To think strikes won’t achieve anything in the UK

[Sunshineseabeach]

What are people opinions; In my opinion education and health will eventually become private and the gap between rich and poor will become bigger

I, for one, would leave teaching if our right to strike was restricted any further. I think there are a lot of teachers for whom this strike is a last resort- if there's no response, or a negative response from the DfE I think we will see an even higher % of teachers leaving the profession in the next year or so.

And in 2024 there will be less training places for teachers.

If you have DC who won't have finished secondary school by about 2025, then you really ought to be hoping the strikes do have some positive effect. Even getting the already agreed pay rise funded would be something as it would help massively stretched school budgets and ensure all teachers actually get the pay rise!

Here's the thing. Public sector jobs have had numerous pay freezes over the last 10 years, as a result people are leaving the professions in droves and there is a serious struggle to recruit replacements AND to retain those who still work there. The staff who work in these professions are expected to put up with ever deteriorating conditions as the people who are suffering most are the patients/children/general public. The only way to get a proper message across is through strikes.

The issues in the NHS were not caused by strikes - ambulances were queueing outside A&E before the strikes started, patients were waiting 10+ hours to be seen, people were dying before an ambulance was even sent to them, there were not enough beds and the corridors were full of seriously ill patients as there was nowhere else to put them.

Teachers were leaving and still are in droves - many cannot be replaced as not enough new teachers are being trained and those who are often leave after a few years. Teachers are expected to be parents, nurses, social work and still produce high quality lessons when what little time they have to plan, prepare and mark is eroded covering for missing staff.
In England this is often solved by putting unqualified teachers in front of the class - many parents have no idea that the 'teacher' their child has is actually a cover supervisor or TA. In Scotland there has to be a properly qualified teacher so classes are put together, staff lose planning time to cover and in the last few years its certainly not unheard of to have to put several classes together in the hall, or leave senior classes uncovered (16+)
Some classes might not have had a proper teacher that's not cover for months or even years. Many schools are dropping subjects at secondary since they can't recruit staff for it. And the staff are getting home at 6pm having taught all day, had no planning and prep time, meetings after school and still need to do their marking and prep for the next day.

To be a teacher (in Scotland at least) you need both a degree and a post grad and a year as a probationer (secondary school) to get paid considerably less than you would in industry, to be sworn and assaulted on an all to regular basis, to have endless reams of paperwork to complete and then still have parents bitching that they only had 10 minutes at parents night and that teachers should be responsible for teaching everything from how to tie shoe laces to how to fill in a job application form.

I can't afford to strike, but I certainly can't afford not to strike. If I was 18 again I absolutely wouldn't go down the teaching path and I love teaching. Right now, if something doesn't change I will be yet another ex-teacher within the next couple of years.

@Overthebow if you read the small print with that deal it's terrible.

Being able to change days off at very short notice etc. They'd basically never be able to plan anything outside of work.

Louder for those at the back! There was also chat that they were going to be requiring masters plus postgrad to become a teacher. To attract that calibre of teachers they are gonna need to top out above the current £42k pay award.

I agree that teachers have become social workers. Sorting out things for kids because no one else is.

The Tories are pushing the anti strike law legislation through soon aren’t they? Angela Rayner was having a debate in parliament a few days ago, meanwhile Grant Shapps just sat there smirking.

The Tories have the numbers to vote it through thought.

I can’t believe they may pass this law through. And it was the Tories that said Brexit was a democracy!

What about the democratic right to strike ?

It has to get through the Lords though, and because it wasn't in the manifesto and is clearly terrible legislation, they might have difficulty there.

I’d imagine most people would morally be against banning striking? Isn’t it part of the Human rights act ?

I just don’t trust this government. It is sad that they don’t care about basic rights like education and health. I do feel for people that work on those sectors. What future is there in the UK if education and health is not value snd pay fairly.

Well public sector pay isn’t wonderful, but pensions, sick pay and maternity pay are certainly decent.

