Discontent grows in NUT

Submitted by AWL on 7 April, 2015 - 5:28 Author: Gemma Short

At the National Union of Teachers conference on 3-7 April, an amendment from the rank and file network Lanac on teacher workload was lost by 41% to 59%.

A wrecking amendment (delete most) to a Lanac proposal on union strategy passed only by 53% to 47%.

Lanac motions usually get about a third of conference votes. This year’s votes show that an increasing section of conference dissatisfied with the mismanagement of industrial disputes, and bemused by the union leaders’ continual self-congratulation at a time when latest figures show that almost four out of ten new teachers quit within a year of qualifying, mostly because of workload.

The executive brought a priority (emergency) motion for a new ballot for strikes if a new government’s autumn statement did not protect education funding. In other words, it wanted to bury the failures of its desultory campaigns on pay, pensions, and workload by switching instead to a new scrappy campaign on funding.

Lanac’s amendment, defeated only 53-47, was moved by Jane Nellist of the Socialist Party and seconded by Gemma Short of Workers’ Liberty.

It tied in the workload issue by demanding increased resources to meet union demands for an increase in planning and preparation time to 20% for all teachers, a reduction of class sizes in all sectors, and a £2000 flat rate pay rise.

The amendment committed the union to a calendar of action, not just a one-day strike followed maybe by another, and then maybe by yet another, and to circulating minutes of negotiations to members. The amendment was lost by 53% to 47% on a card vote.

The union leaders are trying to pose as the UK equivalents of the Chicago Teachers’ Union (CTU), arguing for “social movement trade unionism”.

However their limited version of social outreach (heavily staged education question time public meetings, and a few “stand up for education” street stalls) is decapitated by a lack of industrial strategy, and therefore a lack of involvement of members in the union.

In one bizarre moment it was argued that because the CTU took two years between the Caucus of Rank and File Educators (CORE) taking over and the 2012 strike, we also have to wait for our members to be ready.

The CTU did not “wait” for their members to be ready. Before they won elections in 2010 and after they went out and actively organised a combative and fighting union rooted in the workplaces.

In 2011 NUT members were flocking to local meetings to find out about the pensions dispute in large numbers. Strikes were very well supported. If the union had seized the moment and organised those members at that point, we would not be in a position now where members do think twice about supporting stikes.

Lanac should claim its rightful role as the UK equivalent of CORE, start to organise on a local level, import the sort of bottom-up organising model employed in Chicago, coordinate local disputes and generalise the lessons from them and act as an organising pole for school-based activists.

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