NEU teachers on strike this year. Photo: Essex Socialist Party
NEU teachers on strike this year. Photo: Essex Socialist Party

Vote for fighting, socialist candidates in the executive elections

Sheila Caffrey, Louise Cuffaro, Sean McCauley, Steve Scott and Nicky Downes, NEU NEC members, personal capacity

National Education Union (NEU) conference will be meeting at a critical juncture in the union’s battle to win fully funded inflation-proof pay increases for all education staff.

Two further days of solidly supported strike action by NEU teacher members in England, coinciding with the massive London demonstration that filled Trafalgar Square on Budget Day, forced the Tory government to accept that it would have to talk to the NEU after all. This was the biggest day of coordinated action in this strike wave, with over 600,000 workers taking action together. The NEU estimates that over 50,000 of the union’s members took part in the London demo, with many others on local picket lines.

Funding

Yet, after six days of talks with teaching unions, the best ‘offer’ that the government was prepared to make for teachers in England was derisory. The only thing that was offered to improve on the 2022-23 pay award was an unconsolidated £1,000 one-off lump-sum. For 2023-24, the offer was just 4.5% and with just 0.5% in extra funding to pay for it. In other words, it amounted to an offer of two further years of cuts – both to school funding and real-terms pay.

In reality, this ‘offer’ is an insult to education workers, and also to the families and schools that we work so hard to support. Socialist Party members on the NEU National Executive (NEC) made clear that offers like this have to be refused! Correctly, the whole executive agreed members should reject it.

Socialist Party members supported the proposal that the membership should be surveyed to see if they agree with that recommendation. After all, it’s the union members who will have most to lose from a poor deal, and they need to feel that the decision to reject is theirs, not just the executive’s. By NEU conference we will know if that is the case.

In the week that the negotiations were taking place, interest rates were hiked up once again, and the government’s own CPI inflation measurement jumped to 10.4%. The annual price increase for many essentials, such as milk, rose over 30%!

That’s why we have to make clear to the Tories that they need to come back to us with a real offer, not an insult. And that means not just a fully funded inflation-proof offer for 2023-24 but also a backdated award that does the same for 2022-23 too.

What next?

The key question facing NEU conference delegates is what action now needs to be taken to make sure the government has to improve its offer?

The NEC proposal, in the first instance, is for two further days of action each side of the May Day bank holiday weekend. But, for the government to know we are serious, more dates will need to be named to follow that. To increase the pressure, more two- or three-day strikes and/or a more regular calendar of action is going to be needed in the summer term, including in the exam period if needed, to maintain momentum. The incredible figure of 50,000 new members recruited during this dispute shows the massive potential to escalate.

Of course, some teachers will have understandable concerns about the cost of ongoing strike action on their already stretched incomes. But that’s why the Socialist Party has been arguing that a plan for escalated action also has to be combined with a plan to address genuine hardship. As well as NEU districts using their own reserves, an appeal to the wider trade union movement should be made to boost strike funds to make sure our action remains strong and solid.

Equally, to get the maximum impact from days of strike action, the NEU should seek to coordinate strikes with other unions taking action, such as the junior doctors and postal workers.

But coordination with the rest of the school workforce – support staff – would have the biggest impact of all. Local government unions are opening action ballots for their support staff members. All unions with members in schools need to put their differences aside and make sure that support staff are able to fight together alongside their teaching colleagues, in a joint fight for pay and funding. Reballoting the NEU’s 50,000 support staff members will be a key part of that struggle.

NEU conference is perfectly timed to agree the programme of escalating strike action that will be needed, and to then go back into schools and local districts and branches to build for it!

Breaking news – headteachers could strike too

The union representing headteachers, NAHT, has described the government’s pay offer as “inadequate”. The NAHT has also said that if its members reject what’s on offer, “it is clear that industrial action will be necessary”.

The NAHT will now ask its members whether it should accept or reject the offer, and if they would be prepared to vote in favour of industrial action if the offer is rejected.


Wales

Cath Peace, NEU Cymru member

If only the NEU executive had discovered the same united determination to oppose an inadequate offer for teachers in England when it came to teachers in Wales!

Negotiations with the Labour-led Welsh government produced a proposed deal that, while at least offering something extra for 2022-23, still meant another real-terms pay cut. On top of that, it tied teachers into a two-year deal with a 5% award for 2023-24 that is still far below current inflation rates. There was also nothing offered at all on support staff pay.

But, while strikes in England had been consistently built, in Wales they were mistakenly postponed on two separate occasions, seriously undermining momentum and member confidence that NEU Cymru was serious about winning its demands.

Against that background, and in the absence of a strong rank-and-file left within NEU Cymru willing and able to make the case that a better deal could be won, the deal was accepted in a vote by 73% to 27%.

Of course, the 27% who opposed the deal contains the majority of the most active reps and members who had made sure the ballot had been won and firm strike action then built across Wales. Many now feel that their union has let them down.

Instead of demanding the Welsh government fights alongside the unions to win more funding from Westminster, the dispute has been settled on the basis that this is the most that the Welsh government can afford. That not only sells members in Wales short, it also means we can’t now act alongside colleagues in England in a joint struggle to win the pay and funding we all need.

Many of us feel that this again shows the danger of trying to rely on keeping friendly relations with Welsh Labour. ‘Partnership working’ with the Labour-led Welsh government should be abandoned because, in reality, it works against us.


NEC elections

The following Socialist Party members are standing for election to the NEU National Executive. The ballot runs 6 April – 2 May

Re-elect to the National Executive:

Sheila Caffrey, district 12

Sean McCauley, district 8

Steve Scott, district 3

Also vote for: Anna Scott, district 3

To join Louise Cuffaro, already elected unopposed in district 16