Strikes bring down governments. Remember how no one would vote labour, because everyone said “We can’t go back to the 70s - don’t you remember the winter of discontent?” Well, this is the year of Broken Britain, and it’s all down to the tories. We change things by voting them out and keeping them out, because this is what they do - every single time.

Labour did go out due to that winter. One difference is Thatcher won and reduced union power to help resolve the issues and the public thought tg and kept Labour out for a while.

Labour and Tories have different ties / approaches to unions so it was possible for Thatcher.

This is the public who continually whinge that public sector do fuck all while WFH and watching TV and building a final salary pension? That public? Well they can bloody well see how much we do do when they then whinge about not getting a driving test, or their passport or their UC journal isn't replied to. We are so understaffed current staff are going off with stress as we simply can't cope. Roll on 1 Feb.

Bitter? Moi?

Apart from further disruption of the education of a generation of children who have had 2 years disruption already.

Apart from increasing hospital waiting times and probably deaths of people already impacted by two years of pandemic.

Apart from disrupting the Christmas travel of people who have already had two disrupted Christmases.

Nah, no effect at all really.

I haven’t even noticed the strikes bar a couple of late Christmas cards. I drive if there’s a rail strike on a non working day and WFH most of the time, and nothing else has had any impact as my DC is older and not needed anything else.

though some people are affected, it’s fewer people than before so the government can hold out. Conservative voter demographic is likely to be less affected. Pensioners and or the better off in society.

We have a sizeable household income, happy to pay more tax and National Insurance but somebody voted the Tories in.

Well, those first two statements do rather correlate with one another.

@MarshaBradyo I feel like we are often on a thread together arguing for economic reality but there's a strong cohort of posters who think that because of a couple of dodgy contracts during the pandemic, the government must have hidden supplies of cash to give these double digit % pay rises across the public sector.

I would leave too with DC but I still love London.

the government must have hidden supplies of cash to give these double digit % pay rises across the public sector.

There are ways for governments to get money to invest in vital services you know?

I mean, they gave £7 billon to energy companies in November alone to subsidise energy bills. Where did they get that money from?

They claim to have no money, then magically find it when they want to. Extraordinary.

I would also leave if they removed my right to strike. It’s not something that ANY teacher wants to do, but it is nice to have the security of knowing that we have that option if need be.

Sharon Graham of Unite saying outright on Sophy Ridge that the government are liars. They are lying about being in negotiations and they are lying about minimum services levels.

twitter.com/ridgeonsunday/status/1617091026014855168?s=61&t=xnymqDiqNc3dUIUfsdiBQQ

So if strikes don't work, it's because the government don't want a resolution.

Why would the government not want a resolution?

Well, they want to get rid of that, too...

@noblegiraffe yes and that was the right thing to do. It helped everyone, rather than a few thousand public sector workers who think they deserve many times the level of pay rise we're seeing in the private sector.

In terms of how economies work, it's not like a current account. They don't have to run without a deficit, they just have to keep the confidence of global financial markets. Investing in something like education is unlikely to cause financial markets to lose confidence, because they know economies need highly skilled workers to drive future growth.

The tories, since about 2010, have sold us this lie that the books need to balance, but lots of other countries run on a massive budget deficit and don't see it as a problem!

In terms of minimum service requirements, I would be really, really interested to know what happens if schools or hospitals fall under those on non strike days- we definitely saw it in schools last winter, I know some schools did partial closures and some did an open at all costs view with e.g. sixth form not being taught and year groups being taught together in large spaces like libraries and halls.

In terms of getting legislation through, it does take months, and then unions will launch a legal challenge- I don't think it would impact this current round of strikes. I also think it could lead to the kind of civil unrest we saw around the "kill the bill" protests too- it's a similar sort of issue.

I'm not sure anyone has said they want to ban striking on this thread. I don't support the strikes but I wouldn't ban them. I would prefer the unions accept a realistic pay rise and everyone get back to work, but this is the beauty of democracy - none of us really get what we want 😂