Sheila Caffrey, NEU National executive member, personal capacity
The National Education Union (NEU) ran indicative ballots for school teacher and support staff members earlier this year, which saw over 200,000 education workers engage with voting to take action over pay, funding, workload and redundancies.
The lack of confidence of many on the National Executive to move to action (many using the Tory anti-trade union laws, still on the books two years into a Labour government, to justify their fears) meant that they agreed to push any formal ballot six months later to October.
The threat of action pushed the government to alter their offer from being over three years to over two years, with 3.5% for teachers this year and 3% next year – but not fully funded. For many on the exec, this was seen as an opportunity to pull back on action.
On 9 July, the exec discussed a paper from general secretary Daniel Kebede in which he used the ascendency of Andy Burnham to argue for a ‘snap poll’ at the end of the summer term to judge whether or not teachers would accept the pay deal, and whether they’d be willing to ballot for sufficient funding to ensure the pay deal this year was fully funded.
Socialist Party members were part of a small a handful of exec members who opposed a snap poll, as members’ views were already clear. We could see that many supporters of it were wanting to cancel any action. We reminded the exec that workload was also a key part of the original ballot.
A week later, with the results of the snap poll in, as well as feedback from members in the areas and in union forums, there was a shift. Many members had been vocal that it was ‘ridiculous’ to run a snap poll at the end of the academic year, especially when the demands for an inflation-busting pay deal with funding to prevent redundancies and improve workload hadn’t been met.
Daniel Kebede put forward a paper ignoring the 75% of snap poll respondents who said they would fight on pay, and suggested that with Burnham coming in, this would be a good time just to firm up the 1% of the pay deal that was unfunded, and fight for a small extra pot of funding. (Last year, when Socialist Party members on the exec argued to fight on funding as well as pay, we were told that the union ‘could not’ fight on funding!)
We see it differently. Burnham has been quite clear that he intends to stick to the fiscal rules, so unless we form a big union fightback, why would there be new money? He will be under enormous pressure – he won’t want a fight with hundreds of thousands of education workers on picket lines, and so this is the time to increase that pressure, not take our foot off the pedal.
The pay award sits just over current inflation. It doesn’t take into account the energy price cap being lifted or escalations in Iran, both of which will hit members’ and schools’ pockets heavily in the autumn.
It doesn’t take into account the almost 17% needed to bring pay back in line after 15 years of almost annual real-terms pay cuts.
It doesn’t take into account the redundancies happening up and down the country as schools cannot balance budgets, leading to vital support for children and young people being cut.
And it doesn’t take into account the spiralling workloads that are making workers vote with their feet and leave education more than any other issue.
It was clear that members had been making these points, as a large majority of the exec shifted position – not just to holding a ballot on the original terms, but to actually push it much further!
To firm up wording on funding, so it doesn’t just cover a pay deal, but enough to be able to prevent redundancies; to put in appropriate measures to cut workload and provide a decent education for pupils. And on pay, not just a deal that sits over inflation, but to fight for pay restoration, inspired by the resident doctors in the BMA.
This shows that when many of the exec members feel the pressure from the broader membership, they can be galvanised into action. It shows the importance of building from below, but it cannot be left there. We do need a leadership that is willing to fight!
We are determined to keep the pressure on the NEU top officers to show the leadership and confidence needed to lead this ballot to win for all education workers and for the whole of education.
