Socialist Party Teachers NUT Conference Fringe Meeting

Socialist Party Teachers NUT Conference Fringe Meeting

Grants Hotel, Swan Road, Harrogate, Monday April 9^th, 8 pm

Speaker: Councillor Jackie Grunsell

TAKE NATIONAL ACTION TO DEFEND EDUCATION

WORKLOAD * STRESS * PERFORMANCE PAY

TAKE NATIONAL ACTION TO DEFEND EDUCATION

Martin Powell-Davies, Lewisham NUT

Teachers are being ground down by the pressures of intolerable workload, underfunding and performance pay. Academies and Trusts are designed to further undermine collective opposition to their divisive policies.

Our stressful lives are bad for our health, our families and the children we teach too. Too many teachers are already voting with their feet. Some resign, some are driven out by ill-health or bullying managers.

Local NUT Associations are struggling valiantly to defend members through individual casework and local disputes. But the strategy of relying on school reps and officers to fight local battles alone will not succeed. At best, as when striking against TLR pay cuts, we may win some local victories, but as a long-term strategy it leaves the NUT playing King Canute trying to stem the New Labour tide.

Unless the Union acts, the attacks will continue on pay, conditions and comprehensive education. But, if the NUT led from the front and campaigned to win a ballot for national strike action, members would respond. A successful one-day strike would give an outlet for teachers’ many grievances and raise the sights of members who aren’t yet confident to take action in their school alone.

It’s not that the Union is short of issues to galvanise the membership around. By the Government’s own admission, teachers are still working 50 hours a week and more. Pay rises are being pegged beneath the rate of inflation. The Education Act is fragmenting comprehensive state education.

A demand to withdraw the new performance management regulations could prove the clearest focus for action. They threaten to add a cruel twist to the existing performance pay regime. Schools will be expected to carry out more nit-picking observations and set teachers more ‘challenging’ objectives. More staff will be demoralised and denied their pay rise; more will accept unreasonable workload so as to keep in line for salary progression.

But the Union doesn’t have to choose one priority for national action above all others. The civil service union, the PCS, with Socialist Party members playing an important role in its leadership, have recently successfully won a ballot and called national strike action. They linked different threats to jobs, pay and conditions into one national action. The NUT can do the same.

We must have confidence in our members. Teachers are fed up with everything that has been thrown at them by this Government. A fighting leadership should be able to harness that anger. It’s time the Union gave a lead. NUT Conference delegates have a responsibility to make sure it does.

Socialist Party Teachers NUT Conference Fringe Meeting

Grants Hotel, Swan Road, Harrogate, Monday April 9^th, 8 pm

Speaker: Councillor Jackie Grunsell

Campaign for a New Workers’ Party Conference

*Campaign for a New Workers’ Party Conference
*Saturday 12 May 12 – 5 pm (registration opens at 11 am)
University College London,
Cruciform Building,
Gower St,
London WC1
(nearest tubes Euston, Euston Square and Goodge St)

"New Labour, my arse!"

Ricky Tomlinson addressed the meeting of about 250 in Liverpool on 12 Feb . Older readers will remember the Shrewsbury Two, imprisoned for trade union organisation. Ricky was one of them.

“Tony Blair has disembowelled the Labour Party. It’s not New Labour, it’s the New Phoney Labour Party and a growing number of people are fed up with it. We’ve now got to stop the rot.”

The current choice, he says, between New Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, represents no choice at all.

“There are loads of groups that have set up in opposition but we’ve got to bring all the different socialist parties together to form one powerful new party that can win elections.

“There’s got to be one unified, left wing party that has the interests of the working class at heart.

“Why am I doing this? Sometimes you have to put yourself up as an Aunt Sally. I’ve been at the bottom of the ladder. I’ve had my house repossessed. I’ve been blacklisted. I’ve been unemployed.

“But I have got lucky – I got a wonderful job, earned good money and travelled to places all over the world that I never thought I’d see. I know what is the best out of those two and I want other people to have as many opportunities in life as possible.”

Shop Stewards network

A flyer for the shop stewards network is available here

The founding conference is at
South Camden Community School
Charrington Street
London

7th July
11 am to 5 pm

G8 - Trade Unionists oppose neo-liberalism

Trade unionists against neo liberalism! No to a global race to the bottom!

