NEU's strike action in 2023 forced both Tory and Labour governments to offer more than they intended. Photo: strikes marching in Manchester - Martin Powell Davies
NEU's strike action in 2023 forced both Tory and Labour governments to offer more than they intended. Photo: strikes marching in Manchester - Martin Powell Davies

New ‘Improving Education Together’ agreement must be opposed

Rob Williams, Socialist Party executive committee

It was apt that Sir Keir Starmer staged his New Labour government’s December ‘relaunch’ at Pinewood Studios, where the ‘Carry On’ movies were filmed. Starmer was hoping to breathe new life into his fledgling administration after finding the first period of office to be, to say the least, pretty challenging.

But it is clear that what isn’t going to change is his ‘partnership’ agenda, aiming to bring together the unions with the employers and Starmer’s government. This was the big idea that Starmer announced at September’s Trades Union Congress (TUC). The ‘P’ word littered his speech to delegates, alongside warnings of difficult choices that he and his chancellor Rachel Reeves would have to make. These were soon outlined in Labour’s first Budget at the end of October, which set the scene for the continuation of Tory austerity.

This is the context of Starmer’s appeal for partnership. As The Socialist warned after the TUC: “Starmer is clear: he accepts the limitations of the sick state of British capitalism, including Tory spending plans, and is trying to neuter the workers’ movement by advocating partnership between unions and rabid big-business bosses.”

Strike wave

After 14 years of brutal Tory austerity and the escalation of anti-union legislation, the gap between rich and poor has soared to historic levels. This was one of the spurs of the 2022-24 strike wave, the highest level of sustained industrial action over three decades. Yet Starmer and his supporting union leaders talk about ‘shared interests’ with so-called ‘reasonable employers’.

The first sign of this partnership agenda is the ‘Improving Education Together’ (IET) joint agreement between education unions and employers, which includes academy trusts. The first meeting of the IET ‘board’ was publicly announced on 20 January.

Socialist Party members on the National Education Union (NEU) Executive and our allies were alone in voting against this proposal at the November meeting (see article opposite).

This wasn’t because we are opposed to collective bargaining procedures and meetings. Quite the contrary, we fight for the ability of unions to bargain and negotiate with the employers, as long as they retain their independence.

The NEU leadership has hailed the IET as restoring collective bargaining to education. However, in fact it enshrines partnership, embroiling unions in the developing and recommending of proposals. A point made very clear in a statement published by the leadership of the NASUWT teaching union, welcoming the IET and describing it as “a milestone in developing an approach to improving education that is based on government, employers and trade unions working together in partnership”.

Not bargaining but partnership

In the very first part, it says: “We will come together to agree policy proposals that will draw on all of our disparate perspectives to improve education for all.” This principle is spelled out further in the document:

Maintain privacy and confidentiality of what is shared under the terms of the agreement, while supporting transparency and engagement,

Take collaborative, constructive, and consensual approach to co-determine goals that all members of their IET board can support and promote,

Achieve consensus wherever possible in making recommendations and implementing policies that further those goals in order that all members of their IET board can support and promote the outcomes,

Take responsibility for ensuring that consensus positions have regard to empirical evidence wherever possible, and

Agree to disagree where necessary and seek to resolve tensions without undermining the work of their IET board(s).

No shared interest

But how is it possible to have shared interests or ‘resolve tensions’ with employers who have a diametrically opposed view of education and how workers are treated – such as the vicious academy trusts, which sit outside of any democratic accountability and control?

Teachers and education staff have far more in common with their students, yet they aren’t represented in the IET. They face the prospect of increased tuition fees from Starmer’s government.

While union leaders will argue that the IET doesn’t include – at this stage at least – pay, pensions and contracts, it is nonetheless designed to develop a collaborative relationship with employers, losing a big part of union independence to shared responsibility.

The government wants the IET to set the precedent for other sectors. There have already been examples of attempts to form partnership agreements, both historic and current.

Starmer’s agenda follows on from the social partnership model that was brought in by the Welsh Labour government. And the Labour government of 1974-79 instituted the ‘Social Contract’ in agreement with the TUC.

Also, during the Covid pandemic, a whole number of union leaders, including some who claimed to be on the left, capitulated to the idea that there was a ‘national unity’ of interest with the bosses and Boris Johnson’s Tory government. Socialist Party members on union national executives stood out, often alone, against this pressure.

