Militant leftie teachers will NOT be striking (NASUWT England)

[noblegiraffe]

The ballots have been counted and despite 90% of the votes being in favour of strike action, only 42% of members returned their ballot therefore the 50% threshold of membership voting was not reached and strike action will not take place.

This is for NASUWT members, the second biggest teaching union. The largest teaching union, the NEU, will be announcing its results early next week (possibly Sunday). The NAHT headteachers' union will also be announcing strike ballot results shortly.

If the NEU strike and the NASUWT don't, schools still may close. If headteachers strike, who knows as it has never happened before.

If some unions vote to strike and some don't, can teachers be made to cover for striking colleagues?

No.

Existing staff cannot be made to do this, and bringing in strike breakers is dodgy

Non-striking teachers should refuse to e.g. double-up classes as well as do any cover.

Iirr from previous strikes, non striking staff weren't allowed to cover for their striking colleagues.

We could continue to cover a class if we were routinely due to cover that class on the strike day eh a routine weekly ppa session which always happened that day or a course cover that the teacher was pre planned to be out for so the in school cover was already pre arranged beforehand.

We weren't allowed to use class TAs to cover for a striking teacher. Although they would normally do first day sickness cover for the teacher they weren't allowed to on a stone absence.

And we couldn't cover striking teachers with supply either.

So we had some classes closed if their teacher was striking for a striking union, and some classes open if their teacher wasn't striking with their union.

TAs and cover staff were allocated different jobs for the day.

The striking teachers still retained some of their PPA too, but it was reduced slightly iirr. So a missed day teaching resulted in half an hour less PPA time that week, for example. Same as if we have a four day week.

You must have worked in a better school than me, @Abraxan . If we lost PPA due to striking it was tough titties in my school.

How does one go about refusing to cover for striking teachers? It's not like we get asked nicely if we would; the class appears on our timetable and if we don't show while in school we could be hauled over the coals for safeguarding reasons.

Happened plenty of times before when cover got put onto our only free about 5-30min before we were due to cover said class and SLT wondered why we didn't turn up (err... because I was teaching last period when you dropped this on me).

NaHT didn't meet threshold.

Ive just joined NEU and cancelled NASUWT. Strength in numbers

I'm not in a union (disorganised, new job after kids etc) should I join NEU now or would it look bad to my employer?

I've been NEU in past, just hadn't got round to joining.

Thanks for the replies to my question.

They don't need to know until you either strike or need union support because your employer is being shitty to you about something. You just join them direct and pay by direct debit.

It's been quite useful at times for me - one place assumed I wasn't because it didn't come out of my salary, so when they were indulging in a little disability discrimination and harassment, they were quite surprised to find my union contacting them the following day.

NASUWT also cocked up as well as there was an error on some ballot paper so needed to be redone. I didn’t do mine as had sent it in already. Only happened to see it when I was sorting through Christmas papers to shred and it said to send it in again. No idea if it got there.

people needed to vote even if it was a no.

people voted in the prime minister using online and postal votes so why can’t balloting get with the modern times.

Definitely join a union. Some are offering free membership for a year. Well worth the money in case of allegations or the dreaded support plan

"people voted in the prime minister using online and postal votes so why can’t balloting get with the modern times."

...because the govt changed the laws relating voting for striking to make it harder to strike and to make it as hard as possible for a union to get enough votes to strike. Using online balloting would make it all far too easy for people to vote and for the unions to get over the threshold.

www.gov.uk/government/news/trade-union-act-measures-come-into-force-to-protect-people-from-undemocratic-industrial-action
March 2017

Independent Report from 2017 into conducting electronic balloting for union votes commissioned by the Sec of State for Business etc. Unsurprisingly the conclusion was not to go ahead with it because of of the risk of hacking by external forces seeking to disrupt the vote

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/668942/e-balloting-review-report-sir-ken-knight.pdf

Odd then that when the Tories wanted to vote in a new leader in Oct 22, online voting wasn't considered an issue despite the warnings given in the previous report about security of online voting for industrial action. The article from the BBC actually mentions the 2017 report:

www.bbc.com/news/63344131

So online voting is good enough to choose a new PM but not good enough to allow industrial action.

I was a teacher for over twenty years. I left the profession 5 years ago. I loved the job but, in the end, just couldn't cope with the workload and pay. I think another point is that those of who were older (and proudly leftie) just gave up. It's hard to keep going when you are starting at an old age of poverty.

The right, who love to run teachers down, always joke about "those who can't teach, etc" without wondering what happens when teachers just up and leave the profession. We can, we chose not to. But, everybody had their breaking point. I am far from alone, in leaving teaching. I now earn twice as much and work half as hard. The sad bit is, I'd have loved to remain in teaching, but, it eventually becomes ridiculous to be so poor, work so hard, and realise I won't be in a position to afford my old age.