Salaries

FORGE PUBLIC SECTOR UNITY & BALLOT FOR NATIONAL ACTION

Linda Taaffe (Waltham Forest NUT & NUT National Executive member)

ALL teachers across the country need at least a 10% salary increase. They will have their sights raised by a fighting decision of this Conference to join with other public sector unions in a campaign to break the Chancellor’s imposed 2% barrier.

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PCS opted to combine all the issues they faced into one combined ballot

rown does not expect the unions to mount a serious challenge to this insult. Yet he boasts of the strength of the economy, and makes it easy for city financiers to rake in millions in bonuses. It is time to call his bluff and go for national pay action.

The rise in inflation already means that our latest 2.5% annual pay “increase” is actually a pay cut in real terms. But it will come as no surprise that the Review Body has failed to respond positively to the NUT’s call for them to consider an improved award. The Government believes that they can impose what they like on teacher unions without facing a serious fightback – we have to show them that they are wrong! The threat of united action on public sector pensions forced the Government to retreat – the same can be true over salaries.

We can take heart by the decision of UNISON and the other local government unions to reject their employers’ pay offer of 2%. Instead, they are making a claim for a one-year deal of 5% or £1,000 a year along with improved conditions of service. The civil service union, the PCS, have already taken national strike action on 31 January and will be taking a further day of national action on 1 May. The NUT should prepare for joint union action – with TUC backing if we can get it but without it if necessary.

The PCS’ action was not about pay alone. Like teachers, civil servants face attacks on a number of fronts including salaries, job cuts and privatisation. But, rather than try and judge which single issue was most likely to get members’ support for national action, the PCS instead opted to combine all the issues they faced into one combined ballot – and won the support of their members. The strike on 31 January closed courts, tax offices and jobcentres and even official figures show greater support for the action than their last national strike in 2004.

The NUT needs to take the same approach. This New Labour Government has broken its promises to reduce our workload. It imposes below-inflation pay awards. It also plans to hit us with new performance management regulations as well! All these areas require national strike action if we are going to mount a serious fight to defend our members and the education of our pupils.

The real issue isn’t whether we take national action on salaries or workload, performance pay or privatisation, it’s whether the Union has the confidence to call, campaign for, and win a national ballot.

We should have confidence in our members. Teachers are fed up with everything that has been thrown at them. A fighting leadership should be able to harness that anger. It’s time the Union gave a lead.

Let’s take national action on pay and on all the other issues facing teachers. Let’s forge public sector unity and seek to organise united action with colleagues facing exactly the same kind of attacks.

LONDON ALLOWANCES £7,000 INNER AND OUTER!

The Union also needs to resist any pressure to go down the road of regional pay. The government has shown itself ready to try this on recently by attempting regional pay banding in part of the civil service. Teachers are divided enough through the privatisation of academies, the hiving off of Sixth Form Colleges, numerous cash recruitment and retention incentives, and soon new PRP regulations and trust schools. New Labour’s commitment to individualise learning could be a prelude to individualised teachers’ pay!

However, an element of London pay is a long established and a recognised factor covering public and private sector workers. So, as long as London pay exists, London teachers need as fair and as equitable a system of London pay as possible. This is not the case now. In fact it is a mess.

After the last campaign in London in 2002 the government used the opportunity to change the London Allowance into three separate pay scales – a step along the road to regional pay. They are increasingly a cause for much discontent because of the differentials between teachers at all levels, and all locations. For teachers in Inner London the “notional London Allowance equivalent” can vary between £4000 at the bottom and £6,500 at the top. In Inner London the threshold increase is worth £4000, while in Outer London the same “jump” is worth only £2000. Of the 20 London boroughs, which are known as Outer London, 6 are paid on the Inner pay scale and 14 on the Outer pay scale.

We need to go back to one national pay scale plus a fixed lump sum London Allowance that would be the same for every teacher, at whatever stage of their career they are at, and wherever they teach in London; hence, the demand for £7000 for both Inner and Outer London which covers the whole metropolitan area; and £2000 for the Fringe, who are very hard done by at the moment.

Teachers in various parts of the country may complain that house prices in their areas are just as high; or that there are just as many EAL students or behaviour problems. However, what rate of extra pay a London teacher gets has nothing to do with any of these factors. For Inner London teachers it’s about the ‘threshold’. For those paid on the Outer London scale, it’s purely about geography! Being paid on the Outer London pay scale is decided by such an arbitrary factor as simply having a mile or two of border with the shire counties.

Critics describe “cliffs” at the edges of the Fringe as a potential problem, and give that as a reason for not fighting for a big Fringe allowance. Yet there are canyons of nearly £4000 between some neighbouring Outer London boroughs! There is no justification for differential pay scales of such magnitude within the London metropolitan area.

The Union should be instructed by the delegates at this Conference to launch a national campaign on pay, and to include in our submission to the STRB for the next pay round for 2008 a demand for the SAME SUM of £7,000 for both Inner and Outer London. (For comparison, the police have a metropolitan London Allowance of around £6333.)

Such a decision will help our pay campaign in London and raise the tempo for a fight nationally. There is already the beginning of a campaign in Waltham Forest, where recently a packed special meeting held on London pay unanimously supported the demand of £7,000 for all metropolitan teachers. Those present wanted the Conference to support our demand, and having discussed all the injustice and unfairness of the current system, could not see how anyone could possibly vote against it! We have set up a “£7000 Committee” to progress the campaign to reach all our members in anticipation of a positive Conference decision. Don’t let them down!

A national pay campaign would be enormously strengthened by the added twist of London teachers on the move again.