Stop the G8 summit - Trade unions onto the global stage!

We are trade unionists from many different parts of Germany and we are part of the protest movement against the G8 summit 2007 in Heiligendamm. These annual summits are a symbol for global neo liberal domination like no other international institution. The G8 summits serve the purpose of global coordination and the division of power between the major global powers. This way, they are stabilising the global neo liberal economic order with worsening effects for the majority of the population. An elitist minority accumulates the wealth produced by millions of people.

We support the protest against imperialist power strategies, wars, environmental destruction and the threat of global warming. In contrast to its promises, global capitalism propels humanity into a crisis of existence. Without an answer to the looming climate catastrophe, there can be no solution.

The globalisation of capital and labour markets has put workers into global competition with each other. Workers, industries and workplaces of individual countries are being played out against each other without any scruples in a ruthless competition about jobs, labour conditions, wages and human dignity. As trade unionists we therefore demand the following:

 Essential labour norms are a human right and have to be enforced as minimal standards. Among those are the right to form trade unions, the right to collective bargaining, the abolishment of child and forced labour and a general ban of discrimination at work. Breaches of these rules have to be made public and punished severely.

 Maximum working hours: Redistribution of labour is the most important tool to cut unemployment figures of 200 million and 1.4 billion working poor globally. The development of productive forces has to be used for the progress of society, together with a cut in working hours: The 30 hour week is the aim, there has to be a global maximum 40 hour working week.

 The minimum wage is already a reality in a few countries, albeit in an insufficient form. The minimum wage has to become a worldwide minimum standard. The minimum wage should be 60% of the national average way and thus become a global reality.

 Pension systems have to be built and defended against privatisation and commercialisation. Health, education, public safety and the natural foundations of life must not become a commodity.

 Rights at work have to be regulated by law in order to guarantee a minimum level of protection for workers against arbitrary measures by the employers.

As a result of globalisation, the balance of forces between capital and labour has shifted dramatically in favour of capital. Global financial markets and multinational companies have gained a gigantic blackmail potential against nation states (erosion of taxes and environmental standards, deregulation of labour markets) and against trade unions acting within nation states.

We have to get out of this historic defensive position. We have to put pressure on capital, we have to overcome language difficulties, we have to recognise our common interest to work together across all borders on all levels of the trade union movement, as was the case with the strike demonstration against the Bolkestein doctrine and the international strikes of dockworkers and maritime workers and as will be the case in June 2007 against the G8 summit in Heiligendamm.

We know we are only at the beginning of this journey. But we also know that only by overcoming our national rivalries and by creating a trade union movement which is able to campaign globally we will be able to effectively challenge the globally active capital.

Signatories
(This is a selection, an official publication of all initial signatories will follow soon)

Detlef Baade, Betriebsrat/Schweb-Vertretung/K-Sbv, Hamburg
Hagen Battran, GEW Bezirksvorsitzender, Freiburg
Gerd Buddin, Stellvertretener Vorsitzender der Gewerkschaft ver.di, Bezirk Berlin
Patrick von Brandt, ver.di Landesbezirksjugendsekretär Niedersachsen-Bremen
Jeannine Geißler, ver.di Jugendbildungsreferentin, Hannover
Werner Dreibus, Bevollmächtigter der IG Metall, Offenbach
Roland Hamm, 1. Bevollmächtigter IG Metall Aalen
Ralf Krämer, ver.di Gewerkschaftssekretär, Berlin
Walter Mayer; IG Metall Gewerkschaftssekretär i.R., Berlin
Bernd Riexinger, ver.di Bezirksgeschäftsführer, Stuttgart
Werner Sauerborn, ver.di Gewerkschaftssekretär, Stuttgart
Heidi Scharf, 1. Bevollmächtigte IG Metall Schwäbisch-Hall
Michael Schlecht, ver.di Gewerkschaftssekretär, Berlin
Berno Schuckart, Mitarbeitervertretung, ver.di Hamburg
Sibylle Stamm, ver.di Landesvorsitzende Baden-Württemberg
Roland Tremper, ver.di Bezirksgeschäftsführer, Berlin
And many others.

Contact:

Dirk Spöri, spoeri@gmx.net, Tel.: 0160 7942195, Auwaldstr. 29, 79110 Freiburg

Werner Sauerborn, werner.sauerborn@t-online.de