Sheila Caffrey, NEU National Executive member, personal capacity
Labour made many election promises, including the aim to improve the life chances of children and young people, and part of this would be to recruit and retain 6,500 new teachers. So when they put forward a 2.8% pay deal for schoolteachers with no funding – so that schools have to take it from their already cash-strapped budgets – it went down like a lead balloon.
76% of primaries and 94% of secondaries won’t be able to cover the costs. All local authorities will be forced to make cuts.
At an emergency National Executive of the National Education Union (NEU) 7 January, general secretary Daniel Kebede said any campaign should be framed through the funding crisis as well as recruitment and retention of teachers. The Exec was unanimous in voting to conduct an indicative ballot of schoolteacher members over the level of pay and lack of funding.
Labour still hasn’t repealed the Tory anti-trade union turnout thresholds (which Socialist Party members continue to argue trade unions should demand Labour does immediately), and much of the discussion was around how to build the turnout.
Louise Cuffaro, Socialist Party member, raised the importance of leadership and the ‘messaging’ from the national union. The slogan ‘Pay Up’ has been criticised widely as not having any real content, as well as not addressing funding – or the myriad other issues including academisation and the loss of accountability in schools. Unfortunately, there weren’t any clear answers on this, so it will continue to be something to push.
No to partnership
In November, the NEU Exec decided, with no membership consultation, to enter a partnership deal with other education unions, employers and the government. Socialist Party members opposed this as an attempt to tie the unions to ‘consensus’ with employers and make action more difficult – but the majority of the Exec voted for it, including members of the Socialist Workers Party.
Within five days, the 2.8% unfunded pay deal was announced. Louise pointed out that this was no coincidence. The government saw a chance to push back unions further. These points were ignored in the Exec meeting, but the agreement is to be debated at the NEU’s annual conference, so we will continue to campaign against it.
Support staff
The most heated part of discussion was whether to include the NEU’s over 50,000 support staff members in the ballot. I argued that the deliberate attack on funding again is going to put a further burden on schools, where in almost every area we’ve already seen ‘restructures’ and redundancies. That disproportionately affects support staff.
I said: “This will disproportionately affect our lowest-paid members, women and part-time members. A strong indicative ballot of support staff over funding would strengthen any action taken by teachers. It’ll strengthen local work in schools. It’ll strengthen pay negotiations for support staff later this year, as well as add to pressure on other support staff unions to fight.”
At least 17 Executive members had been contacted by support staff members before the meeting. Unfortunately, this amendment was heavily lost. However, the discussion has continued to rage on various union social media forums, with support staff members arguing that they want to be balloted to fight alongside the other NEU members in their schools.
