Teachers to strike - 30 June

[meditrina]

breaking now on SKY

Overwhelming vote by 2 teachers' unions (92%)

Why do some people find it so hard to accept that some people won't just accept what is being passed down to them? It's not as if you can rely the Government to have your best interests at heart when they let the bankers get away with it, so it's right to question their judgement. Everybody looks after themselves, but if they do it through a Union it's wrong? Is the Daily Hail some people's only source of information?

Someone here explains it much better than I could:

www.newstatesman.com/200103120014

The right to join a trade union, and the right to strike, are as fundamental as free speech. If you don't have them, you're not an employee but a serf, and a society that outlaws strikes isn't free. That's not a left-wing view. Conservatives believe it, too (for Poland, anyway). Where individual bargaining power is weak - perhaps because the employer is a quasi-monopoly purchaser of an employee's particular skill, as London Underground is of Tube-driving skills - collective bargaining power is all that employees have.

Yet we have allowed governments and the courts to make strikes, in effect, illegal.

So you haven't been balloted to strike then - which is what Mum2Be said.

This is from the NASUWT:

98 per cent of teachers were deeply angry about the Coalition Government's proposals to change teachers' and other public service workers' pensions. The overwhelming majority were prepared to take strike action should the Coalition Government proceed with its proposals.

Chris Keates, General Secretary of the NASUWT, said:

"This is a staggeringly high response, which in itself illustrates the intense anger the Coalition's proposals have generated. "This survey is a clear warning to Coalition ministers.

"On the basis of this, I have written to the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander, lodging a formal dispute over pensions.

"I have warned him that, should the Coalition Government either fail to take seriously the concerns of teachers or fail to use the negotiations with the TUC genuinely and seriously to seek an agreed outcome, then the overwhelming support for industrial action among NASUWT members will be translated into reality with inevitable widespread disruption.

People forget that the employer pays 14.1% contributions too so that a total contribution of 20.5%.

And you will find that not many private sector companies will offer their employees such a generous deal. For example, my last company. I put in 5%, they put in 5%. My current company will put in 6% for my 3% BUT it gets capped so until I am much older, there's no way they'd ever pay 14% for my 6% contribution.

The problem is that public sector pensions is unaffordable in it's current guise. The proposal's seem fair to me. Anything you've accrued so far is guaranteed and going forward you need to pay more. It's not nice but it's fair given that in 20 years, the taxpayer of the time simply cannot sustain the amount of people who will be old then.

It's not a political problem. It's one of mathematics. The only political thing about this, is the government's approach.

Niceguy, to answer the 'ideology' question from yesterday; Yes, it's ideological with the Tories and yes it has always been a massive vote loser for them. However, the current economic situation has allowed them a window of opportunity to get it through which thyey've never had before.

Things aren't great economically but they really are nowhere near as bad as government has allowed people to believe this last year. This view is backed up by a very good friend of DH's who is a high ranking actuary in the City and has worked for central government. The government keep dropping Greece into the conversation during interviews. That is nothing more than propoganda and scaremongering.

We do need to tighten our belts somewhat, we've been through a recession but we are nowhere near on our knees economically. If we were, there would be worry and caution at DH's work, which there isn't. The banks aren't lending because they don't have to and it's an opportunity for them to save some money when interest rates would be low for borrowers. This also suits a great deal of people as it is preventing house prices from running away again as they did almost immediately we came out of the last recession.

There have been a lot of comments on here about the Police retiring much earlier than teachers, but I think you'll find that they pay much higher contributions in order to do this - 11% of their salary as opposed to the teachers 6.4%. If teachers are so keen to keep their current retirement age then they should be prepared to fund it more rather than relying on tax payers to bridge the deficit.
Unfortunately teachers have lived in a bubble for too long with regards to what's happening in the real world. For instance in the private sector trying to get a part-time role in a professional job is very hard meaning that a lot of us very qualified mums end up taking noddy, low paid jobs so that it fits in with the kids. A lot of teachers have the option of going part-time without losing their pay scale or benefits. Lucky them!
I'm sure there are a lot of dedicated and competent teachers but the majority of friends I know who are teachers fell into it because they either did degrees that weren't of much use in the private sector or they didn't have a clue what else to do when they left uni and teaching was an easy option. Sorry, harsh I know, but that's what I've seen.

agree with Nobrainer re part time roles in the private sector - hence why I get paid less than a tenner an hour and cannot afford to have ANY pension - I get no contributions from my employer so I simply have to hope I drop dead before I need one!

FloandBoo "I would probably be very unpopular as I would not strike even if I did belong to a union." Well that's just about the daftest thing I've read on this thread and that's saying something! So what you're saying is that the union can support you when things are going well but when there's a real need for people to take action you're nowhere to be found! Shame.

SpottyFrock. There's two ways of looking at this.

Firstly it depends on how you define bad. Personally an annual deficit of £150billion to me sounds bloody bad! That's more than we spend on health. It's more than we spend on education & defence combined. No point in arguing how we got here and who is to blame. We are where we are.

