pay and job cuts in the college sector.
The rest of the month will see a further round of strike action across Scotland which have already targeted colleges in SNP ministers’ constituencies.
One particular issue is planned cuts to the University of the Highlands & Islands (UHI) in Shetland where at least 18 posts (almost a third) are in danger of being lost.
EIS-FELA Branch Secretary for UHI Shetland Andrew Anderson complained that: “We need an Islands Impact Assessment. Education is about opportunities, confidence, life experience and inclusivity. We cannot afford to make quick decisions without a clear understanding of the wider impact of these proposals.”
The EIS conference said rural and island communities should not be disproportionately disadvantaged when it comes to access to further education, and that as UHI Shetland is in receipt of public funding, the buck stops with the Government.
Another Conference
Also holding an annual conference is the general union Unison who headed down to Brighton for their Health conference.
General Secretary Christina McAnea told the assembled delegates: “The government’s promised but not delivered on the NHS. Its legacy will be crumbling hospital estates, outdated equipment, appalling waiting lists and NHS staff at their wits’ ends”. That must have come as a great surprise to them. When they recovered from their shock she went on to complain that “investment’s been drained for 14 years, capacity’s tumbling and workforce stress is ratcheting up” which again must have been a revelation, although that means she swallows the fable that the Blair-Brown years were something of a golden age for the NHS.
Unless this correspondent has missed something, when justifiably complaining about low pay and delays to pay talks Ms McAnea did not make any comment on Wes Streeting, Labour’s Shadow Health Secretary who had earlier declared that to resolve the crisis in the NHS an incoming Labour Government would use “spare capacity in the private sector to cut the waiting lists” and to perform “major surgery” on the NHS – thus continuing a long standing Tory policy.
While Ms McAnea said “during the general election campaign, I hope the public won’t be tricked by the Tories”, but she could have warned about a certain other parties plans.
Her militancy was confined to welcoming the fact that Unison had secured 42 re-banding deals across England and Scotland and that healthcare assistants (HCAs) have won £70 million worth of back pay and that Teeside HCAs were on strike on the day she spoke.
She also denounced NHS managers for not doing anything about certain patients and other NHS workers (presumably not saintly Unison members) for showing her members pornography at work.
Other issues included the demand for reasonable adjustments which are in place for disabled NHS workers to be applied to students on placements. As this does not happen at present some drop out in the middle of expensive training.
Two other disability issues were the need for disable workers to have their conditions catered for across the NHS without form filling whenever they change jobs and for “asserting our rights to disability and carers’ leave”.
Needless to say pay was a major issue on the agenda. The mover of an emergency motion poetically pointed out that “like clockwork, in April, everything goes up. Bills council tax, everything. Except, like clockwork, NHS pay”.
As a result of this month’s rise in the official National Minimum Wage members on the NHS Band Two are now paid just one penny above the minimum wage, or “a whacking 55 pence below the real living wage”.
The demand that the NHS must become a Real Living Wage Employer was made by an East Anglia delegate who noted that “more and more low paid staff in the NHS are earning a wage that is less than the Real Living Wage of £12.00 an hour”. As a result she said “many of these workers are increasingly leaving the NHS because they can earn more elsewhere”. She noted that while there was once considerable competition for NHS jobs now supermarkets and call centres are more appealing.