NUT: Teachers call national strike

NUT_logoThe next NUT national strike will be on Wednesday 26 March. Every NUT rep and officer now needs to be spreading that news and building for a mass show of strength in opposition to education secretary Gove’s damaging attacks on teachers and education.

We hope that other unions may be willing to coordinate with us in taking strike action on that day. The UCAC teachers’ union in Wales has announced that they will.

The NASUWT meets on 14 February, when they will decide whether to participate.

We need to make clear that this is not just a ‘protest’ but must be part of an ongoing campaign of action intended to defeat the attacks on teachers’ pensions, pay and conditions.

The new NUT parents’ leaflet includes the important points:

  • Ensure every classroom has a qualified teacher. Academies and free schools are now allowed to employ unqualified teachers. This is a big threat to standards of education.
  • Allow councils to open new schools where they are needed. There is a huge pupil place shortage but councils are not allowed to open new schools. Many councils are driven to putting huts on school playgrounds to cope. The government only allows new ‘free’ schools and these are often in the wrong place.
  • Make sure changes to the curriculum and exams are positive and planned
  • Ensure there are enough new teachers – stop picking fights with the ones we’ve got
  • Michael Gove keeps criticising teachers. Morale is plummeting. Five years after qualifying two in every five teachers are no longer teaching.

Gove is on a mission to cut costs by making teachers work longer hours for less pay and pension. Even more will leave the profession. That’s not just bad for teachers, that’s bad for children’s education.

We must make him think again – we have to build a solid strike on 26 March!

Total
0
Shares
Previous Article

Posties vote yes - where now for postal workers?

Next Article

Role of ‘Independent’ Newspapers in GSOC bugging scandal must be questioned

Related Posts

Medical secretaries fight jobs & pay cuts

Medical secretaries in hospitals across the Belfast Health Trust are fighting against attempts to cut jobs and pay by £3,000 per year. As a result of the decision by the Assembly Executive to make cuts of £318million in health since last year, frontline services such as those carried out by medical secretaries are being decimated.

Read More

QUBSU staff win emphatic victory

Unite members at Queen’s University Belfast Students’ Union (QUBSU) are celebrating a major victory in their impressive, seven-week-long campaign for respect and pay justice. The campaign developed after workers on zero-hour, casual contracts were left without pay since August as a result of the refusal of university authorities to enroll them on the government Job Retention Scheme (JRS).

Civil Service: We want equal pay now!

THE LOWEST paid staff in the Northern Ireland Civil Service (NICS) are angry and frustrated that more than a year after the Assembly First Minister Peter Robinson publicly admitted that they had been discriminated against for decades, they are still waiting for the money they are owed. Some continue to be underpaid by as much as £5,000 per year.   

Their fury has led them to take matters into their own hands and a template letter to MLAs has spread like wildfire. They have organised meetings with political parties and one of those directly led to a debate in the Assembly and the passing of a motion which called on Nigel Dodds to ensure that staff receive the money they are owed within three months. The DUP amendment which sought to remove the three month deadline was withdrawn when it was clear there was no justification for the delay.