Limits

But the 1970s Social Contract also showed the limitations of partnership, as the ‘incomes policy’ of wage restraint at a time of high inflation couldn’t maintain industrial peace. It was challenged and ultimately defeated by workers’ struggle, including in the ‘Winter of Discontent’ of 1978-79. And in Wales, notwithstanding social partnership, workers took action during the recent strike wave.

In reality, both these instances didn’t involve legally binding procedures and agreements or no-strike limitations, but they were used by the union leaders to subordinate themselves, in order to engender and justify a partnership approach, at the expense of workers. 

Labour try to neuter unions

And the bases for these agreements show what Starmer’s objectives are now. Social partnership in Wales is an attempt to sign up unions to Labour-imposed austerity, rather than challenging the cuts of Tory and now Starmer’s Labour from Westminster. The 1970s Social Contract was designed to make workers pay for the first major post-war economic crisis.

Just days after the NEU exec agreed to partnership, the Labour government announced an insulting 2.8% pay increase for teachers. So much for ‘shared interests’.

Starmer and Reeves have set out the spending straitjacket for their government, dutifully adhering to the limits afforded by crisis-ridden British capitalism. They want to neuter the independence of the unions and their power to take action, which has been shown so effectivity over the last three years.

Therefore, any attempt to build such partnership must be opposed and fought, defending the right of unions to act independently of the employers and the government.

However, as the workers have shown historically, while social partnership would represent an unnecessary barrier for workers to overcome, it will not stop workers’ struggle, particularly at a time of crisis. That is why it is vital that union members fight for the leadership of their respective unions, making the upcoming elections across a number of unions even more important.

NEU executive elections

To help win the fighting leadership NEU members deserve, the following Socialist Party members are seeking nomination in the National Executive elections for 2025-27:

  • Sheila Caffrey District 12 standing for re-election
  • Louise Cuffaro District 16 standing for re-election
  • Sean McCauley District 8
  • Dan Warrington District 11

Why we opposed ‘Improving Education Together’ at the NEU executive

Sheila Caffrey, NEU Executive member, personal capacity

The NEU National Executive was given less than two weeks to consider the ‘Improving Education Together’ partnership deal between education unions, government and employers, while being told to not discuss with members – making the union discussions rather reminiscent of the whole deal.

At the November exec meeting, general secretary Daniel Kebede repeatedly said it wasn’t a partnership deal, and accused those who opposed it of being against negotiations.

Muzzle

But this is not a seat at the table for negotiations. Socialist Party members would agree with a real negotiating body. But any forum with an agenda set only once a year, that says we can disagree but if an issue is agreed by the secretary of state the union cannot then fight on it, is not ‘negotiations’. It’s an aim to muzzle union democracy and campaigns.

Meetings aiming to reach ‘consensus’ with CEOs of academy chains would skew any discussions around privatisation and the need to bring all schools back under local authority control. The secrecy elements would mean that the NEU wouldn’t be able to consult its own members.

In the executive sub-committee discussions, many members raised concerns, including Wales members who explained how social partnership in Wales was of no benefit to unions. But in the final vote there were only four members who voted against the proposal – the two Socialist Party exec members and two of our allies – with all others in favour.

In the January national executive meeting, Daniel Kebede reported that he understood there was little enthusiasm for the deal in the NEU. 

This was a far cry from his speeches in November, where he had said that the perception of members was that education is being treated favourably by Labour. A long list of executive members had spoken about how important it was to take part.

This included the members of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). Their report for South West NEU members said: “We were clear from the outset that we would accept nothing like the social partnership arrangement that existed under New Labour 20 years ago. That has been achieved. This is not the collective bargaining we want, but is a step forward. It is not a social partnership and has none of the terrible elements of the arrangements of 20 years ago.”

Members know the reality

So, what changed between November and January? Members in local authority sixth forms haven’t felt that education has been treated favourably, with pay deals that give them less than their colleagues in academies.

School teacher members haven’t liked being told that any 2025 pay award would be totally unfunded. The 18 schools in the Harris Federation currently balloting for strike action haven’t felt that their CEO – who made two large donations to Rachel Reeves’s election campaign – is someone they can be in partnership with.

Labour’s new education bill, published in December, shows they will not end academisation or provide full funding for education without a fight. Yet already, under pressure from the Tories and academy bosses, they have moved an amendment to water down their own plans on pay in academies.

This shows the importance of union leaders being transparent, as well as thinking about the implications of signing deals with political parties and academy leaders who clearly do not have the interests of children, education or workers at the heart of their decisions.

It is the workers and the communities in which we live and work who should be making these decisions. Socialist Party members of the NEU will continue to campaign for transparent negotiations, as well as for adequate education funding.