This is more money than we can raise by tinkering with tax. Or by making "efficiency savings". There's no way out of this by cutting some fat out. To fix this, we have to cut some muscle and yes it will/is hurt/hurting.

Also part of the problem with pensions is that this is not a problem now but a timebomb which will explode in 20 years. So the question becomes...if you know you will have a HUGE problem in 20 years, do you deal with it now to try to fix it? Or do you carry on regardless and let someone else (ie. our kids) deal with it in 20 years?

"No point in arguing how we got here and who is to blame. We are where we are."...

I suspect the government would be getting a lot more support if they'd dealt with the banks rather more strongly- I mean, many who did actually get us into this mess and whose banks had to be bailed out by us still got their tens of thousand of £ bonuses!

There's every point in arguing how we got here. We, the British, have a strong sense of fairness. We are not seeing this. We are seeing a pile of Oxbridge privileged men, many with handsome trust funds, destroy our DCs chances of ever going to uni and our own chances of ever retiring on a living wage.

Maybe giving up one ir 2 of the 10 plus weeksa holiday the get to educate our children may suffice them getting the pension. Just a thought .

That doesn't make any sense, sorry.

Giving up 2wks of the holidays?

I desperately wanted to teach but certainly the terms and conditions helped make my decision easier. Had the holidays been 6wks a year and the pension been poor I just may have considered something else. Perhaps I would have done law as suggested by my 6th form tutor or become a management consultant like my best friend from university. Both her and my DH (lawyer) have excellent terms and conditions and great pension schemes.

Changing the direction of this thread slightly, does anyone know WHEN we will know which schools will actually be closed on 30th June? Will schools shut or remain open with skeletal staff? Just wondering how it will actually work should the strikes go ahead...

Erebus, this subject has been discussed countless times on other threads. And I'm sure it will continue to be.

The problem is that when all said and done, no matter who you blame, we're all still stood in the same stinking pile of poo.

The problem is still too big to be fixed by tinkering and blame gets us nowhere.

Lastly, the pensions issue was a timebomb regardless of any banking/deficit crisis. So the two should be discussed apart. It's not like if we didn't have a crisis, we'd be A ok. We'd have just delayed things for a few more years.

Depends on the number of ATL/NUT staff in school - and if they are striking or not.

TartyMcFarty

"The brain drain to the private sector" ???

Do you live in such a public sector bubble such that it has escaped your notice that many average local private schools (not your Eton etc type public schools) are struggling for income due to parents having to take dc out as they can't afford fees due to redundancy/ cut backs ?

They too are having to freeze pay/ keep wage rises to a minimum/make redundancies.

Wake up and smell the real world coffee, that stuff teachers are drinking in the staff room clearly isn't doing the job.

Did TartyMcFarty mean Private sector as in Private vs Public sector or private schools? Not sure but I read it as the former.

Not quite sure what teachers would do in the private sector though!

Totally against.. PUblic sectorworkers choose to work in the public sector and the perks are quite considerable, because it's all so PC that you have to be unbelievably rubbish at your job before you're disciplined and even then it's virtually impossible to be sacked.

I don't remotely deny how hard teachers work and how committed they are by the way. I'm self employed - I can't afford a pension, I work during school hours and do my admin in my family time and the fact of the matter is that if I take time off work (like yesterday when my daughter was sent home from school because she didn't feel well) I don't earn any money or I have to catch up at my own expense or refund my clients. Will I be compensated for my lost revenue when my children can't attend school because of a teachers' dispute? I don't think so.

I don't expect a free ride and it's my choice to be self employed in order to spend time with my children and be there for their (LONG!) holidays but I do not appreciate being held to ransom by my kids' teachers going on strike. I'm a single parent. Their dad is always "too busy" to look after them for things like strikes/ill health.

What am I meant to do? Leave them at home unattended so that I can put food on the table?Take them to work with me? Oh yeah - I remember - I've got to take unpaid time off work so that a political point can be made. Yes, that seems really fair....

Oh yes Trish that's right - school is there to provide free childcare isn't it? So that you can work (which you choose to do as a self-employed person). Of course!!!!

Losing a days pay for strikes will probably finish us. Especially if theres more strikes.

But i am reminded of that poem....first they came for the communists but i was not etc etc
Where were the unions when carers, disabled people and unemployed being ripped to shreds by this Govt? But we cant strike can we.
Its not that i dont support public sector wormers. Without doctors dd woild be dead, but the support didnt alwatsgo both ways.
The teachers at the boys school wouldnt even support the Save EMA marches.

Now we are all up shit creek without a paddle sadly.

I keep reading this comment 'teachers are not there to provide childcare' and feel teachers are missing the point. Yes you are not there to provide childcare at weekend and in holidays - but you do during term time. When you strike you impose a direct meaurable cost on parents. That is why parents will quickly lose patience with this. Especially if their own job is under threat and their private pension has been cut or non existent.

Was talking at school today to some staff who are in the striking unions, who have to decide if they are taking part or not. I think they are.

It isn't just the pension though. They were saying that the changes will mean they are on average around £90 a month worse off under the changes - so they pay packet will go down by £90 every single month. That's quite a lot of money.